The impact of data and artificial intelligence (AI) on technology is expanding and deepening rapidly, lending incredible benefits and potential consequences to business. The past year’s AI frenzy had every industry chomping at the bit with the potential of learning language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) to drive business and customer outcomes faster, more efficiently, and more comprehensively. Let’s face it—AI is now mainstream. In fact, a recent survey showed that nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of business owners believe AI will improve customer relationships and increase productivity. With a majority of large enterprises now investing in and embracing generative AI for uses ranging from customer service to cybersecurity, these capabilities will soon cease to be differentiators but mere table stakes.

So how does business stay ahead of the curve? AI on its own doesn’t deliver value—in fact, it adds complexity and involves substantial risk. Sure, it connects users to data, but only via useful applications supported in secure, cloud-based infrastructure. It’s the strategic use of data afforded by carefully managed AI that leads to innovation—and that’s where the magic happens.

The word innovation itself has become so commonplace that we hardly hear its meaning anymore. Delivering fresh methodologies and ideas to market faster than anyone else is now core to business success—and operationalization is the secret sauce: making innovation easier.

Innovation won’t wait

AI is expanding so rapidly; it feels like when the internet was born. Easier isn’t the only goal. How do you also operationalize innovation fast? By connecting and optimizing all your operations across your landscape to create a seamless path for people, process, and technology to navigate, leading to the next Big Idea. That’s the promise of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, BMC’s vision for the future of business—agile, resilient, digitally transformed, and ready to continuously innovate and win. And the way we get there is via Connected Digital Ops.

With Connected Digital Ops, you can connect across your entire technology landscape, from on-premises to cloud to edge, to automate and transform your IT infrastructure. You can turn systems of record into systems of action, enabling automated workflows that give you the real-time insights you need to take action. And you can make operations (the Ops) the catalyst for competitive advantage as the innovation differentiator that’s always connected to customer demands and essential to driving business outcomes.

The power of Connected Digital Ops is in its ability to deliver transformation and growth with the breakthrough capabilities of AI and five distinct Ops.

It’s AIOps, combining data, analytics, and machine learning (ML) to enable enterprise observability, automated issue remediation, and proactive problem-solving.

It’s DataOps, uncovering new opportunities and unlocking greater business value, rapidly, continuously, and at scale.

And ServiceOps, removing the barrier between service (ITSM) and operations (ITOM) to enable collaboration between teams for amazing user experiences.

Along with DevOps, where organizations can develop and deliver in-demand apps continuously and efficiently.

And finally, AutonomousOps, where integrating, automating, and orchestrating complex application and data workflows ensures business outcomes at enterprise speed and scale.

Deliver on the promise of AI with BMC

Today’s IT landscape comprises multiple platforms spanning mainframe, public, private, and hybrid cloud, and on-premises datacenters, all the way to the edge. BMC has nimbly mastered every paradigm shift for more than 40 years, and we are uniquely positioned to help connect your business-critical infrastructure across this vast and complex hybrid IT ecosystem with the power of AI.

Elevate Ops to be the most mission critical part of your business, a foundation for continuous innovation. In the AI-dominated future, business must move faster than humanly possible—and BMC can help you get there.

Learn more about Connected Digital Ops.

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the intersection of environmental sustainability and technology is more critical than ever. A recent survey by Gartner^® highlights this shift: “64 percent of CEOs said they view environmental sustainability as a growth opportunity.”¹ I believe this perspective is further bolstered by the inclusion of sustainable technology in the Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2024 ² report, which, in my opinion, signals a clear readiness among executives to weave sustainability into the fabric of their organizations.

The role of IT in achieving sustainability goals

As organizations across all industries aim to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and achieve carbon neutrality, IT leaders are finding themselves at the forefront of this transformative journey. Digital transformation initiatives that focused on accelerating business outcomes are now being realigned to incorporate sustainability goals, enhancing organizational resilience and setting a foundation for sustainable growth.

Around the globe, governments are steering the shift towards sustainability through a mix of initiatives, including the implementation of carbon taxes, voluntary schemes, and rigorous regulations. This shift is further accelerated by the expanding mandate for detailed corporate sustainability disclosures.

The evolving regulatory framework, highlighted by new directives from entities like the European Union and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is significantly influencing corporate strategies. In particular, the SEC’s pending revision of its climate-related disclosure rules introduces heightened levels of transparency, compelling organizations to meticulously report their direct (scope 1) and indirect (scope 2) GHG emissions in relevant operational areas.

The challenges ahead

Despite the clear mandate, IT leaders face several challenges integrating sustainability into their strategies. These include a scarcity of expertise in sustainable IT implementation, complexities associated with hybrid cloud environments, inefficiencies across IT lifecycles, controlling the energy demands of advanced language models in generative AI, and coordinating myriad supplier relationships.

As the surge in the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and advancements in generative AI exert unprecedented stress on data centers across the globe, research from McKinsey & Company shows that the connected devices that employees use every day—laptops, tablets, smartphones, and printers—generate 1.5 to 2 times more carbon globally than data centers.

And those devices are expected to reach 55.7 billion by 2025. While the sheer volume alone demands a critical examination of the environmental impact of technology, a Capgemini report highlights the current disconnect in the perceived responsibility. It found that a staggering 89 percent of companies recycle less than 10 percent of their IT hardware, and globally, only 43 percent of executives are aware of their organization’s IT footprint.

Tackling these issues requires a comprehensive strategy that includes concrete actions to address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles, energy consumption, and sustainable practices, alongside organization-wide adherence to regulations. With the growing demand for computing resources to support evolving technologies like generative artificial intelligence (AI), the environmental footprint of technological advancements can no longer be overlooked.

While generative AI is credited with improving process efficiency, it also has some GHG concerns of its own. A recent joint study by Hugging Face AI and Carnegie Mellon found a stark difference in the energy usage of generative AI for imagery and text. MIT Technology Review explains it this way, “Generating 1,000 images with a powerful AI model … is responsible for roughly as much carbon dioxide as driving … 4.1 miles in an average gasoline-powered car. [The] least carbon-intensive text generation model … was responsible for as much CO₂ as driving 0.0006 miles in a similar vehicle.” And yet, PwC’s 2023 Emerging Tech Survey found that just 22 percent of business leaders were concerned about sustainability impact when citing issues with deploying generative AI.

A call to action for IT leaders

IT leaders play a key role in advancing sustainability within their organizations. While there’s a gap between aspirations and realization, this presents a unique opportunity rather than a barrier.

SustainableIT.org highlights that many IT organizations have yet to fully embrace ESG mandates, frequently due to implementation hurdles and the absence of standardized carbon footprint evaluation frameworks. However, this scenario offers IT leaders a chance to step up, utilizing their distinct skills and connections to spearhead meaningful sustainable transformation.

Through such proactive leadership, IT departments can transform from being seen as part of the problem to becoming an integral part of the solution, driving forward not only the sustainability agenda but also reinforcing an organization’s commitment to social responsibility and ethical governance. In doing so, IT leaders contribute to the global effort to combat climate change while also enhancing their organization’s reputation, attracting and retaining talent, and potentially realizing significant cost savings through more efficient resource use.

Five steps towards sustainable IT

• Define clear sustainability targets: Start by setting specific, measurable, and ambitious sustainability goals that align with broader standards. Identify critical areas for improvement and commit to ongoing progress in reducing your IT footprint.
• Engage with suppliers for sustainability: Work closely with your suppliers to ensure they adopt environmentally responsible practices and materials. This collaborative approach amplifies your sustainability impact and encourages a shift towards greener industry practices.
• Leverage technology for efficiency: Use automation and other technological innovations to streamline operations, reducing energy use and waste. Optimizing processes and embracing cloud solutions can also help significantly reduce your energy consumption.
• Advocate for sustainable policies: Actively support policies and regulations that encourage sustainability in the tech industry. Engage in dialogues, participate in forums, and advocate for green practices to help shape a more sustainable regulatory environment.
• Cultivate a culture of sustainability: Educate and inspire your team to adopt sustainable practices. Offer training, encourage innovative ideas for sustainability, and recognize efforts to meet your environmental goals, fostering a workplace that values green initiatives.

BMC: Our sustainable IT journey

At BMC, we’re on a path towards sustainability, aiming to become a net-zero enterprise by 2030. Through a holistic approach that addresses emission inefficiencies across the business, BMC is advancing its own sustainability agenda and empowering our customers to do the same. By offering expertise in sustainable transformation, operational efficiency solutions, and visibility into workload optimization, BMC is at the forefront of driving sustainable change in the IT sector and beyond.

Conclusion

For IT leaders, the call to action is clear: sustainability must be integrated into the heart of IT strategy and operations. By setting clear goals, adopting green practices, collaborating with suppliers, optimizing operations, and advocating for supportive policies, IT leaders can drive their organizations towards a more sustainable and prosperous future. The path forward requires a collective effort and a transformative approach, but the rewards are immense—for the planet, for people, and for prosperity.

¹Gartner Podcast, Why All Executives Should Focus on Sustainable Technology to Drive Growth, October 17, 2023. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

² Gartner Article, Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2024, Ava McCartney, October 16, 2023.

The holiday season brings with it a spirit of joy, gratitude, and generosity. In the corporate world, this festive atmosphere provides an opportunity for organizations to embrace corporate citizenship, recognizing the importance of giving back to communities in need. Here at BMC, we strive to think globally and act locally, serving the communities where we live and work around the world. Our annual “Season of Giving” program embodies this ethos, extending warm holiday wishes to our clients and making a meaningful impact by funding 100,000 meals worldwide through the GlobalGiving platform.

Corporate citizenship encapsulates the idea that businesses have a responsibility to contribute positively to society. In the current landscape, consumers and employees increasingly favor companies with a strong sense of social responsibility.

While the Season of Giving showcases our commitment to philanthropy and encourages a culture of compassion within our organization, it is also intricately woven into the fabric of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These 17 global goals serve as a blueprint for a better and more sustainable future, addressing a wide range of challenges from poverty and hunger to climate action and equality.

The foremost goal we contribute to is SDG 2: Zero Hunger. By funding 100,000 meals through GlobalGiving, an online platform connecting donors with grassroots projects around the world, we are providing meals to those in need and addressing hunger and food insecurity, an issue that affects 1.3 billion individuals, on a global scale. The Season of Giving directly supports the aim of achieving food security and improved nutrition and contributes to the broader agenda of sustainable development.

Our commitment also aligns with SDG 1: No Poverty, as we recognize the integral link between hunger and poverty. By addressing immediate nutritional needs, we contribute to breaking the cycle of poverty and creating pathways to economic empowerment for individuals and communities.

Our corporate citizenship initiatives also touch upon other SDGs, such as SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being, by promoting access to nutritious meals; SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, by supporting initiatives that create employment opportunities in the food supply chain; and SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals, by collaborating with organizations like GlobalGiving to amplify our impact.

The importance of giving back as an organization also fosters a sense of purpose and unity among employees, instilling pride in being part of a company that prioritizes social impact. While engaging in philanthropic endeavors does help strengthen the corporate brand, more importantly, it also creates a positive work environment, attracting and retaining talent that appreciate a sense of community and shared values, and it’s an investment in our collective future.

As organizations, we have a unique opportunity to channel the collective goodwill of the season into initiatives that address pressing societal issues. In addition to the Season of Giving program, BMC employees give back in other ways during the holidays—volunteering their time, donating to local charities, and organizing workplace giving campaigns. We also encourage our employees to give back by signing up to be virtual literacy tutors for Joy Education Foundation, and our multilingual employees to become humanitarian aid worker translators on the Tarjimly App. On a one-to-one level, we promote sending a text or card of gratitude to someone who has made a difference in their life or day.

Corporate citizenship is a commitment to making a positive impact on the world. We hope that our Season of Giving exemplifies this commitment by aligning holiday greetings with honoring our clients and providing meals to those in need. As businesses, let us recognize the importance of giving back, not only during the holidays but throughout the year, ensuring that our corporate success contributes to the well-being of the global community we serve.

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend the United Nations (UN) Women HeForShe Summit in New York, accompanied by BMC Chief Financial Officer Marc Rothman. At the Summit, UN Women unveiled the powerful theme of #RespectfullyDisruptive, calling for a collective disruption of global inequalities. This theme emphasizes the urgent need to challenge the status quo and chart a new course toward gender equality, with men as active partners in this journey.

The significance of male allies like Marc in propelling gender equality forward cannot be overstated. In a world grappling with complex challenges, their involvement is crucial. As Sima Bahous, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, puts it, “We must challenge the portrayal of toxic masculinity and promote positive male role models who champion gender equality.”

The power of respectful disruption

Respectful disruption translates into tangible actions that contribute to transforming gender equality into a reality. These actions include active allyship, concrete commitments to advance gender balance, intensifying efforts towards gender parity, standing up against biased attitudes and behaviors, countering gender discrimination, implementing Women’s Empowerment Principles, closing the gender pay gap, advocating for more women in leadership positions, and designing workplace policies that foster equality and inclusion.

Targets of respectful disruption

The call for respectful disruption addresses critical fronts that include:

• Gender social norms: These norms perpetuate biases against gender, hindering individual progress and potential.
• Struggle: Harmful models of masculinity oversimplify the image of men, restricting their ability to embrace their full range of emotions and roles.
• Gender pay gap: The persistence of unequal pay for work of equal value perpetuates economic disparities.
• Violence against women: Violence remains a pervasive issue, affecting the lives of countless women globally.
• Active allyship: Taking proactive steps to bolster gender equality initiatives.

Why gender parity and female leadership matter

While women are making inroads into corporate leadership, there’s still much to do. According to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2023 study, “Since 2015, the number of women in the C-suite has increased from 17 to 28 percent, and the representation of women at the vice president and senior vice president levels has also improved significantly,” but “women—and especially women of color—have remained underrepresented across the corporate pipeline.”

Organizations that prioritize gender parity and female leadership consistently outperform their competitors. Studies show that diverse teams lead to higher innovation, increased profitability, and improved decision-making. Women Count 2022, a UK study of Financial Times Stock Exchange companies by The Pipeline, a diversity consultancy, revealed that corporations that have over 25 percent of women on their executive committees realized a profit margin of 16 percent—more than 10 times higher than those without any female board members. The study suggests that those in the latter category could be forfeiting billions of dollars of revenue with that exclusion.

UN Women HeForShe is championing thriving communities

Research from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reinforces the notion that when women thrive, communities thrive. According to their findings, gender equality is associated with improved economic performance, enhanced competitiveness, and increased social progress. Beyond economic indicators, thriving communities benefit from greater innovation, resilience, and overall well-being when women are actively engaged and empowered.

The UN Women HeForShe movement, through its commitment to respectful disruption, actively supports the IMF theory that when women thrive, communities flourish. By engaging over three million supporters worldwide, UN Women HeForShe channels resources and advocacy toward programs that uplift and empower women while concurrently mentoring men. These initiatives, funded by UN Women HeForShe, span various sectors, including education, healthcare, economic empowerment, and leadership development. Through targeted investments, the organization drives tangible progress towards creating thriving communities across the globe.

BMC’s commitment to HeForShe

BMC recognizes its critical role in influencing gender equality, especially in the tech sector, and is focused on creating inclusive workplaces where women thrive, without diminishing the role of men. Throughout the year, BMC supports UN Women HeForShe initiatives such as policy advisement, employee training, volunteering, awareness, and our annual Global Move event in October.

During Global Move, BMC uses its influence to fundraise and drive awareness for UN Women HeForShe by encouraging its entire workforce and ecosystem to move, walk, run, or roll for 132 minutes. That time is intentional, driving awareness that throughout the world, gender parity will take 132 years to achieve unless we all work together toward progress, and that equality is achievable through taking action. BMC’s support for UN Women HeForShe seeks to elevate the visibility of women, empower allies of gender equality, inspire women to pursue their goals, celebrate their achievements, and inclusively support those who identify as women in their careers.

Join the movement

We invite you to join us on October 21 for Global Move 2023 as we strive to help eliminate bias and create a more equitable world for women in the workforce and beyond. Every action matters, and together, we can be agents of positive change, respectfully disrupting the norms that perpetuate gender inequality. By doing so, we not only advance the cause of gender equality but also foster a more inclusive, innovative, and prosperous world for all.

 #CSR

May is an incredibly significant month as we come together to celebrate both Asian-Pacific Islander (API) Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month. Both observances hold immense importance in fostering understanding, empathy, and support within our communities. As proud mothers and co-captains of the BMC API Employee Resource Group (ERG), we are personally invested in raising awareness about the unique experiences of the API community and the vital role mental health plays in our lives. In this blog post, we want to focus on microaggressions, their impact on mental health, and how we can all contribute to fostering a more inclusive work environment.

Microaggressions are subtle, often unintentional, statements or actions that convey stereotypes or prejudices towards a particular group. Microaggressions can take many forms—from assuming someone’s proficiency in various subjects based on their race to making inappropriate comments about their language or accent. These everyday encounters may seem harmless in the moment but can cause significant harm to a person’s mental well-being over time.

A Public Health study showed that experiencing microaggressions can lead to increased stress, anxiety, and depression in API women. As we navigate our way through the unique challenges of balancing work, family, and cultural expectations, these additional stressors can take a toll on our overall mental health. This May, it’s crucial that we recognize the importance of addressing microaggressions and creating a supportive environment for all employees, regardless of their background. We’ve shared some guidance on proactive steps you can take to eliminate bias here.

To combat microaggressions and foster a more inclusive workplace, BMC has implemented proactive initiatives that include mandatory unconscious bias training; free access to CulturePop, a self-paced, micro-learning app that encourages cross-cultural curiosity; an ongoing Diversity Speaker Series for our employees; and supporting our API ERG to actively promote diversity and inclusion. By actively participating in these programs, we can all contribute to a more equitable and supportive work environment.

In addition to our internal efforts, it’s essential to partner with API organizations and mental health resources on a global level to raise awareness about the unique challenges faced by API individuals. Some notable organizations include Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), and the Asian Mental Health Collective. Learn more about API cultures and traditions through the Asian Art Museum Virtual Tour and a curated collection of Asian recipes.

As we celebrate API Month and Mental Health Awareness Month, let’s commit to recognizing and addressing microaggressions in the workplace through our collective efforts. By engaging and partnering with global API organizations and mental health resources, we can empower our community and ensure that our mental well-being is prioritized. Together, we can make a difference—one conversation at a time.

If your company is on a digital transformation journey with a specific focus on everything as a service (XaaS), then you should also be investing in managed services to maximize the value of your investment in new technology.

A common trend among companies after acquiring world-class products and solutions is to seek low-cost service providers to manage them, which can result in poor service quality, failure to achieve desired business outcomes, and a low return on investment (ROI) despite significant investments in the products.

Let’s take an example; A European health insurance company with significant investments and a well-defined strategic plan invested in the products of COMPANY X. The health insurer had a strong vision, a solid strategy, and clear goals, but overlooked one crucial aspect: a capable team to manage the solutions and achieve the desired outcomes. It made a mistake that is common during a digital transformation journey, outsourcing its services to COMPANY Y, a low-cost managed service provider that had a large workforce but lacked the necessary skills, a clearly defined service improvement strategy, and a focus on delivering customer-value outputs.

The European health insurance company experienced several negative outcomes from this arrangement, such as low availability and inefficient system functionality. The mismatch between business expectations and product capabilities caused confusion and frustration among users and stakeholders, leading to a lack of user adoption, which, in turn, led to a failed investment and the need to search for alternative products or managed services. Finally, the European health insurer failed to achieve its desired ROI and fell short of its digital transformation goals.

A top-notch managed service provider is as important as world-class products and choosing the right one is a crucial and important step. So, what are the things you should look for in a managed service provider? Let’s examine some of the stages of the managed services lifecycle. Reputable providers should have the framework or expertise to address most of these stages, which can be broadly categorized into four sequential phases:

1. Stabilization
2. Familiarization
3. Exploration
4. Adoption

Stabilization

In the first phase, the managed service provider stabilizes the environment, identifying bottlenecks, eliminating customer pain points and frustration, and making the solution available and reliable.

Familiarization

The second phase of the process is to ensure that customers, internal stakeholders, and end users understand the product and solution. The managed services team and education teams work together to explain the capabilities, features, and possibilities of the solution.

Exploration

The third phase of the process builds on the knowledge gained in the previous stage. End users or service owners, who are now familiar with the capabilities of the tools, have developed ideas on how to utilize them for the benefit of their specific domain, business, or organization. The managed services team helps bring these ideas to fruition by collaborating with customers. If excessive modifications to the original product are required, the team can also act as a liaison between the customer and the product development team, collecting feedback and incorporating it into the product to reduce the burden of management and increase opportunities for innovation.

Adoption

Once the company realizes the true potential of the solution and has aligned it to its specific needs, it can be implemented across the organization to all business units. This mass adoption increases synergy among the business units; unifies the approach to managing processes, data, and communication; helps streamline operations; increase efficiency; and improve collaboration. Additionally, having one tool reduces the need for multiple separate systems, which helps to reduce costs and IT complexity. Most importantly, it can provide valuable data insights for the organization.

Now that you understand the four phases, these are some of the additional things you should consider when evaluating a managed service provider:

• Customer references and past case studies that demonstrate their ability to stabilize environments and provide a working framework
• A dedicated education team or partnerships with education providers to train end users and stakeholders
• Capabilities and domain expertise to customize the product and make it relevant to your business
• A framework for providing product feedback to your product’s product management team
• A continuous service improvement framework to innovate and evolve in the changing IT landscape
• The ability to scale to meet your needs as you adopt the service
• Highly skilled personnel with expertise in your specific products
• The ability to measure and produce key performance indicators (KPIs) such as:
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)—score greater than 50 indicates top quality service received by customers
  • Proactive resolution rate—an indication of whether the service is proactive or reactive
  • Renewal rate—an indication of customer trust and realization of the value of the service
  • First-time right metric—measures the efficiency of technical teams
  • Automation rate—an indication of faster turnaround times and continual service improvement (CSI)
  • Mean time between failures (MTBF)—an indication of the stability of the service
  • Uptime—an indication of the stability of the service

Figure 1. Desirable metrics for a managed service provider.

In conclusion, by carefully evaluating and selecting a managed service provider based on the criteria discussed, you can ensure that you are choosing a provider that can help you realize the full value of your investment and support your digital transformation journey.

BMC offers a strong framework to fast-track your digital transformation through our proven Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE) framework, world-class products, and BMC Application Managed Service team of experts. Our solutions consistently meet and surpass the KPIs for numerous customers worldwide. To learn more about how BMC Application Managed Service can benefit your organization, please fill out our form.

As we recognize International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we have a great opportunity to celebrate and talk about tangible ways to continue to uplift and advance women in the workplace, particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). As my colleague, Pam Fitzwater-Johansen, noted in a previous blog, mentorship and sponsorship are vital tools women, and really all workers, can use to amplify their voices and move their careers forward.

Mentors and sponsors

We’ve spoken previously about the power of allies and allyship. At BMC, we are continuously working to be allies, and we’re extending that to advocate sponsorship, which goes beyond demonstrating supportive behaviors to taking practical actions to help with career advancement.

Mentors provide support and empathy, and can span management, peers, co-workers, and anyone who has a unique, relevant point of view to share insights, offer advice, and be a sounding board. A sponsor is a senior-level leader and advocate who helps an individual advance their career with skills building, strategic planning, and wisdom to support their journey. A sponsor elevates them in the room where decisions are made, championing them when opportunities arise.

Harvard Business Review shared an excellent step-by-step guide on sponsorship here. The LinkedIn Learning course, “Effective Sponsorship for Sponsors,” offers insights into what a sponsor is and how anyone can become a sponsor through intentional allyship.

Mentors and sponsors each have their own strengths and merits. As Jackie Ferguson from The Diversity Movement shares in Forbes, “Where sponsorship is focused specifically on professional development and career advancement, mentorship can be a more helpful tool for nurturing feelings of belonging and inclusion. Mentors are especially helpful in learning how to navigate workplaces where dimensions of one’s identity are currently or typically underrepresented. A new, nonbinary Gen-Z employee, for instance, may benefit greatly from a voluntary mentor who identifies as LGBTQ+, so long as the two are mutually invested in the relationship.”

In the pre-pandemic world where the majority of workers were onsite, finding and securing mentors and sponsors was an easier feat. With the increased, now mainstream, adoption of remote and hybrid workforces, there’s an opportunity for organizations and leaders to rebuild those same offerings for workers and women who primarily work offsite. According to the most recent Lean In and McKinsey Women in the Workplace study, less than half of companies surveyed offer virtual mentorship and sponsorship programs.

Those virtual programs are increasingly necessary as more women want to work outside an office, and promotional opportunities still elude the majority of women. Only one in ten women wants to work mostly onsite, and many women cite remote and hybrid work options as a top reason for joining or staying with an organization. Respondents said it wasn’t just about flexibility; the safety net of fewer microaggressions and higher levels of psychological safety were equally important considerations.

The study also highlights the still-disproportionate number of women in leadership roles, which can create a vacuum of women at the top to be mentors and sponsors, with only one in four C-suite leaders identifying as a woman, and only one in 20 a woman of color. For every 100 men who are promoted from entry-level roles to management, only 87 women are promoted, and only 82 women of color are promoted. These numbers are also echoed by the LinkedIn Gender Equity in the Workplace economic graph.

For women who do arrive at the top, it’s still a struggle, with 43 percent of women leaders telling Lean In and McKinsey they are burned out, versus 31 percent of male leaders. To help women advance, and maintain balance once they do, organizations have an opportunity to provide flexible work environments and thoughtful wellness benefits that deliver services and support for women at every stage of their lives.

Practical steps

So, how can leaders move the needle to foster inclusion, growth, and advancement for those who identify as women?

In 2023, pay transparency and equal pay for equal roles should be a baseline goal. In 2022, BMC was certified by Fair Pay Workplace (“FPW”) for our efforts to create sustainable fair pay for our employees around the world. FPW certification holds us accountable, reviewing and independently verifying the steps we are taking to achieve global pay equity across gender, race, and intersectional considerations.

Say something nice about an employee or colleague out loud. Write a LinkedIn recommendation or leave positive feedback on your internal employee recognition platform for your outstanding women colleagues and direct reports. You can also cast a wider net and acknowledge the women in your professional networks to support their professional growth.

Employee resource groups (ERGs) exist to give subsets of employees a safe space to gather, discuss individual and shared experiences, and empower each other through education, volunteering, and other collaborative opportunities. At BMC, Women in Technology and Business is our longest-running ERG, fostering open, real discussions among the women who work at BMC.

Curate experiences that are professionally valuable for women—employees and customers—such as user groups, speaker series, and breakout sessions at events. Recently, the BMC Brazil office held a “Control-M for Her” event where female employees, clients, and partners gathered to network and learn more about expanding the capabilities for our Control-M data workflow orchestration solution in their respective tech stacks.

To attract and hire the next generation of talent, make substantive changes that foster a pipeline of strong future leaders, regardless of their backgrounds. Expand opportunities for hiring and advancement—and candidate access—by retooling job descriptions with gender-neutral language and functional requirements that are skills-based. Include anonymous candidate screening technology like career.place into your talent strategy.

Provide enhanced learning and development opportunities. BMC does this through our Grow @ BMC program and by offering LinkedIn Learning memberships to all employees for self-paced, skills-building coursework. All women and women-identifying employees have also been gifted a membership to Uplevyl, a global online community that creates opportunities for women to support one another with professional advice and financial literacy tools.

Hold your team accountable for practicing and promoting inclusive behaviors with ongoing training and resources. CulturePop is a self-paced, micro-learning app that encourages cross-cultural curiosity. BMC’s corporate membership is available to all employees to use within their teams to help expand their cultural awareness.

Encourage organizational, employee, and ecosystem participation in initiatives like UN Women, a United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, and HeForShe, a solidarity movement for gender equality created by UN Women that invites men and boys to engage in and advocate for gender equality in our lifetime. BMC is proud to partner with these organizations to raise funds through our annual Global Move event and to spread awareness throughout the year.

Focus on building environments where women thrive and that inclusively support them in their careers by inspiring them to pursue their goals without barriers. BMC is working toward an important cultural shift that establishes that the inclusion and elevation of more women in tech and business does not equate to a lesser role for men.

Fostering a workplace that is more welcoming to and inclusive of women requires doing the work and investing resources to establish, maintain, and grow supportive mechanisms—from cultural changes to dialogues to opportunities, and more. It’s necessary work to bring the next generation of women into the STEM workforce, help them advance, and ensure that the Autonomous Digital Enterprise includes everyone.

Organizations can be a positive force this Black History Month by expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives throughout the entire company and past the month of February, and by cultivating an environment where every employee feels comfortable to be themselves. But DEI initiatives are only part of the story. To fully walk the talk about fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace, organizations must also commit to making space for authentic employee voices, improving diversity training, and focusing on philanthropy. Ultimately, the aggregation of these changes must show up as tangible results.

Making space for authentic employee voices

Employee resource groups (ERGs) give employees an opportunity to engage in open, honest discussions on a variety of DEI-related topics. BMC has ten global ERGs, and our Black@BMC ERG focuses on individual and collective lived experiences and recognizes the importance of Black history while also emphasizing the current state and near future for our Black employees.

New this year, our “Black Future” series uplifts their voices, showcasing how exceptional employees and organizational leaders are making history and shaping the future, as well as recognizing and celebrating their journeys. It’s an authentic, thought-provoking, and exciting complement to our existing, ongoing ERG Diversity Speaker Series, which invites speakers to share their insights on a variety of DEI issues.

During these sessions, we’ve heard from colleagues on topics ranging from how to find an invested professional mentor to how you can prepare your children for their first encounter with racism. This has resulted in an excellent collection of voices, stories, perspectives, and history that has inspired our audiences to reshape their own narratives.

Two of our ERGs have executive-level sponsorship focused on equitable pay, career advancement, and group advocacy. Our Black@BMC executive sponsor is BMC Chief Marketing Officer Martyn Etherington, who views the role as a conduit for action and change. “I can provide a voice and bring a bias for action to our team of 71 individuals of Black@BMC,” he shares. “But it is our outstanding captain, Jannelle Allong-Diakabana, and our Black@BMC members, who I listen to and learn from. Together we will map our goals for what constitutes success, and we will hold ourselves accountable for making a positive difference for our members and BMC’s overall success.”

“Throughout all levels of management at BMC, we’ve seen a significant increase in interest in DEI initiatives, as our business leaders and executive leadership team have boosted their engagement, joined one (or more) of our ERGs, and regularly attended the monthly meetings where we share resources, events, personal perspectives, and more. We believe that we are all responsible for forward progress and we do this by learning from each other and participating in the community.”

Improving diversity training

Building and maintaining a robust DEI presence also means developing and repeating training programs that go beyond rubber-stamping a DEI message. According to Denise Lee Yohn, a one-size-fits-all approach won’t get it done, nor will traditional training approaches that focus on organizational values or collect annual survey results.

A newer approach to training and culture-building is to empower everyone in the organization, where people at every level and across every department play different roles in developing and maintaining an inclusive culture. Employees need to be involved, have the opportunity to provide candid feedback, and most importantly, help champion the desired behaviors. At BMC, we using DEI survey feedback and stakeholder interviews to curate content, define strategy, and listen to our employees.

During one of the aforementioned ERG Diversity Speaker Series sessions, guest speaker Melissa Dobbins, CEO of Career.Place, enforced that we can cultivate organizational change by identifying and executing actions, evaluating results, applying lessons, and then repeating it again and again.

Part of that training also involves understanding language—and harmful language. BMC is a member of the Inclusive Naming Initiative, a business collective tasked with defining processes and tools to remove harmful language and replace it with neutral terms. Here is a basic guide to problematic terms you might use every day without being conscious of their impact, and alternative options. BMC is addressing this with our own employees and partners through a style guide resource on how to use inclusive language.

Focusing on philanthropy

As a global organization, BMC—and our employees—have an opportunity to engage, to shape and produce both immediate and long-lasting positive impact for our organization and society. Monthly observances like Black History Month amplify those opportunities, allowing us to spotlight ways to learn, give back, and pay it forward to the communities and people we are celebrating by seeding action, opening doors, and fueling progress. We invite you to join us in our support of the following organizations:

• Algorithmic Justice League
• Black Girls Code
• Generating Genius
• Giving Gap
• Juneteenth Legacy and Nia Cultural Center
• Worldreader

Other ways you can get involved and expand your world view this Black History Month and throughout the year include:

• Checking out our Black@BMC ERG Spotify playlist.
• Trying CulturePop, a self-paced, micro-learning app that encourages cross-cultural curiosity. BMC’s corporate membership is available to all employees to use within their teams to help expand their cultural awareness.
• Watching Coded Bias, the documentary that explores the widespread bias in artificial intelligence (AI), now streaming on Netflix.
• Exploring this YouTube playlist to learn more about how to be an ally.

Prioritizing people and doing the right thing are two of our core values. And as global citizens, we also advocate for awareness, empathy, and curiosity to understand each other. We can accomplish this by continuing to celebrate and uplift Black voices; taking ownership of what we do and don’t know; and giving back to the historically excluded communities impacted by racism, inequities, and discrimination. These are powerful steps on the path to ensuring that the Autonomous Digital Enterprise includes everyone.

ChatGPT’s ability to converse on seemingly everything has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. Social media is loving it. News media outlets are reporting on it. Educators are worried about it. But is ChatGPT ready to securely support and deliver enterprise applications? Read on to see how BMC is planning to support large language model (LLM)-based approaches for self-service and other enterprise use cases.

Zero shot falls short of enterprise needs

First, some background. Today’s chatbot deployments require initial and ongoing training in order for the natural language processing (NLP) models to understand the user’s intents and extract “entities.”

For example, if I type in: “I need guest wifi for 2 at Dallas tomorrow” the training data that we have already entered is used to classify:

• The intent is “order guest wifi”
• Related entities are “2 guests”
• Location is “Dallas”
• For the next day’s date range (e.g., 2/7/23 to 2/7/23)

LLMs such as ChatGPT, Macaw, and others offer a “zero-shot” approach where there’s minimal to no training data needed to achieve the same classification result. This is attractive for customers who can theoretically go live faster and spend less time tweaking and maintaining the training data. However, LLMs carry gigantic amounts of data compared to a mid-sized enterprise’s knowledge base. So, in some cases, we still need to override the general data to deliver customer-specific responses.

For example, while the general answer to, “How do I install Microsoft Office?” might be to visit Microsoft 365 and download installers, an enterprise might set up its laptops to receive downloads and updates automatically via a provisioning model. Or, while some clients may have hardware and software support queues, others may want Mac versus Windows support, or some other distinction. This level of customization on top of the LLM data is essential for enterprises.

ChatGPT’s path to enterprise deployment

ChatGPT is fun and a great demonstration of artificial intelligence (AI)’s potential, however, it needs to go further before it’s suitable for enterprise chatbot use. Here’s why:

1. ChatGPT is a closed model, and it relies on data collected up through 2021. Enterprises require up-to-date information.
2. ChatGPT cannot yet be used or integrated with the internal data sources of an enterprise. As such, ChatGPT cannot provide organization-specific knowledge such as, “Where do I download the VPN client?”
3. Customers have no control over the language in the response since ChatGPT writes its own answers, which enterprises can’t update or style.
4. There’s no dialog management for a turn-by-turn conversation, leading to fulfilment by a backend API. For example, enterprise chatbots need to take a user through a service request like “Order a phone” > “Which phone do you want?” > “Which model do you need?” > “Please confirm” > “Here is a request number.”
5. ChatGPT’s new commercial tier features are limited to faster response time and general availability, and enterprise requirements for segregation, security, and uptime, etc. are not yet covered.
6. ChatGPT makes up incorrect and untruthful answers at an alarming rate.
7. There’s no way to constrain topics. Customers may want their IT/sales/HR chatbots to stick to their domains and not chat about politics, art, or other random topics.
8. There’s no clarity on ChatGPT’s data residency, security, or anonymization—all big concerns for an enterprise.
9. OpenAI’s founders and leaders have publicly advised that ChatGPT is not ready for production use.

Other enterprise LLMs are available now

BMC has already deployed a customized LLM for summarizing AIOps situations in BMC Helix Operations Management. We are also developing other use cases such as extracting useful information from logs and tickets to answer user queries. This is possible because we can configure and prioritize the LLM to return answers from the enterprise knowledge base. Again, we compare this favorably against ChatGPT, which doesn’t have access to internal websites or knowledge.

The Autonomous Digital Enterprise moves closer

Here at BMC, we’re focused on the future, where enterprises can adapt to changes and thrive amid rapid transformation. LLMs are one of the tools at our disposal, and we are actively experimenting with them to reliably, securely, and transparently deliver accurate answers to employees. ChatGPT provides a fun experimental window for personal use at this early phase, especially for content generation topics. Solutions like BMC Helix Virtual Agent are a better fit for enterprise needs today. We will keep you posted on our progress with LLMs and other AI approaches, and meanwhile, we can all marvel at the progress made by our worldwide community of researchers.

These days, economic volatility is a sure thing. Every day, the news has more examples of businesses preparing for (or reacting to) market changes with abrupt, sometimes severe cost-cutting measures. Businesses seeking a North Star to ensure stability and even greater success while weathering these kinds of changes can look to the Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE) framework.

The ADE is a digital-first business with distinct tech tenets and operating model characteristics that support transformation through actionable insights, business agility, and customer centricity. Providing actionable insights means leveraging data analytics tools and automation to gain broader perspectives, and using predictive intelligence to make better decisions, faster. Utilizing business agility means responding rapidly to demands and capitalizing on opportunities as soon as they arise, pivoting quickly when needed. Focusing on customer centricity means using technology to meet your customers where they want to be met and keeping your customers at the heart of every business decision you make.

The ADE Tenets in the Real World

The five distinct tech tenets of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise help maintain resiliency in times of constant disruptions. Let’s look at some real examples of how organizations can focus on the tech tenets.

A Transcendent Customer Experience gives people what they need, where and when they need it, in a highly personalized, frictionless way, allowing organizations to be the winners at attracting and retaining customers and employees. Take Southwest Airlines (SWA) as a cautionary tale. The 16,700 flights that SWA had to cancel over the recent holidays could cost the company as much as $825 million—but it’s harder to put a dollar value on the loss of reputation and trust from their customers.

The airline is reacting by providing frequent-flyer points to customers affected, launching a new sale to entice customers to fly with them again, and providing bonuses to impacted employees as part of their apology tour. SWA has the opportunity to prove now why their customers are important to them and go back to their roots of providing a great customer and employee experience on their journey.

Automation Everywhere is about driving efficiencies at scale. The pandemic brought automation into the mainstream, and it’s taken hold as a way to boost productivity inside and outside a business. As organizations scale back and refocus, automating everyday mundane tasks can help reduce costs associated with previously time-consuming, repetitive functions. It also frees up a business’s most valuable asset—its people—to do more important tasks, making them more productive and boosting retention.

While we’re talking about flight disruptions, how about mentioning the ground stop in the U.S. by the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) on January 11, 2023. A database failure triggered the FAA to implement the first nationwide stop of air traffic in more than 20 years, and it turns out that the reason was human error. A contractor unintentionally deleted files while “working to correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database.” Human error is a part of any business, and despite recurring rumors, robots won’t be replacing humans any time soon, but the FAA has an extraordinary opportunity to adopt automation as they strive to follow the ADE framework.

Agility is the name of the game when your business operations are the only thing you can control amid outside influences. Enterprise DevOps enables the rapid and continuous delivery of applications and services by applying DevOps processes, tools, skills, teams, and leadership across the business. One way that BMC recommends embracing Enterprise DevOps is by integrating DevOps across the entire stack, including mainframe, distributed, and cloud.

Airlines like Southwest and government agencies like the FAA are the types of organizations using a mainframe to store their data. But that data must also integrate with many other applications seamlessly to provide a Transcendent Customer Experience by implementing automated tools across the organization. Enterprise DevOps is the next step in the journey to ensure that developers and operations teams on all sides of a business are working together.

A Data-Driven Business captures, correlates, and monetizes data enterprise-wide, generating high-value business cases with AI/ML while also optimizing and improving data extraction and analysis. There’s never been a better time to work with what you have, and every customer, partner, and stakeholder engagement yields valuable data—if you know what to do with it.

Ticketmaster famously went down when billions of people (and bots) tried to buy Taylor Swift concert tickets online recently. It’s claimed the downtime was due to, “the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes [driving] unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests—4x our previous peak.” While Ticketmaster believed that limiting the presale to “Verified Fans” who had to receive a code ahead of time would contain the demand to a reasonable amount, it was a perfect storm of the organization not understanding its data about Swifties and their propensity to buy concert tickets—especially for a tour postponed by the pandemic. It’s one thing to collect data, but a data-driven business will turn that data into actionable insights. And Ticketmaster’s woes aren’t over—parent company Live Nation just had to explain itself to a US Congressional committee.

Cyber threats continue to rise, and they can spike during times of socioeconomic turmoil. Implementing an Adaptive Cybersecurity posture can help you secure your business, your employee and customer data, and your devices with automated, AI-enabled, and crowdsourced threat detection that uses coordinated development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) strategies and a Zero Trust access and authentication framework.

Type the word “hack” into Google and click on the news icon and you’ll find out about the hacks that didn’t even make the feed of your normal news app. For example, T-Mobile’s recent hack in November with 37 million people affected was just one of many. Data breaches are starting to feel commonplace, but you can ensure that your company’s name isn’t in your customer’s next Google search if you ensure an Adaptive Cybersecurity posture.

Despite the above examples, (let’s be honest, companies only make the news when they’ve done something wrong), it’s not all doom and gloom. Organizations likes yours can continue to adapt and succeed amid ongoing geopolitical and socioeconomic turbulence and threats of recession. You can’t dictate future disruptions, but you can control how you respond to them. By adopting pervasive technologies for innovation and business growth and following the tech tenets of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, you can be future-ready and primed for success, whatever comes to pass. Learn more at bmc.com/ade.