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BMC Exchange 2020 Recap: Watch The Highlights

BMC Exchange 2020
9 minute read
Stephanie Grubbs

BMC Exchange 2020 Day 1 Recap

BMC Exchange 2020 was a resounding success. A huge thank you to our customers, sponsors, partners, and employees who joined us for our first virtual BMC Exchange. If you weren’t able to attend the sessions live, or you’re interested in a refresh, you can watch all of them on-demand now at exchange.bmc.com. To whet your appetite, here are a few highlights from Day 1.

Capitalize on the Unexpected: Your Winning Path as an Autonomous Digital Enterprise.

Featuring: BMC CEO Ayman Sayed, SAP COO Christine Schöneweis, and Park Place CEO Chris Adams

Our Day 1 keynote was headlined by Ayman Sayed, President and CEO of BMC, who shared how today’s tumultuous global markets and rapid technology advances can turn a potential disruption into a major competitive advantage for Autonomous Digital Enterprises (ADEs) across all industries. He talked with Park Place CEO Chris Adams and SAP COO Christine Schöneweis about how your current IT investments are the foundation for the innovative intelligence-driven solutions that can help you become an ADE. Ayman also shared new and exciting solution announcements and a few great customer success stories. Don’t miss your chance to watch this session on-demand!

Is Your Organization Ready: ADE Competitive Index

Featuring: Herb VanHook, member of the BMC CTOs office, and Carl Lehmann, senior research analyst at 451 Research, a part of S&P Global.

If you’ve been following BMC for a while—and we hope you have—you’ve likely heard about our Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE) vision. While we talk about the need to become an ADE over the next five-plus years, some organizations are already embracing parts of the vision now, according to an early peek at the new ADE Index developed by 451 Research, a part of S&P global. Among the highlights touted by Carl Lehmann, senior analyst:

  • 41 percent of respondents said their organizations currently have dedicated lines of business that operate as distinct digital business domains to create and bring to market digital products and services, with 90 percent of those surveyed calling it an important, very important, or essential differentiator from their competition
  • 39.4 percent of surveyed organizations are automating business and IT processes broadly across their operations today, with 86 percent of respondents saying it is an important, very important, or essential differentiator
  • 43.8 percent of respondents say they are executing within several lines of business a data-driven approach to decisions and operations, with 56.4 percent saying they will scale out their data-driven initiatives across their enterprises in the coming two years.

There will be a lot more content coming on the ADE Index soon, but if you missed the session, you can watch it now on-demand.

The “Next and New” for Every Autonomous Digital Enterprise

Featuring: Ali Siddiqui, BMC Chief Product Officer, and Ram Chakravarti, BMC Chief Technology Officer

The ADE vision does not only apply to our customers; it’s a vision for BMC’s future as well. In this session, Ali Siddiqui, BMC CPO, and Ram Chakravarti, CTO, outlined some of the innovating product work being done here at BMC. One of the highlights was the announcement of Ali’s vision for the ADE Foundation.

ADE

The duo also chatted about:

Definitely watch this session if you want to hear how the ADE is coming to life inside the walls of BMC.

Data/Analytics Orchestration with Control-M for COVID-19 Tracking and Recovery

Featuring: Mike Badal, BI/analytics manager, and Fausto Gonzalez, senior data warehousing specialist, both from Tampa General Hospital

As COVID-19 has become the talk of the world, we were glad to have Mike and Fausto join BMC Exchange to share their timely and uplifting success story. They discussed how Tampa General Hospital successfully employed analytics as part of a region-wide effort to track COVID-19 ICU and hospitalization rates. With SQL Server as its primary database platform and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) as the primary extract, transform, load (ETL) tool, the hospital was able to get near real-time lab ETL data feeds from the hospital lab system for COVID-19 tests.

Control-M from BMC provided the team with the data review processes it needed to make informed decisions. By gathering usage and inventory data around critical personal protective equipment (PPE), the team helped ensure reserves and plan for purchases with forecasting models and what-if scenarios. With Control-M’s visualizations and Gantt display, the team was able to understand and fine-tune complex reloading scheduling requirements during the morning “rush hours” when data surges occur. The team was also able to identify areas for performance improvements in its real-time COVID apps.

As part of a network of more than 50 hospitals across 13 counties, Tampa General is now accessing, processing, and analyzing the critical data it needs to help ensure robust care during the healthcare crisis. We are proud to partner with this team and encourage you to check out this session to learn more.

Enterprise DevOps Transformation Case Study: Lloyds Banking Group

Featuring: Reg Wilkinson, Agile and DevOps lead, and Jon Richards, mainframe lead, both from Lloyds Banking Group

This year at BMC Exchange, we included a DevOps Leadership track specific to our DevOps loyalists. Reg Wilkinson and Jon Richards from Lloyds Banking Group shared their digital transformation journey and tips and tricks for success. Over the past few years, Lloyds Banking Group has invested heavily in driving the adoption of Agile Development and DevOps practices across its business to strategically modernize its digital service capabilities and align with customer expectations. A few pieces of wisdom they imparted:

  • Be ok with imperfection, just get started!
  • Share the knowledge across all the teams in formal or informal sessions; build communication systems
  • Momentum is everything, nurture the spark and enthusiasm on your team
  • Share your successes and results with management
  • The mainframe is just another platform, so don’t discount it

If you’re a DevOps expert, or novice, watch this session to learn more from the pros who’ve been there and done that.

Here are a few more:

Innovation Through Automation: The Game Changers: Innovation means you must constantly look for new ways of doing things. The more you can quickly and flawlessly execute, the better the ROI you’ll earn, which leads to more investment and innovation. Automation is an essential component to all of this. Learn how automation-driven actionability is a true game changer for service and operations management.

 

Control-M Updates and Roadmap: Learn what’s new and coming down the road for Control-M, directly from the product leaders.

 

BMC Helix Updates and Roadmap: Predictive IT & AIOps: Join us as our product leaders share what’s new and upcoming for BMC Helix.

 

We had so many great conversations, it was hard to choose which sessions to showcase. Luckily, you can view every session when you register for free at exchange.bmc.com. Other can’t miss sessions from Day 1 include:

  • Barriers to Becoming an Autonomous Digital Enterprise
  • Integrating Dev and Ops with Control-M
  • Predictive IT and AIOps: Critical for Experience Success
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Complacent: Mainframe Security Practices from the Real World

BMC Exchange 2020 Day 2 Recap

BMC Exchange 2020 was held live (virtually) October 20th-22nd. “This year’s event was our most successful Exchange yet, as we delivered the foundation for our customers, partners, and more, to start their Autonomous Digital Enterprise journey today and thrive in the future,” says BMC CMO Saar Shwartz.

If you weren’t able to attend BMC Exchange 2020 live, or you’re interested in a refresh, you can watch all of them on-demand now at exchange.bmc.com. With interactive sessions spread across two half days, we’ve split the highlights into two blogs. You can review the highlights from Day 1 here. For highlights from Day 2, keep reading.

Winners and Losers of the 2020 Race to Digital Transformation

Featuring: David Kirkpatrick, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Techonomy, Drew Ianni, Founder & Chairman of CDX, and Ram Chakravarti, Chief Technology Officer at BMC

Digital transformation has been a well-worn topic for years. Everyone said they were doing it, but the pace was slowed. What’s the rush? The global COVID-19 pandemic put those digital transformation plans into overdrive. Suddenly, everyone got the message—simultaneously. So, who grabbed the opportunity by the horns and who struggled?

Our all-star panel tackled that discussion. They talked about how to innovate to seize on new opportunities born out of the pandemic, and the importance of continuing to innovate while optimizing current business operations. We highly recommend watching this panel discussion on-demand.

CEO Corner

Featuring Ayman Sayed, CEO of BMC, and Jesper Andersen, CEO of Infoblox

Ever want to be a fly on the wall during a conversation between technical execs? This is your chance. BMC CEO Ayman Sayed sat down with Jesper Andersen, CEO of Infoblox, to discuss navigating the current business climate, how to bring innovation to life, and where they’re prioritizing investments. Particularly of interest is the discussion on the hot IPO market, the funding still happening across tech, and where they’re seeing the biggest risks. Channel your inner executive, suits optional (sweatpants encouraged), and hear from the experts.

Control-M: New Release Overview

Featuring: Ram Chakravarti, CTO at BMC; Gur Steif, President of Digital Business Automation at BMC; Guy Eden, product manager at BMC; and, Karol Smeczechowski, vice president of research & development for Control-M

During the opening keynote on Day 1, BMC CEO Ayman Sayed introduced BMC Helix Control-M, the new software as a service (SaaS) version of the venerable Control-M workflow orchestration solution. This panel, which featured BMC’s CTO and senior Control-M leadership, delved further into the new release, highlighting its features and deployment model. Among the topics discussed:

  • Differences between Control-M on-premises and the new BMC Helix Control-M
  • Specific use cases for BMC Helix Control-M
  • The advantages of hosting on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

For customers looking to manage complex workloads in a hybrid-cloud environment, watch this panel discussion to learn how BMC Helix Control-M can help.

Moving From On-Premises to SaaS: Insights from Experience

Featuring: Joe Heyer, global program manager at BMC, Mildo Stolk, global IT manager at Huisman Equipment B.V, and Russell Thurgood, assistant director of service management at The University of Kansas Health System

Moving from on-premises to software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions is a key part of an organization’s digital transformation. In this session, BMC’s Joe Heyer spoke with two BMC customers about their experience with a SaaS migration. Huisman Equipment B.V. is fairly new to migrating and Mildo Stolk, the global IT manager from Huisman, shared insights on how they initially moved to a SaaS setup for select business functions. Based on that initial success, Stolk said they’ve had requests from other business units to move their applications, too. At the University of Kansas Health System, SaaS has been in place for several years, and is prevalent across the organization, not only on BMC applications, but throughout its app environment.

In addressing challenges, both Stolk and Russell Thurgood from University of Kansas Health System agreed that training and documentation are very important, especially as you roll out upgrades and customizations. The biggest benefit both cited was the out-of-the-box ease of use. Moving to SaaS meant that they didn’t have to invest in the hardware, spend time on an installation, or worry about the back end.

To hear more from this comprehensive discussion, and understand the challenges and benefits of moving on-premises to SaaS, view this session at exchange.bmc.com.

Think Your Mainframe Can’t Be Hacked? It Can. See It Live.

Featuring: Christopher Perry, lead product manager for BMC AMI Security at BMC, and Chad Rikansrud, director of North American Consulting Services at BMC

With its historical place in the IT world, the mainframe might be considered impenetrable, but our BMC experts prefer to say that it’s the most securable. Yes, it actually can be hacked, but there are measures you can take to prevent that from happening. To set the stage, Chad Rikansrud, director of North American Consulting Services at BMC, defined a hack in very simple terms as, “Anytime you’re using resources in a way they weren’t meant to be used.”

He explained that can mean anything from stealing credentials to accessing an open port on a web server for a remote connection. He said it doesn’t even have to be a super complex code vulnerability. It could be as easy as guessing someone’s password. From there, it’s not just about what they access, but rather what they do once they get in. He then demonstrated hacking into a mainframe through a common vulnerability with an off-the-shelf tool.

To watch this hack, learn more about recent hacks in the news, and services and software BMC can provide to help protect your mainframe from hackers, check this session out.

Here are a few more:

DevOps Transformation: Metrics That Show Business Value: Transforming a 40-year old company from Waterfall to Agile, implementing DevOps, and committing to CI/CD is, to say the least, a journey. Along that journey, baselining, collecting, and analyzing valid metrics are key to identifying bottlenecks in the value stream so adjustments can be made quickly and continuously. Learn how a company increased time spent on innovation, reduced escaped defects, and improved MTTR, and importantly, how measuring KPIs proved that Agile and DevOps really do provide a business advantage.

 

BMC Helix ITSM Updates and Roadmap: AI ITSM: As business evolves, so do our solutions. Get the inside scoop on the latest and upcoming innovations for BMC Helix ITSM, directly from the product leaders.

 

Compuware Updates and Roadmap: This year, Compuware joined the BMC family. Learn about the latest product updates and get a sneak peek of what’s coming next.

 

You can access all sessions highlighted above on-demand when you register for free at exchange.bmc.com. Other can’t miss sessions from Day 2:

  • Deliver Rapid Innovation and Compelling Services
  • How AI Can Elevate Your Service and Operations Management
  • Building a Better Software Delivery Platform
  • Why Counting on Audits Could Be Putting Your Mainframe at Risk

We are already looking forward to seeing you at next year’s BMC Exchange!

These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.

See an error or have a suggestion? Please let us know by emailing blogs@bmc.com.

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About the author

Stephanie Grubbs

Stephanie Grubbs is a Senior Solutions Marketing Manager on the Strategic Marketing Team. She has worked as a Solutions Marketing Manager for BMC's mainframe cost optimization offerings prior to this. Stephanie has over 9 years of experience in software consulting, program management, and marketing.