By Dick Stark

Every chance it gets, ServiceNow (SNOW) reminds BMC, HP, and CA customers, that they have legacy products from legacy IT firms, and that soon Remedy, or fill in the blank, will die an ugly death just like Siebel Systems did at the hands of Salesforce. Siebel created the customer relationship management (CRM) business in 1993. Within five years, the company grew to $2 billion in revenue and was recognized in 1999 as the fastest growing tech company in history. Just a short six years later, Siebel sold out to Oracle, which left Salesforce virtually unopposed in the CRM space.

SNOW is “making hay while the sun is shining,” reminding prospects of the challenge of maintaining legacy IT systems, while touting the promise of cloud computing and ITSM as a service. Even more frightening to CIOs, is the threat that those companies that don’t modernize (or digitize) face competition from “disruptors” like Netflix or Uber who can quickly change the competitive landscape. And give credit to SNOW for increasing the value of ITSM. CIOs are now looking at consolidating applications using an ITSM platform as the centerpiece of the IT infrastructure—a value rather than a cost center.

What is BMC doing to turn the tide and compete as one of the “cool kids?”

Innovation. Although BMC was slow to move to the cloud, there have plenty of cool new products:

• ServiceBroker, a storefront for any employee or customer facing on-premise or cloud services.
• BMC HR, a comprehensive HR app with an extensive mobile component.
• TrueSight Pulse/Intelligence, another new tool that gives instant performance statistics for websites.
• MyIT, which is designed to improve the customer or end-user’s experience with IT.
• Remedy 9 with SmartIT, a FaceBook like interface for Remedy; and Smart Reporting, which enables users to build custom reports with ease. Remedy 9 is built 100% on top of Java.  Of course, Remedy is available in a SaaS version, Remedy-onDemand,

Architecture and Adaptability is critical. Digital Enterprise Management (DEM) is BMC’s blueprint for companies seeking to transform into fast-moving, innovative enterprises able to seize the opportunities, and overcome the challenges, presented by the digital economy. The core elements of DEM are BMC’s four pillars of ITSM, aka Digital Serve Management, Digital Service Assurance (TrueSight), Digital Enterprise Automation (DCA), Digital Infrastructure Optimization (Capacity Optimization). The glue that holds everything together? Analytics, Orchestration, and Policy.

BMC’s ability to recognize the impact of the “L” word to their customer base and actually do something about it is impressive. Customers do have an upgrade path away from their legacy systems to more modern systems like Smart IT and MyIT. With Remedyforce and Remedy-onDemand, BMC has complete Cloud based offerings And, BMC, offers integrated solutions around service assurance and automation that far exceeds anything from SNOW. Automation of repetitive manual tasks such as server provisioning/remediation, can reduce costs and improve efficiencies, allowing IT to focus on more strategic initiatives as it becomes a true value center.