August 16, 1999

BMC's Professional Services

Focus will be on packaged offerings and faster delivery

By Ramin P. Jaleshgari

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MC Software Inc., following in the footsteps of enterprise software competitors such as Computer Associates and Tivoli Systems, launched its own professional services division last week.

The move expands the integration work the company has been providing some customers into a formal program based on packages of services, says Chip Nemesi, BMC's VP of professional services. "Our focus will be using packaged offerings to deliver faster solutions," he says. "Customers have told us that their biggest concern with projects is that consultants come in and become long-term staff members as the project goes over budget and over time."

Nemesi says BMC's services staff grew from 70 last year to about 300, and has gone through an intensive nine months of training on its own products. He expects to hire another 150 staffers in the next nine months.

"They're building a very broad services capability, but there may be some gaps between where they are and where they're going," says Bill Martorelli, an IT services analyst with Hurwitz Group. "It's a competitive requirement to have a services capability of some significance to serve the great number of customers that BMC already has. They are doing a joint product-and-services push, and I don't see how it can be anything but that-they are new in the services game."

Among the packaged offerings will be a pre-implementation assessment module, a rapid rollout plan, and a follow-up cycle to ensure performance of systems and methodologies. Custom consulting will also be available in areas such as enterprise resource planning, electronic business, MQSeries, recovery, and data management.

"We are going to stay 100% focused on systems management-no Y2K, no supply chain, no Lotus Notes, for example, because those things are not systems management in our mind," Nemesi says. "We will, however, resell and implement other people's software on a case-by-case basis at clients' request."

Larry Rundell, a project leader at Northwest Airlines Information Systems in St. Paul, Minn., has used BMC consultants and says he hopes to continue the relationship now that the software company has a formalized professional services division.

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