>> Narrator: From around the globe.
It's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS re;Invent 2020
special coverage sponsored by AWS global partner network.
>> Welcome to theCUBE.
This is our coverage of AWS reinvent 2020
with special coverage of the APN partner experience.
I'm Lisa Martin I've got a couple of gentlemen
from BMC software joining me.
Please welcome Greg Bukowski,
the technology solutions director
and Simon Blanks, area vice president
Gentlemen it's great to have you on theCUBE virtual.
>> Great to be here Lisa.
>> Representing social distancing
from across the country here.
So guys, I'd like to just start Greg with you
give our audience an understanding
of your role technology solutions director
your role and responsibilities at BMC.
>> Sure I play the role of a field CTO.
So I actually am aligned with our strategic CTO office
and I bring their message to our customers
all of our strategic customers within North America.
>> And Simon, tell us a little bit about your role
as area vice president.
>> Well first of all, thanks for having us
I have responsibility for our channels and our partners
in the Americas.
So I get to work both within our organization
with our customers and with our partners
to help them grow, to help us grow
and deliver value to our customers.
>> Speaking of your customers Simon
the last year has been incredibly challenging
and brought on a lot of challenges but opportunities.
Talk to me about how that has impacted BMCs customers.
>> That's a great question.
You know, I think our customers are wanting to simplify
that they're wanting to focus on what makes them win, right
and get away from the things that, you know
are not the competitive advantage.
We see a lot of customers wanting to get out
of the day-to-day operation of the data centers
and migrate to the world of AWS
but it's not as easy as we would all like it
there's lots of challenges.
AWS consulting partners are there to help them.
One of the largest areas of challenges we see
that they are having to address is manage these millions
of IT assets that are constantly changing
and some of them they don't even know exist
and moving those to AWS,
but moving them quickly, securely
and of course, in a cost-effective manner.
>> Talk to me a little bit about some of the speed
like in the last nine months, have you seen an acceleration
of those customers wanting to move workloads to AWS
as we think of way back when the pandemic started
and every business had to suddenly send workforces home
no access to a data center or very limited.
Is that something that you've seen speed up
the last few months?
>> Yeah we believe it's not only gained in velocity
but will continue.
We don't think that some of these changes
to how a business is conducted are going to stop
once the vaccine comes out.
So yeah
and you know the complexity of making this happen,
you know it's difficult,
especially in some of the very large organizations
be it banks or telecoms or manufacturers or retailers
you know it's not an easy chore
and you know we've experienced some great wins in that area
and helping some of our most strategic customers
make that happen.
>> So talk to me a little bit about Simon,
what's your elevator pitch when you're going
and i know you talk with customers, you talk with partners
how do you describe BMC and what you guys deliver?
>> Well BMC is a 40 year old company with 6,000 employees.
we help 93% of the global 1000
manage their IT infrastructure right.
In addition to that we help thousands of other customers
with the same problems.
So, you know what I tell organizations
is we're there to help them be successful
and to make things tick.
>> Awesome thank you.
So Greg, talk to me about more about the BMC solutions.
You said in your role, you're also field CTO.
What are some of the BMC solutions that you recommended
AWS consulting partners consider to help customers,
especially in this time as you're seeing more and more
migrations AWS?
>> Yeah I think that's a great point, Lisa.
I mean, with the pandemic coming in,
you know there was an initial pullback right
that we saw from our customers
and now as that trend,
you know as the summer came on,
not that it's gotten less, right.
I mean obviously it's a big concern for customers
but the realization of how
they're going to operationalize themselves
and still be a tech driven company
and tech driven organization
has really accelerated their digital transformation
and it's driven more than anything
the adoption of cloud technologies
and to move into that cloud space
it's brought about understanding customers
how did they become more digital
and to do that they have to connect their services.
So underlying that challenge is really
what we wanted to bring today to talk about
is that BMC has an industry leading solution
it's called a BMC discovery solution
and it automatically goes within an organization's footprint
and understands the dependencies
between their infrastructure and their applications.
That's really difficult, right?
Typically we can just find assets, right?
A lot of solutions out there can do that.
What BMC does or what our solution does.
That's unique in this space is that
it understands relationships
so that you understand from an application viewpoint
which ultimately ties back to a business service
into the software that runs on those assets
into the applications that are supporting that
as well as the platforms and infrastructure
and that becomes more and more complex to date.
What we see with our customers as they have cloud services
they've got containers, they've got on-premise stuff.
So we're working with customers today, right?
We are the largest retailers in the US
working with them to actually
transform how they're doing business continuity.
So it becomes not only an acceleration
but a risk aversion program for them
as well as a cost savings effort
of trying to adopt that understanding
those services from both within their data center,
through the mainframe back into their cloud, right
and understanding all those interdependencies
so that they can run their business more efficiently.
>> So Greg have you automated what used to be
a traditionally manual lengthy process of that discovery.
>> I think that is the key point Lisa.
I mean when partners look to us
for what value we can bring to them
it's about accelerating that time
all about reducing the time through automation
what used to be a manual effort of understanding
how these things connect
and being able to having go talk to the application teams.
We worked with a large bank as well.
They were using other solutions in the marketplace
and were taking six to nine months
to map a single business service
which is complex right
it's got about a dozen applications that support it.
We brought in our solution and they did it in three hours
with one piece of information from an application team.
It was unbelievable, right
and these are the stories we hear all the time
from our customers
and this is a great solution that we have that runs in AWS.
That's part of our AWS migration competency that we have
and you know this is why we're here today on theCUBE.
>> Well that speed improvement is massive
as you just talked about Greg
you know, when you think of organizations now
that there is no time, there is no six to nine months
to figure things out anymore right.
Especially because we've all learned, I think a lot
in the last nine months, professionally and personally
but there's competition out there.
That's ready to come and be nimble and faster
and maybe with less legacy than any type
of whether it's a retailer or a financial institution.
So being able to get in there and discover
and align this business and IT services folks
to discover what they have, where they should move it
that fast is really something that sounds to me
like not just a survival mechanism,
keeping the lights on during a strange time,
but something that may even set apart
the winners and the losers of tomorrow.
>> Absolutely right.
I mean you have to be able to tie into
your existing infrastructure for print
that traditional legacy or heritage as we call it
for print that you have, that still runs your core business.
Right, if you're a retailer
it's probably some kind of supply chain rate
If you're a bank it's all the financial transaction stuff
that you do
but then also adopt the technology and innovation
that exists within the fintech space
for a financial services customer
and bringing that together
and when you're doing that at the native integration point
a lot of it comes into the cloud services, right
and that's really where they're going to get
the acceleration to attack new markets
grow their margin in that space
and that's where they need partners to help them.
To adopt and learn those technologies
and integrate those additionally, right
we have other advanced capabilities that we offer
from an AWS migration competency standpoint
around cloud optimization.
So when those services are running in there
we also do a cost optimization
that doesn't look at it from the infrastructure standpoint
but actually it takes the same discovery data
and lines it back to the lines of business.
So the line of business now has visibility into
if they're going to change what their operating model is
how that's going to affect the cost in the backend services
they can optimize their resources.
>> So Simon looking at the capabilities
that BMC is delivering.
Talk to me about the BMC partner program.
Why become a BMC partner?
I think there's a couple of answers to that.
First of all, what Greg was talking about in terms of this
you know massive I'll call it reinvention
of the amount of time it takes to perform
some of these tasks.
Some of these tasks that are done in every migration
from you know months to days or hours
that in and of itself can help
the AWS consulting partners massively
you know in their efforts.
So that's one but I think more importantly than that
is the culture of BMC and the importance of partners
and the focus that it's getting
whether or not it be from our board or CEO
or down the management rank.
So the channel has become massively important to our success
and we're committed to helping our partners be successful
right, we're committing to help them make money, right.
We're actually, as a part of AWS re;Invent here
were going to offer
an incentive to partners
to come and join our family.
Traditionally there's enablement
and costs associated with that
and we're going to refund that cost.
Plus we're going to invest
our monies and refund any costs associated
with the first co-marketing effort together
that we can go out to the market and help them.
So I think you know, it's sort of the three legs
of the stool.
The technology itself is you know, impressive
the commitment of our leadership
and we're also willing to make it
you know, very economically attractive
so that would be the reasons
>> Everybody likes that, especially economically attractive.
So in terms of what you're offering
you said that around re;Invent
with respect to interested perspective partners,
how do they move forward with BMC to become
an AWS consulting partner?
What's that process like?
>> Well, we have you know an onboarding team
that Susan DuRoff
she reports in to me and helps me with that process.
But the best way to do it would be to contact me directly.
My email address is simon_blanks@bmc.com
and if you reach out to me directly,
I'll make sure we get back to you promptly.
We can have further discussions
and you know, facilitate it
and we really look forward to making that happen.
>> That's pretty excellent personal service I like that.
So Greg talk to me as we get towards the wrap here
as field CTO, looking forward into 2021
which we all hope is going to be trim
significantly better than 2020.
What are some of the opportunities that you see
that this time has uncovered for the IT folks
and the business folks to get even stronger alignment?
>> Yeah, I think this is a great opportunity for customers
to realize that bringing together the IT organizations
in alignment with their business organizations
is a great opportunity from the Revolut
to accelerate their adoption of technology
accelerate their migrations into adoption of cloud services.
But then also look for the opportunities
to take advantage of, to grow revenue streams.
Right I mean, challenges present opportunities
and opportunities present growth, right?
That's how customers grow
when they recognize those opportunities
and become agile enough to adopt them and go after them.
>> That's a great mindset because it's absolutely true.
It's not matter of how we look at it
and look at what's being uncovered
to then kind of exploit for good
new products, new services, competitive differentiators
all sorts of things going on.
Well gentlemen, it's been a pleasure having you
on theCUBE virtual today.
Thank you for joining me.
>> Thank you so much
appreciate the time and thank you.
>> All right.
For my guests.
I'm Lisa Martin.
You're watching theCUBE.
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