As businesses become more dependent on IT than ever, the line between IT and business operations is becoming indistinguishable. The simple fact is that IT to one degree or another is being used to control almost every business process. As such, the management tools used to manage IT and those business processes need to converge.
That’s the thinking that went into version 8.0 of BMC Control-M Workload Automation, an extensible framework for creating what BMC Software describes as a nerve center capable of managing both IT and business processes. According to Robin Reddick, director of Control-M solutions marketing, this release features a new user interface that has been specifically designed to make BMC Control-M Workload Automation more accessible via mobile computing devices. Rather than being only an application that IT people can use, Reddick says BMC envisions business users taking advantage of BMC Control-M Workload Automation to directly manage business processes that are dependent on IT systems. As part of that effort, Reddick notes that BMC has also enhanced the collaboration tools provided within BMC Control-M Workload Automation.
Traditionally, organizations have relied on separate sets of tools to manage IT and business processes. But as it becomes increasingly clear that just about every business process is now dependent on IT, an opportunity to converge the management of IT and business processes arises. Obviously, that will require IT managers and business users to work more closely together, even to the point where the functions themselves start to blur. But there’s no reason, for example, why the same management framework can’t be used to manage inventory levels and the underlying IT systems used to enable that process, says Reddick.
That level of convergence can not only be used to make the overall organization more efficient, it can also reduce costs by eliminating separate IT and business process management frameworks that are increasingly becoming redundant, says Reddick.
On the one hand, the convergence of IT management and business processes represents a long, sought-after achievement concerning the strategic importance of IT. On the other hand, it also means that more business users are going to want to influence, if not outright control, those processes. That doesn’t necessarily mean they want to manage IT, but it does mean they want a lot more visibility into how the management of IT affects specific business processes. That conversation can’t start, however, until everybody involved is really looking at the same thing at the same time.
