BMC's Dublin hub has evolutionary strategy

Mr Bob Beauchamp is president and chief executive of one of the largest and oldest software companies in the world - a $1.3 billion company that employs 90 people in the Republic, having added 20 jobs last summer to its Sandyford office, writes Karlin Lillington

But unless you manage networks for a large organisation, you've probably never heard of BMC. And that's fine with Mr Beauchamp.

"We market to the largest IT market in the world, not to the home market or small businesses. We spend our marketing dollars targeting senior IT directors. We know the names of the people who buy our software," says Mr Beauchamp, who has the clean-cut, earnest look of a man sent down from Central Casting to play the role of "serious American chief executive" in a new drama series.

But he's not all seriousness. "My mother once asked me why we didn't advertise on television, and I said, 'what's your budget for enterprise software?'" He laughs at the recollection.

BMC makes enterprise management and services software, the high-level plumbing that enables all the disparate systems within a large organisation work together, share data and manage tasks.

He is quick to point out that by services, "we're not talking about professional services but an IT-delivered service".

The professional consultancy and installation work they leave to their resellers and partners, which range from large international consultancies and corporations, such as Accenture, EMC, Dell, Intel and Siebel, to local suppliers.

What BMC means by services is all the IT magic that happens behind the scenes when you want to trade shares online, or you put your ATM card into a slot in a bank machine, he says.

The company pumps an extraordinary 25 per cent of revenue into research and development to keep its products cutting edge.

Though those IT processes may be complex and diverse and draw together functions from several separate IT systems, BMC's goal is to make that complexity appear simple to both the end-user, the people managing systems within the organisation, and to management.

That's a shift from the 1980s, when BMC was established in Texas. The company directed its products at distinct "silos" of technology: a product for the networking group, another for the database management group, another for the applications group.

"Now customers say, 'Take all that gobbledygook and show it to me the way my customers see it'," says Mr Beauchamp.

"No bank customer cares that a server has gone down, but he cares if an ATM isn't working."

One of the positive outcomes of the recent economic downturn - at least for IT customers - is that technology has moved out of the realm of the technologists, he says, and has become something that has to be understood better in the boardroom and, indeed, all across the board.

"During the downturn, financial officers began to demand of IT companies, 'What am I getting for my investment?'. So IT companies have found it absolutely necessary to talk in business terms rather that IT terms." But isn't this something that IT companies should have been doing before? Wasn't this neglecting the customer during easy-sale boom times? Mr Beauchamp doesn't think so.

"I think it's a natural evolution of an industry. When an industry is in its early stages, it's the realm of specialists. Now, the business people must understand the technology, because IT has become more and more central to the business. So it is the discussion of the boardroom."

Several developments have accelerated this move, he says, from the importance of IT systems always being available, to the vulnerability of those systems to the threat of terror, and corporate governance issues.

In addition, the advent of the Web means that the customer comes into contact with corporate IT systems and data within those systems. He gives the examples of eBay and Amazon - if anything happened to their systems, customers immediately would know, which could affect the reputation of such always-on companies.

Mr Beauchamp says the European market is extremely important to BMC's bottom line, which is why the company has invested in more jobs at its European, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) operations in Sandyford.

Some 53 per cent of software licence revenue comes from outside North America, with the bulk of that coming from Europe, then the Asia Pacific region. The European market lags the North American market and European companies are slower to adopt new technologies, "but design and plan more carefully" when they do, he notes.

BMC ended up in Dublin following its purchase of Boole and Babbage, which had a facility here.

Since then, the company has found Dublin to be "a strategic location to expand some of our operations into". Operations include product distribution and customer support.

Mr Beauchamp was in Dublin to pay his first visit to the Irish operation and meet his Dublin employees.