One of the products I’ve worked with over the years and have enjoyed very much is BMC Software’s CONTROL-M for Distributed Systems.  This workload management solution is the modern day "batch scheduler" that people may remember from the days of the mainframe.  Today, scheduling is more than just running particular jobs at a particular time — instead its about managing your workload and kicking off processing based on not only the clock, but also on external events and other triggers.

Batch Impact Manager is one of the "first step" products that I recommend for any company that is looking to start adopting ITIL practices and align their business and IT goals.  It’s a perfect way to help manage SLA’s as well as define critical paths within your scheduling solution.  It all starts with measuring and identifying your critical business processes.  You can find out how I did this using CONTROL-M and Batch Impact Manager by reading a short article I wrote for BMC’s Operations Insight newsletter.

About two years ago I did a video for BMC talking about my job, how we use ITIL methodologies and how CONTROL-M plays a big role in our overall IT strategy.  Call it my 15 minutes of fame!  You can view the video on Youtube or at BMCTV.

In 2009 I did a second video, this time talking about BSM and how it plays a role in IT.  I also talk about how CONTROL-M plays a role in this.  You can find it at http://www.bmctv.com/videos/carfax-1.

If you are looking for a good source of Control-M related information be sure to check out the Control-X mailing group over on Yahoo groups.  A lot of us Control-M folks hang out there and its a great resource for getting questions answered and sharing tips and tricks on how to use the tool.  Visit the group at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Control-X

Tools / Scripts I’ve Written (Public Domain)

Help & How-To

Conference Presentations