A short time ago, Dell, like many other companies, embarked on a broad initiative to integrate and upgrade its IT services to better satisfy business needs. As part of this initiative, Dell addressed a job scheduling solution that had failed to keep pace with ITIL integration. In enterprises around the world, stale job scheduling software lingers for fear of the costs and risks of conversion. Dell's experience yields the following lessons in the successful conversion and exploitation of workload automation software:

• Choose software with a proven track record for rapid and uneventful conversions.
• Choose a vendor with a proven track record for superior customer service.
• Choose a solution supporting enterprise-wide frameworks that align IT services with business needs - the primary tenet of IT Service Management (ITSM).
• Choose products that permit a modular approach so that the company can selectively target automation areas while also controlling the duration, ROI, and scope of projects.

Because Dell followed these fundamental rules, their success today extends beyond a smooth conversion into efficient, scalable, integrated, event-driven, workload automation (WLA) architecture that addresses the service concerns of both business and IT. To accomplish this, Dell chose BMC's CONTROL-M.