About

Updated 12/27/18

I’ve been on the PagerDuty rocket ship for well over a year now as a member of the Digitial Insights team. The Digital Insights team provides two roles for PagerDuty being Operation Health Consulting and Professional Services. I have the pleasure of working with a globally diverse customer base ranging from start-ups to very large enterprises beginning their digital transformation journey. A day in my life at PagerDuty consists of helping new customers rapidly stand up modern incident response processes or adopt DevOps like “you code it, you support it” practices within their teams. I’m equally spending time optimizing our well established PagerDuty customers who need to quickly modernize their implementations or integrations to the latest versions. I also enjoy the opportunity to consult and advise our customers on better practices within their DevOps, HybridOps or CentralOps environments.  When I’m not working with our awesome customers, I’m spending time building new tools for automating the work our team does.  I’m enjoying building things in AWS with Lambdas, analyzing customer data in Databricks, Looker and Mode Analytics and writing Python, Node.js, R and SQL seem to be the norm these days.

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Updated bio 6/27/09 to incorporate new role.

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Doug McClure is a member of the Business Service Management (BSM) Architecture team within IBM Tivoli’s BSM Development organization. He is currently focused on BSM solutions strategy, content, integrations, time to value and ease of use for the Tivoli BSM (TBSM) portfolio while maintaining a heavy focus on client opportunities, deployments and overall satisfaction.

He is actively focused on defining the next generation of BSM where the convergence of BSM, SQM, BTM, BQE, SLA, CEM, BPM, BAM, and BEM will drive increased value, ROI and the next generation business and IT focused operations centers and management techniques.

Previously, Doug was a Senior Managing Consultant for Business and IT Service Management within the IBM Tivoli Lab Services (ISST) organization which he joined via the Micromuse acquisition in 2006. He led architecture, design and implementation of the largest BSM deployments for IBM Tivoli worldwide. He founded and led the Virtual BSM Practice within IBM Tivoli Services focused on ensuring that IBMers, business partners and clients worldwide are best prepared for success from their BSM strategy.

Doug has focused the past 18 years of his career on developing repeatable methodologies for continuous improvement in business and IT service management across many diverse public, private and government positions. He is an industry recognized thought leader and subject matter expert in the area of BSM and publishes a widely followed blog on the subject and participates in global conversations within this rapidly evolving space.

Doug is happily married to his wife Denise of 17 years, has three children and resides in Marietta, GA.

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My vision for this blog

I have worked within the information technology industry for over 18 years where I’ve served in various technology development, operations and management positions within government, enterprise and service provider organizations.

My career goals are to help the concepts of Business Service Management (BSM), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), Business Process/Performance Management (BPM), Business Transaction Management (BTM), Information Technology Service Management (ITSM), IT Information Library (ITIL), etc. come to life through the design of reference architectures, implementation strategies, templates, wizards and engagement practices that can be used by current/potential customers and partners.

Prior to joining Micromuse and ultimately IBM Tivoli I was employed at a very large Internet Service Provider in Atlanta, GA where I led the Service and Technology Management (NMS/EMS/OSS) group. Under my leadership, this group’s focus areas included creating true end-to-end service management across all layers of the technology infrastructure and to ensure the service and technology management architecture was capable of supporting the company’s future directions in Voice over IP, WiFi, Broadband, Managed Services and advanced consumer application deployment.

The stellar team I had helped provide real time insight into business and process performance and customer experience via real time testing, monitoring, and dashboard presentations. In order to meet the rapidly changing requirements of a growing company, service and technology management solutions had to be open and capable of adapting to any technology deployment. The team developed a service focused approach from both the business and customer perspective (top down) as well as from a technology infrastructure perspective (bottom up). By focusing on the business and customer in addition to the technology infrastructure we enabled management of complex services and technologies efficiently and effectively while never loosing sight of the customer’s experience.

In January 2004, I founded the Atlanta Network and System Management Technical User Group (ANSMTUG) where local Fortune 500 companies such as Bell South, The Home Depot, Delta Airlines and Cox Communications meet monthly to learn about ways to continuously improve service and technology management within their environments. The purpose of this users group is to foster collaboration between administrators, architects, engineers, developers and operators of applications and tools to manage and monitor complex networks, systems, applications, services and business activities.

The technical user group focuses on helping the local user community through monthly meetings to learn about best practices, how-to’s, FAQs, lessons learned, etc. outside of annual vendor sponsored conferences or meetings. These monthly meetings allow for local networking opportunities within the user community, hearing monthly presentations about user driven topics of interest as well as presentations about user/company/vendor implementations or products.

I’ve branched out over the past few years focusing ways to implement technology solutions that help business get more value out of their investments in service, technology and business management and monitoring solutions. As I mentioned above, I had the pleasure of a great team of developers and engineers and we were able to design and implement many of these ideas finding out what worked and didn’t work along the way. I am very interested in all things real-time and related to creating true value oriented BSM, BAM and end-to-end service management solutions. There’s a lot of potential out there in current technologies and vendor solutions that can help businesses get to a level which may seem like a Utopian dream or the “holy grail”.

I hope to communicate my thoughts, ideas and commentary around some of these areas below and offer insight on how businesses can map their way towards getting to the next level in their quest for continuous improvement. I’ll try and keep up with industry activity and any other exciting success stories that I can share that may be related as well.

If you are interested in the things I talk about on this blog or any of my thoughts, ideas or other professional experiences and wish to discuss setting up a meeting or other professional engagement, etc. please feel free to contact me or your IBM / IBM Tivoli point or contact.

Doug

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Many ask how I became so passionate about Business Service Management (BSM). Here’s my response to a recent Q&A with ScienceLogic:

ScienceLogic: How did you get involved in BSM?

Doug McClure: I think the foundations of my service management background and passion were initially established during my service in the US Navy. Today, I relate that experience to what I call BSM for the Military or Mission Services Management (MSM).

We had been taught over and over that extreme attention to the details of the mission at hand (aka “the business”) was the number one priority and that all of our technology, services, and applications existed for those Sailors and Marines on the other end (the “customer”). I can recall countless instances where mission critical communications services (telephony, orderwires, teletypes, command and control systems, etc.) were impacted in one way or another. It was extremely critical that we understood who was impacted and to what degree so that contingency plans could be activated. We weren’t just talking about lost revenue, poor sales or customer experience; we were talking about human lives and the security of the United States.

It is that military bearing, attention to detail and real world experience that drives me with many of my modern day BSM endeavors. That migration from “Mission Services Management” to BSM was honed working for over 10 years working in the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and datacenter, hosting and colocation business.

In those rapid growth businesses during the Internet boom, service differentiation was what “made you millions” or paved your way to bankruptcy. The companies I worked for had an extreme passion and focus on ensuring that their services, applications and Internet access products were of the highest quality, highly reliable and just plain better than the competition.

Again, the IT infrastructure, service quality and customer experience relationship was ingrained in all of our heads. It was all hands on deck when Webmail, Internet access, DNS, or the network experienced problems. We were measured in terms of how many customers experienced a busy signal or dropped connection or if you couldn’t log in fast enough to read your email. Companies like Keynote Systems and LionBridge/Veritest/Inverse tested the quality of our networks, services and applications and publicly ranked us against our competition. We thought in terms of customer experience and impact every minute of the day, 24×7.

It was in my last job managing a traditional enterprise management and monitoring development group for a nationwide ISP where I was able to work with emerging technology to help get a handle on the complexities of these rapidly growing IT environments filled with emerging technologies and products. Applying this early technology to complex service problems in our environment proved to me that the technology, coupled with the right emphasis on how the technology was implemented and an emphasis on the people and processes within the organization could bring BSM to life.

Where I felt left out in the cold was with my vendor relationship. While their technology gave me the potential, they didn’t teach me how to work through the organizational and technological problems to successfully implement the BSM strategy. My very first end-to-end BSM pilot was extremely successful and provided visibility into the IT environment and business service impact that have never been available before.

And here I am today, working at a software vendor for the first time. Welcome to the “dark side” as they say. The approach and methodology we followed for BSM has become the basis of the core BSM Methodology that I teach IBMers and our clients around the world today.

My personal mission and drive here at IBM Tivoli is to ensure that BSM is something that the typical monitoring tools administrator can actually implement and that our BSM story is something that any of our clients can be successful with. The sales and marketing slicks must be backed up by something like this whomever you are these days. Clients shouldn’t put up for “marketecture”, me too and gee whiz buzz words.

BSM takes a partnership and commitment to every client’s success, and I want to be involved in those BSM efforts in every industry or market worldwide. We need more thought leaders collaborating together in an open and public forum to change legacy attitudes about BSM and do what we can to enable client’s to be as successful as they can be.

Recent Projects and Engagements

• Financial Services – Trading, Investments, Consumer and Professional – Business Service Management, BSM Use Cases, Scenarios and Solutions Methodology
• Aerospace Manufacturing – Business Service Management, Business Transaction Management
• Energy and Utilities – Business Service Management
• Global Electronics and Semiconductor Company – Business Service Management, Verification Assurance Center, Production Assurance Center, Business Service Management Use Cases, Scenarios and Solution Methodology
• Fortune 20 Global Financial Services Firm – Business Service Management, Business Service Management Methodology, Business Service Management Strategy, Business Service Management Use Cases, Scenarios and Solution Methodology
• Fortune 100 Global Financial Services, Brokerage and Fund Manager – Business Service Management
• Fortune 1000 Global Financial Services and Transaction Processing Company – Consolidated business service and event management.
• Fortune 20 Commercial Bank – Global Business Service Management, Global Business Transaction Management, Global Business Process Management, Global Business Activity Monitoring
• Top Three Banks in China – Business Service Management, Business Aligned, Top Down Consolidated Service Management Architecture
• Fortune 500 Bank – Business Service Management
• Fortune 20 Commercial Bank – Business Service Management, Consolidated Operations and Service Management
• National Cable Television, Internet, Telephony Company – Service Management, Business Service Management
• Fortune 20 IT SW/HW/Services Company – Global Service Level Management, Global Business Service Management
• Fortune 20 IT SW/HW/Services Company – Global Outsourced Business Process Service Level Management
• Fortune 20 IT SW/HW/Services Company – Global Business Service Management
• Fortune 500 Medical Equipment Company – IT Service Management and Monitoring, Business Service Management for SAP
• Fortune 100 Media and Entertainment Company – Business Service Management
• Product Offering Development – Consulting, Design and Implementation Services, Managed Service Offering – Business of IT Dashboard, Business Service Management, Service Level Management, Integrated Supplier Management

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**Note: I see a lot of searches landing on this blog for things I have not yet posted about. If you’re in search of information related to any of the topics I write about here but can’t find what you’re looking for, please contact me for assistance!
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