BMC India has now become the global innovation hub: Tarun Sharma

Interview with CEO, BMC India

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BMC Software is not the typical outsourced captive centre which does just maintenance. In the last two years BMC has filed more than 16 patents in India. Being leader in the Cloud Management category, it has the most comprehensive well integrated solution in the market. Also, it has done more than 100 implementations under cloud management services. Even in recession time, company is hiring employees and claims to be the one of the best places to work for in India. Tarun Sharma, CEO, BMC India, shares his views with Hrishikesh Joshi on company, cloud, and attrition. Edited excerpts:

Tell us something about BMC Software as a company?
BMC’s business model is designed to leverage partnerships with industry players. BMC delivers all technologies as a package to manage the IT services of their customers through cloud. BMC helps customers to cut costs, reduce risk and achieve business objectives. We have offices in more than 120 countries with the revenue of approximately $2.2 billion. The company has approximately 6,500 employees worldwide. More than 25,000 IT organizations – from the Global 100 to the smallest businesses – in over 120 countries rely on BMC Software to manage their business services and applications across distributed, mainframe, virtual and cloud environments.

How different is BMC India as compare to other locations?
BMC India is not the typical outsourced captive centre which does just maintenance. In the last 2 years we have filed more than 16 patents in India. Our leaders have realized a big difference in its India operation. While leaders in headquarters and other larger markets have to manage investors, analysts, customers and other stakeholders and in India, the employees were the primary stakeholders. Almost all BMC business functions have headcount in India. Over 22 per cent of total BMC employees are in India. All products and solutions have representation in India, especially strategic ones such as Incubator, Cloud Lifecycle Management, and other solutions. Pune is the largest BMC R&D office worldwide. Roughly, half of worldwide ESM R&D and IS&T based out of India. Most current and future solutions are being engineered in India.  

Could you brief us about BMC's cloud business?
Indian IT sector is aggressively moving to cloud thus recognizing the big revenue opportunity from this region. Two years ago, back BMC did not have a cloud business. We are the leaders in the Cloud Management category, we have the most comprehensive well integrated solution in the market. We have done more than 100 implementations under cloud management services. Now we have crossed over $100 million revenue from cloud business across the globe. India is the only incubator for our worldwide operations. Our entire cloud offering is done from the incubator team here in India. Cloud is managed from countries like India, US & Ukraine – however, the entire cloud management is lead by the India team. BMC India has now become the innovation hub and no longer remains a cost arbitrage.

What is your policy on attrition? Does this really affect performance?
Attrition is one of the most feared words in software companies in India. Managers try to deal with the issues by throwing money, offering promotions, retention bonuses and other things in reaction to arrest attrition. Despite that, the best employees quit. What they fail to realize is that money doesn’t buy engagement. In BMC, earlier it was up to 20 per cent and now it has came down to 12 per cent only from last one year.The workforce in IT is very young and ambitious, and hence their needs are different. Also, families play a large part in an individual’s career decisions. And what’s more, in an environment where attrition is anywhere from 20 per cent to 100 per cent annually, BMC Software is trending towards managing attrition at 12 per cent . What else could be a better testament of the fact that employee engagement works!

What the HR policies which have been customized for the Indian employees at BMC under the employee engagement program?
We Design every process and policy by keeping employee experience in mind. Simplify their interactions with service providers like IT, finance and HR. Engage not only the employee, but as many members of the employee’s family as possible. Strengthen relationships with managers. Hold managers more accountable for developing their people. Hold individual contributors responsible for developing their own careers. Once the basic framework and principles were in place, they designed programs that would implement the tenets of this belief system. The various programs that were identified were CSR activities, BindaasMasti Club, Ninja Club which is an organization by the techies for the techies. A key criteria to become a Ninja is ability to design and code. Even an architect who no longer codes cannot become a Ninja. The concept compares programmers to martial artists.