10 IT Resolutions for 2013

Learn more about BMC

The IT world is rapidly evolving. Companies should review and evaluate 2012 challenges so they can be planned for and managed in 2013. Here are 10 tips for IT strategic planning 2013:

1. Don't underestimate the information your consumers are willing to share with you. Big Data starts under your own roof. Consider all the different data elements you could be collecting.

2. Don't get caught up with nomenclature and buzz words - users/consumers/IT/ITSM/DevOps. The desire to use the "correct" wording, doesn't translate to consumers whose attention span has dramatically decreased.

3. Build time into all schedules for slack and innovation. Add a corporate slack rate of 10 percent into every schedule to allow employees to think about what they are doing.

4. Simplify your situations and projects.

5. Don't forget that saving money is usually a signal for time mis-management, not systems failures or enhancements.

6. Encourage your employees to sign the email charter: www.emailcharter.org

7. Get involved in your organization's external social media. It is IT's role to understand these systems and help your consumers and peers navigate this alternate world.

8. Be kind to your IT team - they are bombarded with FUD from the marketplace about the changing economy, workforce and IT. Make each person feel safe and important.

9. Imagine information systems that don't have form-based workflow. Imagine how you would interact in a mobile only world.

10. Hire the best and trust them.

ABOUT Chris Dancy

Chris Dancy is Director, Office of the CTO at BMC Software. He has been working in IT support for 20 years with experiences ranging from help desk level 1, service desk manager, ITSM process consultant, software product manager, executive corporate marketing, and entrepreneur. Most people know Chris as @servicesphere on twitter and as the host of the US edition of ITSM weekly, the podcast, syndicated to 30,000 listeners monthly. His name and avatar are synonymous with social media for IT, edutainment and his futuristic visions for IT.

Related Links:

Q&A Part One: Chris Dancy of BMC Talks About APM and User Experience

Q&A Part Two: Chris Dancy of BMC Talks About Social Media

The Latest

2026 Observability Predictions - Part 3

In APMdigest's 2026 Observability Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how Observability and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2025. Part 3 covers more predictions about Observability ...

2026 Observability Predictions - Part 2

In APMdigest's 2026 Observability Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how Observability and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2025. Part 2 covers predictions about Observability and AIOps ...

2026 Observability Predictions - Part 1

The Holiday Season means it is time for APMdigest's annual list of predictions, covering Observability and other IT performance topics. Industry experts — from analysts and consultants to the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how Observability, AIOps, APM and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2026 ...

Top 5 Data Infrastructure Trends to Watch in 2026

IT organizations are preparing for 2026 with increased expectations around modernization, cloud maturity, and data readiness. At the same time, many teams continue to operate with limited staffing and are trying to maintain complex environments with small internal groups. These conditions are creating a distinct set of priorities for the year ahead. The DataStrike 2026 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, based on responses from nearly 280 IT leaders across industries, points to five trends that are shaping data infrastructure planning for 2026 ...

Agentic Remediation: Capitalizing on the New Era of Database Observability

Developers building AI applications are not just looking for fault patterns after deployment; they must detect issues quickly during development and have the ability to prevent issues after going live. Unfortunately, traditional observability tools can no longer meet the needs of AI-driven enterprise application development. AI-powered detection and auto-remediation tools designed to keep pace with rapid development are now emerging to proactively manage performance and prevent downtime ...

ZTNA 101: Common Misconceptions That Keep Companies From Adopting It

Every few years, the cybersecurity industry adopts a new buzzword. "Zero Trust" has endured longer than most — and for good reason. Its promise is simple: trust nothing by default, verify everything continuously. Yet many organizations still hesitate to implement Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). The problem isn't that ZTNA doesn't work. It's that it's often misunderstood ...

When Dashboards Say "Green" But Customers See Red: Why Digital Experience Still Fails at the Last Mile

For many retail brands, peak season is the annual stress test of their digital infrastructure. It's also when often technical dashboards glow green, yet customer feedback, digital experience frustration, and conversion trends tell a different story entirely. Over the past several years, we've seen the same pattern across retail, financial services, travel, and media: internal application performance metrics fail to capture the true experience of users connecting over local broadband, mobile carriers, and congested networks using multiple devices across geographies ...

Don't Fall Into These 5 PostgreSQL Traps

PostgreSQL promises greater flexibility, performance, and cost savings compared to proprietary alternatives. But successfully deploying it isn't always straightforward, and there are some hidden traps along the way that even seasoned IT leaders can stumble into. In this blog, I'll highlight five of the most common pitfalls with PostgreSQL deployment and offer guidance on how to avoid them, along with the best path forward ...

Why AI Is No Longer Optional for IT Operations

The rise of hybrid cloud environments, the explosion of IoT devices, the proliferation of remote work, and advanced cyber threats have created a monitoring challenge that traditional approaches simply cannot meet. IT teams find themselves drowning in a sea of data, struggling to identify critical threats amidst a deluge of alerts, and often reacting to incidents long after they've begun. This is where AI and ML are leveraged ...

Outages Aren't the Enemy, Complacency Is

Three practices, chaos testing, incident retrospectives, and AIOps-driven monitoring, are transforming platform teams from reactive responders into proactive builders of resilient, self-healing systems. The evolution is not just technical; it's cultural. The modern platform engineer isn't just maintaining infrastructure. They're product owners designing for reliability, observability, and continuous improvement ...

10 IT Resolutions for 2013

Learn more about BMC

The IT world is rapidly evolving. Companies should review and evaluate 2012 challenges so they can be planned for and managed in 2013. Here are 10 tips for IT strategic planning 2013:

1. Don't underestimate the information your consumers are willing to share with you. Big Data starts under your own roof. Consider all the different data elements you could be collecting.

2. Don't get caught up with nomenclature and buzz words - users/consumers/IT/ITSM/DevOps. The desire to use the "correct" wording, doesn't translate to consumers whose attention span has dramatically decreased.

3. Build time into all schedules for slack and innovation. Add a corporate slack rate of 10 percent into every schedule to allow employees to think about what they are doing.

4. Simplify your situations and projects.

5. Don't forget that saving money is usually a signal for time mis-management, not systems failures or enhancements.

6. Encourage your employees to sign the email charter: www.emailcharter.org

7. Get involved in your organization's external social media. It is IT's role to understand these systems and help your consumers and peers navigate this alternate world.

8. Be kind to your IT team - they are bombarded with FUD from the marketplace about the changing economy, workforce and IT. Make each person feel safe and important.

9. Imagine information systems that don't have form-based workflow. Imagine how you would interact in a mobile only world.

10. Hire the best and trust them.

ABOUT Chris Dancy

Chris Dancy is Director, Office of the CTO at BMC Software. He has been working in IT support for 20 years with experiences ranging from help desk level 1, service desk manager, ITSM process consultant, software product manager, executive corporate marketing, and entrepreneur. Most people know Chris as @servicesphere on twitter and as the host of the US edition of ITSM weekly, the podcast, syndicated to 30,000 listeners monthly. His name and avatar are synonymous with social media for IT, edutainment and his futuristic visions for IT.

Related Links:

Q&A Part One: Chris Dancy of BMC Talks About APM and User Experience

Q&A Part Two: Chris Dancy of BMC Talks About Social Media

The Latest

2026 Observability Predictions - Part 3

In APMdigest's 2026 Observability Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how Observability and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2025. Part 3 covers more predictions about Observability ...

2026 Observability Predictions - Part 2

In APMdigest's 2026 Observability Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how Observability and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2025. Part 2 covers predictions about Observability and AIOps ...

2026 Observability Predictions - Part 1

The Holiday Season means it is time for APMdigest's annual list of predictions, covering Observability and other IT performance topics. Industry experts — from analysts and consultants to the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how Observability, AIOps, APM and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2026 ...

Top 5 Data Infrastructure Trends to Watch in 2026

IT organizations are preparing for 2026 with increased expectations around modernization, cloud maturity, and data readiness. At the same time, many teams continue to operate with limited staffing and are trying to maintain complex environments with small internal groups. These conditions are creating a distinct set of priorities for the year ahead. The DataStrike 2026 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, based on responses from nearly 280 IT leaders across industries, points to five trends that are shaping data infrastructure planning for 2026 ...

Agentic Remediation: Capitalizing on the New Era of Database Observability

Developers building AI applications are not just looking for fault patterns after deployment; they must detect issues quickly during development and have the ability to prevent issues after going live. Unfortunately, traditional observability tools can no longer meet the needs of AI-driven enterprise application development. AI-powered detection and auto-remediation tools designed to keep pace with rapid development are now emerging to proactively manage performance and prevent downtime ...

ZTNA 101: Common Misconceptions That Keep Companies From Adopting It

Every few years, the cybersecurity industry adopts a new buzzword. "Zero Trust" has endured longer than most — and for good reason. Its promise is simple: trust nothing by default, verify everything continuously. Yet many organizations still hesitate to implement Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). The problem isn't that ZTNA doesn't work. It's that it's often misunderstood ...

When Dashboards Say "Green" But Customers See Red: Why Digital Experience Still Fails at the Last Mile

For many retail brands, peak season is the annual stress test of their digital infrastructure. It's also when often technical dashboards glow green, yet customer feedback, digital experience frustration, and conversion trends tell a different story entirely. Over the past several years, we've seen the same pattern across retail, financial services, travel, and media: internal application performance metrics fail to capture the true experience of users connecting over local broadband, mobile carriers, and congested networks using multiple devices across geographies ...

Don't Fall Into These 5 PostgreSQL Traps

PostgreSQL promises greater flexibility, performance, and cost savings compared to proprietary alternatives. But successfully deploying it isn't always straightforward, and there are some hidden traps along the way that even seasoned IT leaders can stumble into. In this blog, I'll highlight five of the most common pitfalls with PostgreSQL deployment and offer guidance on how to avoid them, along with the best path forward ...

Why AI Is No Longer Optional for IT Operations

The rise of hybrid cloud environments, the explosion of IoT devices, the proliferation of remote work, and advanced cyber threats have created a monitoring challenge that traditional approaches simply cannot meet. IT teams find themselves drowning in a sea of data, struggling to identify critical threats amidst a deluge of alerts, and often reacting to incidents long after they've begun. This is where AI and ML are leveraged ...

Outages Aren't the Enemy, Complacency Is

Three practices, chaos testing, incident retrospectives, and AIOps-driven monitoring, are transforming platform teams from reactive responders into proactive builders of resilient, self-healing systems. The evolution is not just technical; it's cultural. The modern platform engineer isn't just maintaining infrastructure. They're product owners designing for reliability, observability, and continuous improvement ...