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

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

Some people call him the Social Media Guy. Some people call him a Futurist. Chris Dancy simply describes himself as a person who does not know any other world than IT.

APMdigest readers might be familiar with Chris Dancy's involvement in Servicesphere or the ITSM Weekly podcast, syndicated to 30,000 listeners monthly, but they might not realize that last summer he took on the new role of Director, Office of the CTO at BMC Software.

In Part One of APMdigest's exclusive interview, BMC's Chris Dancy talks about APM and user experience. You may not agree with, or even relate to, everything he says, but his perspective is unique and interesting, and he may just make you think about some aspects of APM or IT in ways you had not considered before.

APM: What will you be doing in your new role at BMC?

CD: I have a variety of roles. I spend a lot of time working with communications and our marketing teams. From the product side, I work with BMC MyIT in a limited capacity. I try to fill the void of what it should look like in three years. And that is really bold. You cannot safely say what things should look like and work like in one year. But I have been pretty accurate over the last two years of saying what is going to happen tomorrow. But that is not because I'm super smart. I super pay attention. You just have to connect enough weird dots.

APM: What are the main lessons learned for APM, and IT in general, in 2012, from your perspective?

CD: When it comes to Application Performance Management, my view is that applications need to perform for their designed outcome. What was unique about 2012, I think a lot of people were starting to look at the question of what products are – because we iterate and create and then iterate again, and let the market decide. Application Performance Management is difficult because we are constantly changing what applications are, which changes how we expect them to perform.

So if there's anything we should take away from 2012, it is the way that we think about designing applications in consumer facing ways. Maybe we need to look at the performance measurements in a new light. I often say for the service desk and enterprise software related to IT operations, it looks to me like we are on a starship with a wooden ruler. We are flying at warp speed, and we have a 12 inch wooden ruler.

Today we can't really apply the same metrics, at least from an IT operations standpoint – uptime, downtime, that type of stuff – because in the social network, Facebook never goes down. Performance management is really difficult to get your head around if something never goes down. Then it becomes experience management. Experience management is buzzy, like culture. It is unrealistic because it is as fluid as DNA and humanity.

APM: Are you saying you see challenges with analyzing the user experience?

CD: Right now it is really hard to get the user experience. You have to capture a lot of data. I think the problem with performance management, it is a moving target because people pervert applications to fit their lifestyle. They develop a relationship with the applications that is unique and not like the applications were designed for.

You don't know that a photograph or an upload speed or a cached version of something is more important to this person or that person, because they're using the same application in two different ways. To measure those things we actually need more sensors and more context awareness. More connectivity to other open systems would give context to why I'm using an application in the way I am using it.

We need bigger understanding of our relationship with technology at a human level, both a human chemical level and a human level from an anthropological sampling. How is technology changing us? If we are changing the rules to fit our needs, how do we measure someone who's going to constantly change? How do you measure a painting that someone is constantly adding to and taking away from without you knowing it? I think these are really big questions for 2013. Very daunting pressing problems.

APM: Do you think can you do that through technology? To actually be able to understand someone's motivations behind what they are trying to achieve with the technology?

CD: I completely think you could do this with technology. I wear three sensors during the day and five at night. I think there are ways that technology can help us help it.

Look at what we do now with application performance. If something crashes, would you like to send a report? That is so rudimentary. I would look at what the user did after it crashed. Did they go to the app store? Did they go to the web version of the app? I do think technology can answer these questions. It is going to keep learning from us.

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

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

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

Some people call him the Social Media Guy. Some people call him a Futurist. Chris Dancy simply describes himself as a person who does not know any other world than IT.

APMdigest readers might be familiar with Chris Dancy's involvement in Servicesphere or the ITSM Weekly podcast, syndicated to 30,000 listeners monthly, but they might not realize that last summer he took on the new role of Director, Office of the CTO at BMC Software.

In Part One of APMdigest's exclusive interview, BMC's Chris Dancy talks about APM and user experience. You may not agree with, or even relate to, everything he says, but his perspective is unique and interesting, and he may just make you think about some aspects of APM or IT in ways you had not considered before.

APM: What will you be doing in your new role at BMC?

CD: I have a variety of roles. I spend a lot of time working with communications and our marketing teams. From the product side, I work with BMC MyIT in a limited capacity. I try to fill the void of what it should look like in three years. And that is really bold. You cannot safely say what things should look like and work like in one year. But I have been pretty accurate over the last two years of saying what is going to happen tomorrow. But that is not because I'm super smart. I super pay attention. You just have to connect enough weird dots.

APM: What are the main lessons learned for APM, and IT in general, in 2012, from your perspective?

CD: When it comes to Application Performance Management, my view is that applications need to perform for their designed outcome. What was unique about 2012, I think a lot of people were starting to look at the question of what products are – because we iterate and create and then iterate again, and let the market decide. Application Performance Management is difficult because we are constantly changing what applications are, which changes how we expect them to perform.

So if there's anything we should take away from 2012, it is the way that we think about designing applications in consumer facing ways. Maybe we need to look at the performance measurements in a new light. I often say for the service desk and enterprise software related to IT operations, it looks to me like we are on a starship with a wooden ruler. We are flying at warp speed, and we have a 12 inch wooden ruler.

Today we can't really apply the same metrics, at least from an IT operations standpoint – uptime, downtime, that type of stuff – because in the social network, Facebook never goes down. Performance management is really difficult to get your head around if something never goes down. Then it becomes experience management. Experience management is buzzy, like culture. It is unrealistic because it is as fluid as DNA and humanity.

APM: Are you saying you see challenges with analyzing the user experience?

CD: Right now it is really hard to get the user experience. You have to capture a lot of data. I think the problem with performance management, it is a moving target because people pervert applications to fit their lifestyle. They develop a relationship with the applications that is unique and not like the applications were designed for.

You don't know that a photograph or an upload speed or a cached version of something is more important to this person or that person, because they're using the same application in two different ways. To measure those things we actually need more sensors and more context awareness. More connectivity to other open systems would give context to why I'm using an application in the way I am using it.

We need bigger understanding of our relationship with technology at a human level, both a human chemical level and a human level from an anthropological sampling. How is technology changing us? If we are changing the rules to fit our needs, how do we measure someone who's going to constantly change? How do you measure a painting that someone is constantly adding to and taking away from without you knowing it? I think these are really big questions for 2013. Very daunting pressing problems.

APM: Do you think can you do that through technology? To actually be able to understand someone's motivations behind what they are trying to achieve with the technology?

CD: I completely think you could do this with technology. I wear three sensors during the day and five at night. I think there are ways that technology can help us help it.

Look at what we do now with application performance. If something crashes, would you like to send a report? That is so rudimentary. I would look at what the user did after it crashed. Did they go to the app store? Did they go to the web version of the app? I do think technology can answer these questions. It is going to keep learning from us.

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

The Latest
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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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