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New Report Highlights Top Ten Proven IT Management Principles Inspired by Deming and the Toyota Way, February 25, 2008



The new research report and related benchmark reveals how change, configuration and release practices and enablers improve performance at 340 IT organizations studied.

Lexington, MA, February 25, 2008 - BladeLogic, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLOG), a leading provider of next-generation data center automation software, today announced the publication of a report from the IT Process Institute (ITPI) entitled, "Build Confidence by Developing IT Operational Excellence." The report is designed to help IT organizations achieve data center operational excellence and optimize business value.

As part of the research for the report, ITPI studied the common practices of hundreds of top-performing IT organizations to derive a basic set of IT management principles inspired by Deming and the Toyota Way. By providing general operating guidelines to complement existing best practices, IT departments are given a coherent and realistic approach to optimize IT operations and transform themselves into a high-performance organization. Included with each principle is a set of "proof in practice" statistics that rate high performers, medium performers and low performers in each area. The principles detailed in the report include:
  • know what the organization needs from IT;
  • balance controls with efficiency and agility;
  • create well-defined roles and responsibilities for all IT personnel;
  • control access to computing environments;
  • build a process culture and manage process exceptions;
  • make data-driven decisions;
  • standardize configurations and minimize configuration drift;
  • follow a common development-to-release lifecycle;
  • link change requests to underlying systems and business service;
  • and mandate that all production changes follow a rigorous process.
"In an environment where business is dependent on IT more than ever before, operational excellence is critical in order to achieve consistent results," said Kurt Milne, Managing Director, IT Process Institute, and author of the report. "It is not enough to know what IT must do to optimize business value; IT organizations must also be able to consistently deliver at a level of predictable performance that allows the business to achieve strategic objectives."

"IT organizations are increasingly looking to proven approaches to rapidly manage changes to applications that enable critical business processes, and the multitude of servers that support those applications," said Vick Viren Vaishnavi, Vice President of Marketing, BladeLogic. "This report, which includes both key IT management principles and real-world case studies, provides IT organizations with a detailed framework for achieving operational excellence and ensuring that IT can support the changing needs of the business."

To download a copy of this report, please go to http://www.bladelogic.com/solutions/resource-library.php.

About the IT Process Institute
The IT Process Institute is an independent research organization that exists to support the membership of IT operations, security, and audit professionals. Our mission is to advance IT management science through independent research, benchmarking, and the development of prescriptive guidance. Our purpose is to identify and study top-performing IT organizations and identify proven practices to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the industry. www.itpi.org

About BladeLogic (NASDAQ: BLOG)
BladeLogic is a leading provider of data center automation software with a large installed base of Fortune Global 500 customers, including 21 of the top 100 global companies, 3 of the top 10 aerospace and defense companies, 7 of the top 25 commercial and savings banks, 3 of the top 5 securities companies, 2 of the top 3 entertainment companies, 2 of the top 3 general merchandisers, 7 of the top 12 pharmaceutical companies and 7 of the top 10 telecommunications companies. BladeLogic's data center automation software solutions enable enterprises, service providers and government organizations to easily browse, provision, configure, patch, audit and remediate physical and virtual servers and applications, allowing customers to achieve reduced data center operating costs, improved service quality and enhanced security and compliance. BladeLogic is headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA. For more information, please visit www.bladelogic.com.

Contact: BladeLogic
Tedd Rodman
+1-781-257-3560
trodman@bladelogic.com