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IT organizations that want to achieve the full business value from Service Management initiatives need consistent, current, accurate, and secure information. That’s why an increasing number of IT organizations are seriously looking at how a configuration management database (CMDB) can help them manage their infrastructure more effectively. A well-configured CMDB can easily monitor configuration items (CIs) — their location, status, and relationships to each other — and consolidate disparate data sets. It can provide a single source of accurate information about data in the IT environment. This heightened level of control is what drives IT staff to implement CMDBs and it strengthens the value of the services they provide to the business.
A CMDB should work in harmony with IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) best practices for Service Management. The ITIL standards for Service Management include Service Support and Service Delivery disciplines (see Figure 1 in the Introduction section of this paper), which depend on the process integration and control provided by the CMDB. Any IT organization concerned about the evolution and maturity of its IT processes needs to understand how a CMDB enhances Service Management objectives. This paper provides an overview of that issue.
Historically, many IT organizations created CMDBs using their own homegrown tools and processes. Today, the marketplace provides standardized solutions for creating CMDBs, based on ITIL processes. “CMDBs and ITIL are not exactly breaking news. But the addition of application-to-infrastructure component mapping by a few innovative companies over the past four years has changed the face of the CMDB. This technology allows the CMDB to become a foundation for all IT service management disciplines.”
New technology has dramatically increased the effectiveness of the CMDB and it has evolved into a service greater than the information it contains. Combine the power of a CMDB with ITIL best practices and your organization can achieve more effective, consistent management across all IT services. This paper provides an overview of the value a CMDB can bring to both IT and the business, and describes how a CMDB can work in harmony with ITIL best practices to enhance Service Management.
Many organizations today must manage IT services and assets based on process-oriented methods. Although some organizations manage to achieve ITIL Service Management objectives without implementing a CMDB, this is difficult to accomplish and maintain. And, as IT Service Management matures within an organization, a CMDB becomes even more business-critical to providing the needed control of processes and information.
ITIL offers the strategic guidance for processes that depend on a CMDB. ITIL standards recommend using a CMDB because it is a core component of mature, predictable, standard IT Service Management processes. Figure 1 cites the various disciplines for ITIL Service Management, which are described in Table 1.
ITIL Service Management Definitions and Goals
> CMDB: “A database that contains all relevant details of each configuration item and details of the important relationships between configuration items.”
> Configuration item (CI): “A component of an infrastructure that is (or is to be) under the control of Configuration Management. CIs may vary widely in complexity, size, and type, from an entire system to a single module.”
> ITIL goals for Configuration Management
- Account for all the IT assets and configurations within the organization and its services
- Provide accurate information on configurations and their documentation to support all the other Service Management processes
- Provide a sound basis for Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, and Release Management
- Provide verification of the configuration records against the infrastructure and correct any exceptions CMDB Integration with ITIL and Automated Processes
As organizations add more ITIL-based automated processes, they must ensure that all components seamlessly integrate into the CMDB. How solutions are delivered and how they are used within the organization must be considered in relation to the ITIL Service Management disciplines. If you follow these ITIL disciplines, you will increase your chances of using more mature, repeatable processes.
Today, CMDBs are available with ITIL-compatible, preconfigured tools that integrate with supporting applications. This capability lowers the cost to deploy services and increases the effectiveness of those services. For example, the service desk captures events from a variety of different sources. Events are filtered, standardized, and prioritized based on severity, scope of problem, or business impact.
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