CMDB Adoption in the Real World: Just How Real Is It?

Introduction
The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) has skyrocketed into prominence within a mere 18 months. And it has done that under the radar of virtually all media editors and most reporters and analysts. In spite of its confusing name – the CMDB far transcends “configuration” as most of the industry would define the term – the CMDB has nonetheless taken off like a rocket in the minds of IT adopters. This doesn’t mean that these same adopters see it clearly or have a consistent understanding of the CMDB. Indeed, this report is developed around research that’s focused on showing the many faces of the CMDB – as a central point for governance, asset, inventory and change and configuration control, and as a core system, in many cases for more effective service assurance (with an ROI of in one case 300% in three years).
However, many buyers naively view the CMDB as a “thing” to buy, rather than as an enabler for data integration in support of superior process and organizational efficiencies. Too many IT organizations still want to forego the painful technology assessments, process initiatives, and organizational commitments to change that need to occur if this indus-try and its markets are going to evolve.
But this confusion – which is likely only to get worse, not better in the short-term – may well be worth the price. The CMDB holds the promise of more than enabling ITIL processes. It suggests a new way of investing in, reconciling and consolidating management investments, and is transforming in an already dramatic way how vendors are beginning to market and position themselves. It is also a foundation for cultural, political and organizational change, without which not only technology initiatives, but process initiatives as well, will ultimately fail.

Audience and Objectives
This report is designed for both IT adopters and planners, and for vendor solution planners. It is designed to be read by executives as well as architects, and technical influencers. It includes the industry’s first meaningful breakout of CMDB sub-markets (“The Two CMDBs” and “Vendors and Services”) as they are likely to take shape over the coming years, and provides both a descriptive way of assessing current market dynamics and technologies, while offering some pro-scriptive recommendations towards the future evolution of the market.
Methodology
This report was developed in the following manner:
- It was informed by eighteen months of industry dialog, research, IT consulting, and extensive writing on CMDB initiatives and vendor technologies.
- From this, a questionnaire was developed which received 154 respondents.
- This was supplemented by more than 20 hours of in-depth phone interviews across 16 IT organizations worldwide. All of the 16 vendors but one were chosen as being CMDB adopters often with significant and extensive histories to share. One was chosen for balance as a CMDB skeptic without CMDB deployment plans. This group included:
_ One IT services operations organization in the Middle East
_ One Canadian company in the financial sector
_ One telecommunications provider from Europe
_ One telecommunications provider from the Pacific Rim
_ One financial institution from Europe
_ Four systems integrators and/or IT service providers in the U.S.
_ One large public sector organization in the U.S. with significant global presence
_ One U.S. Healthcare service provider
_ Four financial sector organizations within the U.S.
_ One large manufacturer within the U.S.

ITIL and Architecture
The “Configuration Management Database” is a term and concept that was defined and developed by the IT Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. ITIL is a resource for IT organizations seeking to define and evolve their processes from a best practice perspective in support of what ITIL calls IT Service Management or ITSM. ITIL provides libraries that can help IT organizations collaborate more efficiently across silos, address customer requirements more effectively, align more closely with the businesses IT supports, and proactively take control of change.
Just as ITIL is a resource for IT organizations – ITIL developed the concept of a CMDB as a resource that’s critical for enabling best practices for not only configuration management, but also a wide range of other disciplines and processes. At core, the CMDB is a trusted and dynamic repository of information relevant to such things as infrastructure configuration and topology as they map to the delivery of IT services.