How about Solving the Change Management Challenge with Discovery and Dependency Mapping?

ASG-Discovery and Dependency
MappingT: A Fresh Approach to
Solving the Change and Configuration
Management Challenge
An ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMAT) White Paper Prepared for ASGMarch 2010
IT MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,INDUSTRY ANALYSIS AND CONSULTINGIT MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,INDUSTRY ANALYSIS AND CONSULTING
Table of Contents
Overview.................................................................................................................................................................1
ITIL and Change and Configuration Management .......................................................................................2
Discovery and Dependency Mapping as a Data Center Discipline......................................................3
ASG-Discovery and Dependency Mapping (ASG-DDM)...........................................................................4
Key Differentiators...............................................................................................................................................5
EMA Perspective...................................................................................................................................................7
ASG Discovery and Dependency Mapping (ASG-DDM): A Fresh Approach to Solving the Change and Configuration Management Challenge©2010 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.IT MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,INDUSTRY ANALYSIS AND CONSULTING
OverviewConfiguration Management is at the heart of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and forms the foundation for Business Service Management (BSM). In fact, it is safe to say that neither the ITIL IT Service Management (ITSM) processes nor the BSM functions that leverage ITSM can be efficiently carried out without accurate configuration and dependency information. Lacking a clear understanding of the ways in which hardware and software assets interconnect, and which ones depend on others, IT organizations must resort to managing today's complex business services via trial and error. Gathering and maintaining accurate configuration information, Gathering and maintaining particularly as it relates to applications and their dependencies, accurate configuration is a significant challenge for most IT organizations. This paper information, particularly as focuses on Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping, it relates to applications a relatively recent enterprise management technology which and their dependencies, is directly targets the challenges related to application configura- a significant challenge for tion management. Supported by the notions of the Configuration most IT organizations.Management Database (CMDB) in ITIL v2, and the Configuration Management System (CMS) in ITIL v3, the configuration reposi-tory provides complete, accurate, and up-to-date information about business hardware and software assets, their characteristics, and their interdependencies. However, wholesale adoption of compre-hensive Configuration Management has been hindered by the difficulty and expense of gathering and maintaining such information. ®The most recent ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES (EMAT) Configuration Management research found that only 15% of companies surveyed were in full production with a Configuration Management System. Twenty four percent (24%) were in the process of deploying a first-phase CMS and another 18% were still in the planning stages. There are multiple reasons for these low numbers, but the most compelling revolve around data. How does a company go about the process of locating and documenting hardware and software assets, determining interrelationships and dependencies, storing, and reporting this information? And once such information is in place, how can it be kept current without expensive manual labor and a host of IT specialists?The good news is that while ITIL was evolving from v2 to v3, specialized Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping solutions were evolving as well. Today, there is no reason why deploying and maintaining an accurate, federated CMS must rely on manpower and manual processes. ASG's innova-Ttive Discovery and Dependency Mapping (ASG-DDM ) solution, combined with ASG's industry-leading ASG-metaCMDB, provide a basis for efficiently executing the ITSM processes, and a founda-tion for carrying out the BSM functions. ASG-DDM leverages sophisticated ... [download for more]