Realize the organizational benefits of a CMDB

More than ever, organizations rely on a well-managed IT infrastructure, but the whole depends on individual components delivering at their full potential. Utilizing Configuration Items (CIs) and a well-structured configuration management database (CMDB) gives the business, stakeholders, and customers confidence that we are leveraging and fully controlling their IT investment.

What is a CI?

A CI is any component that needs to be maintained or managed to deliver a service to the organization. CIs can include IT Services, hardware, software, buildings, people, formal documentation, licenses, and other assets.

Examples

• Lifecycle CIs: e.g., service management plans, disaster recovery, test plans
• Organisation CIs: e.g., strategy and internal policies
• Internal CIs: e.g., tangible and intangible assets such as software for individual projects
• External CIs: e.g., external customer agreements, releases from suppliers or sub-contractors

What is a CMDB?

A CMDB is a mapped group of CIs showing relationships and dependencies within an organizational infrastructure. A well-defined CMDB provides comprehensive and easy-to-use facilities for managing your organization's assets, inventory, contracts, licenses, and configurations.

CMDB business benefits

• Optimising the performance of service assets and configurations improves overall service performance
• Better forecasting and change planning
• Helps meet service level targets for incident and problem resolutions
• Fewer non-conformances to standards and regulatory requirements
• Control of assets and services ensures more business opportunities
• Costs of services more readily identifiable

CMDB Strategic Objectives

• To assist in providing better IT service delivery to the organization
• Provide a source of knowledge and control of what IT assets, configurations, and services support the organization
• To support change and risk assessment
• To enable informed purchase and renewal decisions
• Provide information to support service management processes better
• Maintaining configuration items, relationships, and their dependencies
• Building an effective and successful CMDB need not be complicated; it requires the following:
• Deciding on the scope that's right for your organization
• Adopting a phased approach
• Having the right policies, processes, and procedures in place that are kept up-to-date and actively followed
• People to follow the process
• Demonstrable business and operational benefits
• A continual service improvement focus

Remember to keep it simple and ensure it's of value for several processes and people. There are many benefits and values associated with Configuration Items and CMDB. Ensure that the decision-makers discuss and agree upon CMDB's required complexity and depth. The CMDB must be kept current - out of date, inaccurate CMDBs can mean a business disaster. Regular reviews to assess CI-level business requirements are essential. Avoid the risk of a single point of failure – share knowledge. Business knowledge is critical, and infrastructure knowledge is equally so.

Marval MSM, a secure, reliable, scalable service management software solution, supports delivering consistent, measurable, and repeatable processes across an organization. The design aims to meet changing customer and market requirements while minimizing risk and supporting enterprise services and growth strategies.