CMDB
The absence of topology can be a key inhibitor for AIOps tools, creating blind spots for AIOps as they only have access to event data. A topology, an IT service model, or a dependency map is a real-time picture of tools and services that are connected and dependent on each other to deliver an IT service ...
Industry experts offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how APM and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2021. Part 6, the final installment in the series, covers ITSM ...
The configuration management database (CMDB), along with its more federated companion, the configuration management system (CMS), has been bathed in a deluge of negative opinions from all fronts — industry experts, vendors, and IT professionals. But from what recent EMA research on analytics, ITSM performance and other areas is indicating, those negative views seem to be missing out on a real undercurrent of truth — that CMDB/CMS alignments, whatever their defects, strongly skew to success in terms of overall IT progressiveness and effectiveness ...
The goal of EMA's latest research was to look at how advanced IT analytics (AIA) — EMA's term for primarily what today is best known as "AIOps" — is being deployed. Here are the remaining four of my seven personal takeaways ...
As tech headlines flash across my email, the CMDB, and its federated equivalent, the CMS, are almost never mentioned. And yet when I do research, dialog with IT, or support our consulting team, the CMDB/CMS many times still remains paramount ...
In a perfect world, deployments would always go as planned – however in the world of IT we all know that is not the case. There's a long list of reasons why Application Performance Management (APM) deployments might fail. Some reasons can be aligned to people, others to process and finally some to product ...
As a follow-up to my previous columns on change management, I’d like to step back a little and shine a light on an even broader landscape. Here I’ll touch briefly on process, dialog, and workflow as a triad that can help IT organizations move forward toward a more efficient and potentially more business-aligned way of working ...
In Part 3 of a three-part series on change management, I’ll look at how the technologies for service modeling, automation, visualization, and self-service are evolving to address the more dynamic demands of trends such as cloud, agile, and mobile ...
This is Part 2 of a three-part series on change management. In this blog, I’ll look at what it takes to make change management initiatives succeed — including metrics and requirements, best practice concerns, and some of the more common pitfalls ...
This is the first of a three-part series on change management. In this blog, I’ll try to answer the question, “What is change management?” from both a process and a benefits (or use-case) perspective ...
In my last blog, I discussed how IT service management (ITSM) roles (and rules) are becoming more operations-aware. The blog examined a number of key game-changers for ITSM, including a growing requirement for shared analytics; the rise (not the demise) of the CMDB/CMS and service modeling; cloud as both a catalyst for innovation and a resource to be managed; and support for enterprise services such as facilities and HR. I also discussed two topics, mobility and unified endpoint management, that I’d like to examine in more depth here ...
Both the “rules” and the “roles” governing IT Service Management (ITSM) are evolving to support a far-broader need for inclusiveness across IT, and between IT and its service consumers. Recent EMA research, What Is the Future of IT Service Management? (March 2015), exposed a number of shifting trends that might surprise many in the industry ...
Both the “rules” and the “roles” governing IT Service Management (ITSM) are evolving to support a far-broader need for inclusiveness across IT, and between IT and its service consumers. Recent EMA research, What Is the Future of IT Service Management? (March 2015), exposed a number of shifting trends that might surprise many in the industry ...
Here is a suggested Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping (ADDM) checklist summary, addressing key areas of product differentiation ...
The Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping (ADDM) market is evolving rapidly, and in multiple directions at once. While this can be confusing, it is overall a good thing. Through this diversity, vendors delivering ADDM capabilities are, as an aggregate, seeking to be more responsive to a yet broader set of constituents, use cases, and roles than ever before. This includes requirements emerging from internal and external (public) cloud, the extended enterprise across ecosystems, agile application development, and a dramatic upswing in currency, ease of deployment and modularity. In some cases you will want to be sure to select an ADDM package that integrates with your core CMDB at initial deployment. In other cases it may come at a later time as a separate investment. On the other hand, depending on use case and overall readiness, an ADDM package may be the right starting point for growing your CMDB System in Phase One even without a core CMDB ...
Very few CMDB solutions are currently packaged as standalone options. For instance, you may already have a CMDB embedded in your service desk that’s not yet in use. However, you may decide for any number of reasons that your current investment isn’t the one to take you the whole distance going forward. Moreover, there are a growing number of variations on a theme — as some CMDBs are packaged primarily as BSM solutions optimized for service impact and performance, others target workflow and automation, and some CMDB solutions are extensions of application discovery and dependency mapping tools ...
In writing CMDB Systems: Making Change Work in the Age of Cloud and Agile, we gained a lot by talking to deployments. In the spirit of our own recommendations for how to manage and optimize a CMDB-related initiative, our goal was to learn from reality more than just preach a series of best practices. What I’ve chosen to write about here are just a few highlights, following four key areas of interest: Dialog, Communication and Stakeholder Planning; Architecture; Cloud; and Agile ...
Almost three-fourths (70%) of companies forget about documenting changes, up from 57% last year, according to Netwrix Corporation's 2015 State of IT Changes Survey. Undocumented changes pose a hidden threat to business continuity and the integrity of sensitive data. The survey shows that 67% of companies suffer from service downtime due to unauthorized or incorrect changes to system configurations, while the worst offenders are again enterprises in 73% of cases ...
Everyone presumably loves a good mystery. And in fact the questions “What is a CMDB?” and “What is its relevance in the age of (cloud) (agile) (fill-in-the-blank)?” often provoke such conflicted industry responses that they do suggest the presence of some mystery underfoot. But we didn’t set out to write a mystery novel per se. Instead, CMDB Systems: Making Change Work in the Age of Cloud and Agile is designed to serve as both a guide and a chronicle of real-world experiences — honoring the mystery by sharing different points of view, while trying to help our readers optimize their CMDB planning for what is increasingly becoming a positive and successful initiative ...
This is the time of year when stores start to decorate with holly and tinsel, snowflakes and twinkling lights, as they prepare for the biggest revenue-generating season of the year. While online sales organizations do not need to hang any mistletoe, they should be preparing for what is becoming – more and more each year – their biggest sales season as well. As e-commerce represents a greater percentage of any company's revenue, the challenge to meet customer needs online is more important to the company's success each year. With this in mind, APMdigest asked experts from across the APM industry for their opinions on how to best prepare for the challenges of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Holiday Shopping Season. The first six technologies presented here start out with mainstream APM capabilities that are essential to e-commerce success ...
Today's blog will center on some examples of we call "external metrics" based on use cases, as well as on planning meaningful ROI metrics in conjunction with specific use-case benefits ...
It may sound childlike, but a good place to start before putting any metrics in place is to ask,"Why?" Probably the first answer at the top of most adopters' minds is because I have no choice if I'm going to sell this thing. Other bad reasons to establish metrics include to justify the cost of the CMDB project and to provide an absolute yardstick of CMDB success. While both of these motivators may sound good politically, they create a false notion of how value can be directly measured around a CMDB System ...
