CMDBs Evolving Beyond Databases Into Corporate Assets

The web seminar featured Peter O’Neill from Forrester research who detailed trends and best practices for configuration management databases (CMDBs), focusing on their pivotal role in IT service management, and in particular on their foundational role in supporting critical business decision making.

According to Dustin McNabb, VP of Marketing for Managed Objects and leader for the February 14th discussion, “Global 2000 IT organizations are increasingly implementing CMDB projects for their capabilities beyond mere service support to extend to service delivery itself.”

“A CMDB should be more than a repository for configuration items and relationships,” noted McNabb. “Companies need capabilities that allow them both to proactively avoid downtime as well as to make business-oriented decisions about IT.”

Over 500 Global 2000 attendees echoed these findings in their responses to a poll conducted during the web seminar. When asked to identify the key values they wanted to derive from their CMDB project, over 68 percent of respondents said they expect their CMDBs to help across a broad spectrum of corporate IT initiatives and organizations -- from service support to service delivery, to IT operations, and finally to IT governance and compliance.

In contrast, less than 20 percent of respondents indicated that their CMDBs would help with only service support, reflecting a paradigm shift in the IT market away from the long-held belief that CMDBs were meant for Service Support (e.g. Help Desk) organizations alone.

To substantiate the value of the CMDB beyond Service Support, the web seminar discussion focused on specific recommendations on how to leverage the CMDB to enable proactive, business-oriented IT management.

-- To achieve both service support and service delivery, CMDBs should
include "state" as a CI attribute, which includes status of both
technology resources like servers and applications as well as
technology processes

-- Only with a knowledge of state are advanced CMDB analytics
possible, including:

-- Process analytics that help to manage unplanned changes,
problems with changes, and change collisions

-- Service analytics that enable root cause and impact
analysis, availability and performance management

-- CMDB analytics position organizations to deliver IT service views
and assure service levels, availability, capacity and
continuity - critical Service Delivery capabilities

-- This information, when combined with data arising from financial
and business intelligence applications, yields a comprehensive
visualization of the health of the business for decision making,
the ultimate goal of business service management

"There’s no question that the market has moved beyond aiming for the basic functions of a CMDB and is now focused on deriving a higher order of value from it," said Siki Giunta, President and CEO for Managed Objects. "This is an important milestone for the industry - the recognition that the importance of a CMDB lies not in the data itself, but in what you do with it.”

The recorded version of "CMDB: Beyond a Database… to a Corporate Asset" featuring Peter O’Neill, a Principal Analyst for Forrester Research, may be requested by emailing info@managedobjects.com or by visiting www.managedobjects.com.

Learn more about Managed Objects' CMDB360 solution: http://www.managedobjects.com/solutions/cmdb.jsp

About Managed Objects

Managed Objects is the Business Service Management Company. Companies use our solutions to more effectively monitor, manage, and model their IT enterprise. Our unique service perspective overlays existing management tools so complex IT infrastructures can be managed, not as a set of components, but rather as the set of services that IT delivers to the business--services like order processing, e-commerce, online trading, or email. Companies that use Managed Objects realize measurable improvements in IT service quality, cost savings, and increased IT responsiveness.

A venture-backed company headquartered in McLean, VA, with operations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia Pacific, Managed Objects is consistently acknowledged by leading industry analysts as well as industry leaders like AIB, CSC, Credit Suisse, DISA, Fidelity Investments, JPMorganChase, Progress Energy, Reuters, TIAA-CREF and other global organizations who rely on Managed Objects BSM technology. For more information, visit www.managedobjects.com.

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