CMDB: The Golden Ticket for Digital IT Transformation

CMDB has long been managed as an additional IT tool and has no priority. As a repository for all infrastructure, software, applications, and assets, CMDB is usually not the “most critical system” that a company considers first. But true transformation requires innovative problem solutions and new perspectives, including our views on the role and value of CMDB. Data is one of our most useful and valuable corporate assets. Our CMDB is not just our warehouse-it is our golden ticket.

As an integral part of our IT operations and asset management requests, how do we take action and prioritize our CMDB?

It all starts when we fill the CMDB with data that brings real business value, not just a compromise between quantity and quality. When you use our best data management practices to elevate your CMDB to business priority, you are promoting true change management. Because it can help your key stakeholders understand the value of data, the resources and teams associated with it, and the benefits of governance, compliance, and security. In addition, find out why this data is as important to your business as it is to your financial system.

Let’s face it: populating the CMDB with data or configuration items (CI) and relationships has no real value in itself. The true value of CMDB comes from the processes it supports or the decisions that can be made from it. In order for your CMDB to be the core of your IT infrastructure, you need to understand the value you want from the CMDB so that you can set up a route for your planned trip.

Priorities of CMDB prioritization:

• When working with suppliers for IT asset and inventory management, ensure compliance and reduce friction losses.

• Reduce management work and costs through data center integration and/or cloud migration.

• Improve efficiency and reduce integration friction when taking over and selling companies.

• Reduce the company’s risk by reducing the number of security breaches.

• By implementing enterprise change management and impact analysis, protect your organization from problems and failures caused by itself.

• Support and accelerate the rationalization of general applications and IT transformation through the transparency of innovative decision-making.

Don’t make it too complicated: choose an entry-level plan with the greatest potential business value, and start from there. Once the goal is determined, detailed information can be analyzed to assess the health of IT and increase the business value of the CMDB to support your journey-just like a professional.

In order to unify our organizational priorities and unite around CMDB, we need to agree on common values, common language, and common standards. A unified approach, vocabulary, and system enable you to generate service reports, avoid duplication of tables and data, and remove upgrade barriers that can disrupt your IT transformation journey.

This is where the Public Service Data Model (CSDM) comes into play. CSDM is a set of standard service definitions recommended for the ServiceNow platform and products, which can realize true service level reporting and enable and support multiple configuration strategies.

CMDB is sometimes rightly referred to as the core of the IT environment. It is the center of the world in terms of IT health and visibility of the dependencies between the configuration information, resources, and the resources required to provide digital services. Just like a real heart, it is vital to maintain its shape by being vigilant and paying attention to what drives it and what may block the arteries.

A key area where data quality comes into play is the need to interconnect with other systems. After you spend time cleaning up the data and aligning change management with business value, the last thing you want to do is to ingest data from external sources that do not have the same quality standards to destroy all the basic work.

If you are already using ServiceNow, it will get better. Our ready-to-use solution for auto-filling the CMDB uses an identification and reconciliation engine and helps you get the job done. And always connect with IT! IT service management, IT operation management, IT portfolio management, IT security operation, IT governance management, IT risk management, IT compliance management, IT business management, etc.

Practical tip: Speed ​​up decision-making by understanding dependencies and configuration items.

Now that we concentrate the data in one center and control its state, we can drive real small and large transformations. We do this by tracking, visualizing, and reporting the relationship between configuration items (CI) and their interdependencies. The best way is to start with automatic dependency mapping or “service mapping”.

• Provide efficient IT services

• Simplified handling of system failures

• Realize real value savings and risk reduction through software asset management (SAM)

• Reduce risk through faster response to security incidents and vulnerabilities

• Easily comply with regulations and requirements

Do you now understand the function of CMDB in your IT infrastructure, are you ready to deal with change management with all stakeholders, do you see the possibility of making CMDB the core of all your activities? Then it is time to take the initiative and put your knowledge into action!

You can find more information about IT transformation in this e-book.