You would wonder how a catalog of IT Systems (including H/W and S/W) maintained by IT Operations, be responsible for Customer Experience and Employee Experience in an organization.
There is a sure shot answer to this. If you don’t know what you have, how will you use it effectively, measure performance, report on it, improve it and retire it.
Configuration management is defined as a process to maintain systems such as Computer hardware (H/W) and Software (S/W) in a desired state. Configuration Management Database is the repository containing details of your H/W and S/W components, what version/value they are currently at and where they are located.
Having an accurate CMDB database, helps in
- depicting the accurate details of H/W, or S/W , in a complex environment, of Cloud based services, On premise and Hosted services.
- identifying the rootcause of issues quickly without delay during an outage or a Major Incident
- tracking the impact of changes of any upstream or downstream component, thus helping to prevent failures at multiple levels
- maintaining credibility of our IT Services in the front of our customers.
- controlling change to the configuration components, by following a Configuration change policy and maintain their updated versions.
- Driving continuous improvement of the IT Services.
- Disaster recovery of the services and planning of Business Continuity.
In my experience A high quality CMDB helps in proper maintenance and upgrade of downstream IT systems in a timely proactive manner, to prevent disruptions faced by the Customer at the User experience level, thus improving Customer Experience.
A high quality CMDB helps employees in the DevOps team, Customer Support team to plan for upgrades, releases, migrations and consolidation of IT Systems, in a smooth manner in Production. They help the team to understand the impact of any prior changes, plan appropriate tests and thus have peaceful go lives , thus improving Employee Experience.
One organization that is doing a great job in this area is the Plat4mation team. This organization details a strong framework to ensure organizations have a high quality CMDB, with discovery, processes, structures and implementation roadmap.
IT spends are expensive and Critical. It is imperative that this area deserves much attention, including Roles and Responsibilities of a Configuration Manager supported by a dedicated team. Along with structure, processes and policies should be in place for auditing, change control and retirement. CMDB is central to IT Teams (Network Ops, DatabaseOps, ITOps) , DevOps Team, Customer Support Teams and Application Teams (Service delivery/Shared services)
According to Gartner “Industry statistics indicate that only 25% of organizations are receiving meaningful value from their CMDB investments.”
Do let know your thoughts in the comments section about what you think about having a strong CMDB.
Thanks
PI
