About this ebook
Implementing an enterprise-wide Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is one of the most influential actions an IT organization can take to improve service delivery and bridge the gap between technology and the business. With a well-designed CMDB in place, companies are better positioned to manage and optimize IT infrastructure, applications, and services; automate more IT management tasks; and restrain burgeoning costs. Now, there’s an objective, vendor-independent guide to making a CMDB work in your organization. The CMDB Imperative presents a start-to-finish implementation methodology that works and describes how the CMDB is shifting to the superior Configuration Management System (CMS).
Expert CMDB industry analyst Glenn O’Donnell and leading-edge architect and practitioner Carlos Casanova first review the drivers behind a CMDB and the technical, economic, cultural, and political obstacles to success. Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of organizations, they present indispensable guidance on architecting and customizing CMDB solutions to your specific environment. They’ll guide you through planning, implementation, transitioning into production, day-to-day operation and maintenance, and much more. Coverage includes
- Defining the tasks and activities associated with configuration management
- Understanding the CMDB’s role in ITIL and the relationship between CMDBs and ITIL v3’s CMS
- Building software models that accurately represent each entity in your IT environment
- Ensuring information accuracy via change management and automated discovery
- Understanding the state of the CMDB market and selling the CMDB within your organization
- Creating federated CMDB architectures that successfully balance autonomy with centralized control
- Planning a deployment strategy that sets appropriate priorities and reflects a realistic view of your organization’s maturity
- Integrating systems and leveraging established and emerging standards
- Previewing the future of the CMDB/CMS and how it will be impacted by key trends such as virtualization, SOA, mobility, convergence, and “flexi-sourcing”
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About the author
Glenn O’Donnell is a Senior Analyst with Forrester Research, a top technology industry research and advisory firm. He is a trusted adviser to IT organizations worldwide, serving Infrastructure and Operations professionals. He is the Forrester analyst covering CMDB, configuration and change management, and IT automation and is a major contributor to Forrester’s growing ITIL and ITSM coverage. He was previously a Principal Product Marketing Manager with EMC’s Resource Management Software Group, responsible for marketing and strategy development for the EMC application-oriented software offerings and EMC’s overall IT service management strategy. Prior to EMC, he was a Program Director at META Group, also as a top IT Operations analyst. A prolific speaker and author, Mr. O’Donnell is a world-renowned authority on management systems, IT Service Management, IT Operations, and automation technologies and holds an ITIL certification. Since 1980, he has proven to be an innovator and thought leader in various technology development, operations, and architecture roles at Western Electric, Bell Labs,AT&T, and Lucent Technologies.
Carlos Casanova is the President and Founder of K2 Solutions Group, Inc. K2 Solutions Group, Inc., offers professional services, training, and technology products that support the delivery of CMDB/CMS, and ITIL initiatives. Prior to this, he was a Sr. Enterprise Architect with MetLife, Inc., where he was the visionary and manager for the first CMDB deployment and subsequently helped design its second-generation, enterprise-wide ITSM platform. He has been a speaker at major ITIL conferences on Configuration Management and CMDB, has several ITIL certifications, and is well known and respected by ITIL leaders. Mr. Casanova’s career spans electronic hardware design, military contracting, software architecture, management consulting, business process modeling, account management, entrepreneurial startups, and technology architectures. In addition, his professional experience in IT Risk Management, Business Continuity, and IT Security has provided him with a broad foundation and perspective that enables him to maintain a constant client/end-user focus with integrity and objective reasoning at the core of all his designs.
