Norm, <IMHO>
The point of ITIL is to focus on process and drive to measurable, monitorable reality, the will of the business. ( Think continuous quality improvements and your on the right path.) The Service Desk (help desk) function is central to this effort (as it has been since the mid 90's) because they get the flack from the end users and they are the "face" of the organization. If they are left "out of the loop" then everyone suffers. Yes there are other processes involved, but the Service Desk is the only Function. :) It is special for many reasons. The more tightly your CMDB (again, Configuration Management(CM)) can be tied into your Service Desk so that the Service Desk uses CMDB data to "know" what the state of the universe is and why it matters, then the better everyone is. Please here my full comment here.... Auto discovery alone is not enough. This IT stuff is complicated (and getting more and more so by the day) and it takes smart people to be able to look at the change that happened on the server/network/desktop 10 days ago and understand why, or how, that might be causing the user on the phone's problem today. Monitoring is, I believe, as critical as discovery. Also very important is the "Clue-by-four" that management needs to apply to anyone making changes that are unplanned and unauthorized. Which brings me back to the "will of the company". Strong willed companies can thrive and achieve explosive growth, radical downsizing or any other "major change" because they know what they are trying to do. However, that same strong will can also drive a company into the ground if the direction is incorrect. The point of most quality improvement programs is to measure, then tweak then keep measuring and tweaking. Discovery and Monitoring are just measurements. (IMHO) The CMDB can be a big of a monster as ALL of your IT "configuration" (AKA: status) all of the time. But it does not have to start that big. The rub is that until it is "a large portion" of your IT configuration then the value to the company is proportional to is relative % of the total CM that exists. If you have a 1% CMDB then it may only be useful 2-5% of the time to the Service Desk. If you have a 10% CMDB then it will only be useful 5-8% of the time to the Service Desk. If you have a 70% CMDB then it will likely be useful 90-95% of the time to the Service Desk. See the inversions? At some point the remaining CM that is not in the CMDB might cost you more than it is worth to get it into the CM. Those things might still be assets but that is what Asset Management(AM) is for. Do not confuse CM with AM. Their reasons for being are very different even though they share some large portion of data. AKA: The IT things the company owns. What is the most important thing to put in your CMDB first? Well that is a good question and it brings us back, again, to the "will of the company". IMHO, the one thing that is most important to any company is the people. If you do not understand yourself, and your customer's relationship(s) with you company then you have already lost the war. (Not just the battle, the whole war.) Does that mean that you need a discovery tool for your people? Yep. It is your HR processes. :) Go after that data and then you have a shot at mapping hosts to internal people for support, relative important of uptime, etc... Then comes the relationships between the "stuff" in the CMDB. Some of that can be discovered, but most of it is likely "knowledge" that needs to be entered manually. (Why is that RDBMS more important that that other one? [ Because it is what prints the pay checks, and the other one is used to order post it notes and other minor office supplies. They both might be Oracle 10gR2, but one is definably more important than the other. ] But to most direct answer your question about "for those of you who have a populated..." My company is not yet into the CMDB arms race. We have ideas and plans, but we lack a start of good monitoring AND/OR discovery. So our Service Desk continues to suffer from blind spots and unexpected and under managed changes. We know these issues can be reduced and improved by better processes.... and we are working to try to improve the "will of the company". :) Only time will tell if the company actually wants to change, or just throw money at new software and hope it fixes something. :) And.... to drive the point home... No Discovery tool can tell you why a server is important. But your CMDB could because you know what applications/services (and hopefully users) are dependent on that server. No Discovery tool can tell you how much money your company is loosing because a network link is down. But your CMDB could because the CI's are linked to your business processes and from there to your cash flow information. No Discovery tool can understand that "Box2" replaces "Box1" because "Bob took a bat to Box1 because he was paged one to many times last night." :) But your CMDB could tell you that. (Because the CI is liked to the Incident where Bob was escorted from the building in a white coat with really long sleeves at 3AM. :) I view the CMDB as a union of rough and raw data to fine business practices. When done well, they complement each other. When to much focus is placed on one part or the other, then they both suffer from resource starvation and competition from the other. </IMHO> -- Carey Matthew Black Remedy Skilled Professional (RSP) ARS = Action Request System(Remedy) Love, then teach Solution = People + Process + Tools Fast, Accurate, Cheap.... Pick two. On 6/27/07, Kaiser Norm E CIV USAF 96 CS/SCCE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Matt and everyone else: So for those of you who have a populated CMDB in a large enterprise--are you truly gleaning anything OF VALUE from it that you couldn't glean from the native auto-discovery DB itself?
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