ITIL missed the opportunity to provide an easy to use, pragmatic, best practice model. But customer demand, project failures, retrials, re-thinking of affected show that such an easy to use, transparent and simple model is the key for successful configuration management projects. We propose a “Service Configuration Tree” Model as a sound base to work with. (more…)
Archive for the ‘CMDB and CMS’ Category
Service Configuration Tree – the key to success
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011What is the difference between Service Knowledge Management and Service Asset and Configuration Management?
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011The short answer according to ITIL: The service knowledge management provides all relevant knowledge (including information such as e.g. service asset and service configuration data) to provide efficient and effective IT services.
Optimization suggestions for your configuration management
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
Today we launched our ComAdvisor. Invest 10 minutes of your time to answer 10 questions regarding your business case, your environment, your experience and you get convenient suggestions on how to improve your configuration management system. This is free of charge and there is no need to register.
German version is available here.
Presentation on the ITSMF Germany Conference in Darmstadt (8.12.2010)
Monday, January 3rd, 2011I had the pleasure to talk about Configuration Management in the Darmstadtium. (http://www.itsmf.de/kongress2010.html). The title of my presentation was “How to make your configuration management fit for the future” and I covered ”Five areas where one can improve your configuration management”. The audience was great and the discussions were lively.
Below the GERMAN presentation including script of my speach: CoM_ITSMFDE_Bandi_Life
If you are interested in an English Version, please do not hesitate to contact me.
TADDM-Guru – insights into IBM’s Discovery solution
Sunday, December 12th, 2010For those of you, who use IBM’s Application Dependency Discovery Mapping tool. Boris Moers, our TADDM Specialist, has documented his insights regarding IBM’s discovery tool (TADDM) here: http://www.taddmguru.com. He’s also available for experience exchange, knowledge sharing and examples. Please contact him directly
What is the purpose of Discovery / Discovered data ?
Friday, December 10th, 2010According to ITIL, the main purpose of a discovery solution (such as HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping, BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping, IBM Tivoli Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping) is to provide data to the Configuration Verification and Audit process to compare discovered data with the data in your CMDB/CMS. Within this quality assurance process you create discrepancy reports and incidents in case that inexplainable differences are found. So far, so good. But is this all that data can be used for? (more…)
Key areas to improve Configuration Management
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010Most of the bigger companies today, have some kind of CMS / CMDB / Configuration Management. It is often something inventory and/or asset management system like with no or stepmotherly managed relations and limited control. These current systems often do not meet new requirements stated from Availability Management, Capacity Management, IT Financial Management Service Level Management. (more…)
Third time is a charm! don’t do top-down, neither bottom-up but tree by tree
Friday, October 15th, 2010Some companies started their Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to be filled bottom up, starting with the physical IT CI classes like server hardware and then move on to server operating system, middleware…. Others approached the opposite way, they started with their logical environment IT CI classes like: IT-Services, applications, products. Both procedures figure challenges when it comes to connecting physical CIs with logical CIs (or vice versa). The best way to go on is to explicitly define a configuration tree (you also hear the term service tree) and start manage the tree and no longer concentrate on distinct CI-Classes.
What are the most important aspects when buying a Tool to support Configuration Management?
Monday, September 20th, 2010Of course, when doing a proper configuration management tool evaluation you get about 25 – 50 requirements. In this article I focus on the three most important points:
1. Diligence of prudent definition of what the tool should do
2. Integration with other processes
3. Structure of your CMDB/CMS/Configuration Tree
(more…)
Why Configuration Management? the unusual answer
Thursday, September 16th, 2010- How save do you feel entering an airplane?
- Why do we have confidence that a medicament causes only its defined effects?
- Do you know a company not relying on strict financial accouting?
We know, that within these three areas clearly defined controles are applied and enforced. So to speak, strict Configuration Management is applied – only difference – the Configuration Items (CI) are not IT Objects but screws, engines, pharmaceuticals, money. (more…)