The Service Management Soapbox

I just posted a new article to the Forrester Research blog for Infrastructure and Operations Professionals entitled:

Is a CMDB even possible?

There has been extensive debate about this point because many CMDBs have failed and tainted the potential for the CMDB to truly realize its potential. I wrote this to help clarify what is real and what is not. In short, the CMDB is possible, but only if we follow the newer architectural and process models of ITIL v3’s CMS instead of the old notion of a monolithic CMDB.

The monolithic model is almost guaranteed to fail. The CMS can act as a catalyst to help transform your entire IT organization, but only if you do it right!

This one fell through the cracks! I published the report:

Managing the IT Management Software Portfolio

on September 25, 2008, but I didn’t post the notice here until now. The report covers practical ideas to make the best use of the collection of management tools you use. It also outlines how the evolving tools market will reshape the “Big Four” group of vendors.

It is available on the Forrester web site. This report is for Forrester clients only. Its distribution is restricted by the terms of Forrester Research client agreements.

Management tool integration has long been the bane of IT Operations organizations. Getting one tool to communicate with another has always been difficult because there are far too many incompatible data definitions that are used to integrate data from one tool to another. Each vendor has its own data model and various APIs to exchange data. Standards appeared in various forms from such bodies at the DMTF and OASIS as an attempt to address this issue. Despite their clarity and noble ambitions, adoption has proven lackluster.

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