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!

Along with my coauthor, Carlos Casanova, I am happy to announce that the formal writing phase of the book is complete! We only have the final editing steps and a few other odds and ends to polish up before it goes to print. The title is:

The CMDB Imperative
How to realize the dream and avoid the nightmares

The CMDB Imperative is expected to be available in late January or early February of 2009. It is already showing up on Amazon. We will keep everyone posted as we get closer to the official release.

Glenn’s latest Forrester report, dated 30-Jun-2008:

A Federated CMDB Remains Distant, but Start Now

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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