White Paper

CMDB -
Practical steps to successful implementation

This paper is a five step guide to successful implementation of a

Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary 3
Challenges of Today 3
Solution 3

Introduction 4

1. Set Objectives and Benefits 5

2. Set the Configuration Item Policy 7
3. Federation or Centralization? 9
4. Get the Team Right 11
5. Get Started 13

Overview of Essential Functional Capabilities within an 15

ITSM Solution
Risk Control 15
Change Agility 15
Governance Automation 16

The assyst Solution 17

Summary 19
Appendix : CMDBf - what is it? 20

Copyright Notice
© Copyright Axios Systems 2009. The information, which is contained in this document, is the property of Axios Systems. The
contents of the document must not be reproduced or disclosed wholly or in part or used for purposes other than that for which it is
supplied without the prior written permission of Axios Systems.

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Executive Summary
Challenges of Today
Once an organization has decided to implement Configuration Management,
there are a number of questions to ask and challenges to face. Despite this
process being the backbone of all ITIL disciplines, it has historically proven
difficult and complicated to implement successfully and without major impact.

So how do we approach Configuration Management and make it a success?

What are the key steps to take and decisions to make? What project structure
should be used?

Solution
This paper describes how to take on Configuration Management and win!

It describes a simple and comprehensive five step guide to scoping and

implementation, covering objectives and benefits, features (Configuration Items),
options (Federated versus Centralized), people and project challenges.

Information and guidance on the emerging ‘CMDBf’ standard are also provided.

In addition, this White Paper highlights some of the new features in the assyst
CMDB, as well as the advantages and benefits these features could bring to your
organization.

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Introduction
The five steps detailed within this paper identify key areas to consider when
implementing Configuration Management Systems (CMS) and in particular a
Configuration Management Database (CMDB). When embarking on such a
project, organizations often encounter issues and attribute blame to the data,
system complexity and/or incompatibility, multiple platforms etc. Most of the
real barriers to success, however, are due to approach, methodology, people,
business objectives, skills and knowledge, project management, culture and
resistance.

This paper aims to provide simple yet effective advice to ease implementation
and ultimately enable project success.

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1. Set Objectives and Benefits

Be clear as an organization on what you want to achieve

Any organization implementing, or considering implementing, Configuration

Management (CM) should be clear on the objectives and benefits expected.
Many mistakes have been made at the first hurdle by embarking on this task
without any clarity around what is expected and what can realistically be
achieved.

Configuration Management can:

‚‚ Save money instantly on License Management when combined with

Discovery and Asset Management.

‚‚ Provide information to Incident Management and Service Desk delivery,

while aiding fast diagnosis of issues.

‚‚ Speed up resolution times.

‚‚ Aid Problem Management to diagnose root causes, while saving time

and money lost due to outages.

‚‚ Avoid costly downtime by assisting Change Management to assess risk

and impact across complex infrastructures.

‚‚ Speed up audit compliance and reduce costs through automation of

governance processing to ensure changes are authorized and executed.

‚‚ When combined appropriately with Service Level Management (SVM)

and a Service Catalog, the IT organization is empowered to manage
and demonstrate value-based and differentiated IT services.

Figure A:
Service Value
Management (SVM) and
ITSM: 2 key areas for
successful SVM are an
accurate CMDB and a
Service Catalog.
IT Business Services
The CMDB holds Service Catalog Business Intelligence
information on all IT
infrastructure and
components, and their
relationships
Each business service or
process is defined as a
supply chain of IT
components, taken from
IT Intelligence CMDB the CMDB

IT Components and
Infrastructure

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What is important is that you are clear about what you want to achieve from
CM. Don’t launch into the process without at least compiling a summary list of
clear and tangible expected deliverables – without this you are asking for trouble
and disappointment.

In addition, make sure that the expected deliverables are also linked to business
objectives, so that the success of the CM project can easily point to related
success and quality in business delivery.

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About Axios Systems

Axios Systems is the world’s leading provider of IT Service Management (ITSM)
solutions. Its customer-centric approach, combined with its award-winning
software, enables customers to improve their Service Delivery and Support and
deliver Continual Service Improvement (CSI) by helping to align and realign
IT services to changing business needs, supporting business processes and
improving productivity.

Its core solution, assyst, built around its Configuration Management Database
(CMDB), intuitively steers users through the ITIL (Information Technology
Infrastructure Library) processes which help organizations transition toward
the next generation of ITSM and Service Desks. assyst offers a unique
lifecycle approach to ITSM with the integration of all ITIL processes (including
Incident, Capacity, Problem, Change, Asset, Configuration and Service Level
Management), twelve of which have been verified by Pink Elephant’s PinkVERIFY
service as compatible with industry best practices (based on ITIL V3), in a single,
out-of-the-box application. It empowers management with a dashboard-based
transparent view of real-time performance against Service Level Agreements
(SLA), and Operations Level Agreements (OLA) using Web 2.0 technologies.

Implementing assyst into an organization optimizes IT Infrastructure efficiency,

reduces overheads and lowers the total cost of IT ownership (TCO) helping to
ensure a significant return on investment (ROI) with rapid time to value. Axios also
offers a comprehensive set of consulting and training services to support ITSM
best practices in an organization.

Axios is headquartered in the UK, with offices across Europe, the Americas,
Middle East and Asia Pacific. Axios’ global presence is further strengthened with
a worldwide network of partners.

For more information, visit: www.axiossystems.com.

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of

the Office of Government Commerce, and is registered in the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.

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