In light of the dozens of management solutions deployed today, most IT organisations suffer from a lack of integration and the subsequent inability to share critical management information.
The reality is that most IT environments are managed using a variety of infrastructure management products from multiple vendors. While the goal of each product investment is to enable the efficient and productive management of IT infrastructure, the lack of integration and the disparate data sources have the opposite effect by increasing complexity, labour requirements and cost.
These infrastructure management products also operate on different platforms, store data in multiple databases and file formats, and often require additional, offline data stores for analytical processing and reporting.
What the industry needs is a solution that is able to provide access to all management information across the enterprise while also delivering the basis for a new generation of intelligence applications as well as management automation.
An integrated management database (MDB) is the answer, providing the foundation for integration across all management solutions.
For one, knowing what you have is critical. If you don`t know you can`t manage it, and if you can`t manage it you can`t model it, secure it, back it up and wrap a lifecycle around it.
To manage effectively, CIOs need an integrated view of the data from the management solutions that run their IT infrastructures. Without an integrated view, visibility into the IT resources and services that support the business is not available.
Without this visibility, a business-centric IT organisation is not possible.
MDB provides a single integrated database schema for management data. It offers CIOs a complete view of the entire IT environment just as the central database used by enterprise resource planning (ERP) software products provide a complete view of an organisation`s business operation.
ERP software packages are large-scale integrated suites of business management products that use a single integrated common database to operate. This proven architecture is an essential underpinning for large-scale integrated management solutions.
Tightly integrating IT management products around a common central management database is fundamental to delivering an "ERP for IT" for the CIO.
The following are key features of MDB:
* Supports a full spectrum of management data;
* Provides integration at the data level;
* Is managed for high-performance;
* Enables flexible deployment;
* Supports open standards and best practices.
CA has also made the MDB the heart of an enterprise IT management strategy as it combines all data from distinct disciplines - operations, storage, security, lifecycle and service management - and provides the foundation necessary to manage and optimise organisation`s IT infrastructures.
Importantly, MDB also supports both mature and emerging management standards. MDB is fully aligned with ITIL and will support DMTF initiatives such as CIM.
A key element of ITIL is the configuration management database (CMDB), which is a requirement for best practices. The CMDB provides visibility and control for configuration items, which are components of the infrastructure such as hardware, software and services.
Again, MDB can serve as the CMDB as specified in ITIL best practices. For example, the MDB stores the current state (discovered in real-time) and desired state (from change management) required to support ITIL change service continuity management.
No doubt, MDB enables you to optimise the performance, reliability and efficiency of your enterprise IT environment. By providing a unified view of all aspects of an enterprise`s IT infrastructure, the MDB enables advanced management solutions required for a business-centric IT organisation.
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