I am sure most people have seen the well-known 1986 flick, The 3 Amigos, directed by John Landis. A classic for those who enjoy the three comedy geniuses Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Martin Short. Now, it might be intriguing as to why I am going on about an ancient movie (there will no doubt be a long wait before this one is seen in HD), where three out-of-work misfits go to the rescue of a hapless maiden, all working together in their own special way, with their own special talents.
The movie came to mind when I was chatting to a colleague about the evolution of the CMDB (configuration management database) into what is seen today in the CMS (configuration management system). We were dissecting the differences of asset, inventory and configuration management and how they all play a very specific role within any CMS. Now, I must add that - yes, there is the possibility of getting into a semantics discussion around the various definitions of asset, inventory and configuration management. But whatever the definitions are, I think it should be agreed that they are indeed different and have a specific place within any configuration management landscape. And depending on a company's requirements, they might only need two amigos and not all three. To set the scene, I would like to offer three basic definitions below:
Amigo 1 - Inventory management:
Here the basic information is collected: what IT assets does the company have, what software is installed on them and possibly, where they are located (among other discoverable or manually collected attributes). This is the very first step in getting a CMS up and running. This will allow the actual state of the IT environment to be mapped; and if the company has an automated inventory discovery tool (there are loads of these in the market today), the company should be in a better position to have a friendly chat with the local audit office.
Most mature IT organisations will have all three amigos working together.
Clive Brindley is a solution architect and ore-sales manager for HP Software and Solutions South Africa.
Amigo 2 - Configuration management:
Here the inventory data is taken to the next level and relationship information is added. Physical and logical relationships are added to the inventory data the company has collected. It starts thinking about the 'service' context, and how all this stuff that has been discovered supports business and other services. For example, advanced change management processes are supported with enough information to determine what is potentially going to impact critical business services. The company can even start correlating 'actual' versus 'authorised' CI (configuration item) states.
Amigo 3 - Asset management:
The data is now expanded to collect information to support numerous other stakeholders. Financial aspects of assets, including cost, value and contractual status are collected. Holistically speaking, asset management looks at the full life cycle management of assets; from birth, usage until asset heaven, or until they end up at the local school's IT lab.
Most mature IT organisations will have all three amigos working together and supporting the myriad ITSM processes to manage the cost, risk and overall service quality of the services IT delivers to the business. However, as stated before, it is not paramount to have all three, it depends on the movie being made. So, how does a company know which 'actors' it needs to build the CMS? Hate to say this, but it depends on the requirements and the complexity of the world the company is in.
Tailor-made
Let me offer a few examples.
A friend of mine works for a small company out of a converted house, with approximately 20 employees. The company's IT services consist of e-mail, Internet, file and print and one additional industry-specific application.
Would a simple spreadsheet be sufficient, recording all of the 20 IT assets, who owns them and the applications installed on them (inventory management)? Absolutely. In fact, procurement and service contract documentation is stored in a single lever arch file and is readily available (asset management). Auditors could walk in any time and have a look; I am sure they would pass with flying colours. Plus, if someone needs to make changes to the infrastructure, they would know that the one and only e-mail server, called email1, would impact everyone wanting to send e-mail (configuration management).
Now, imagine the scenario in a multinational organisation with 30 000 employees. An advanced inventory discovery tool is going to be needed to go out and find all the IT assets (PCs, printers, servers, applications etc). Then the important relationships between CI/assets will be added, so the services can be mapped to determine impact if changes are made. Is server em276_gbl_za001 an e-mail server? What services will be impacted if a patch is applied and the server is restarted? The auditors are rolling in next month, the company needs to validate its software compliance posture, figure out which machines need to be replaced (based on original procurement date and applying the organisation's asset replacement policy), and the new CFO wants to get a true cost of the billing service supporting the partner companies. And so it goes.
As can be seen from the examples above, different organisations can have very different CMS requirements. There are numerous solutions in the market today that can provide businesses with all the fancy widgets to address most of their needs, but tools are only part of the solution. Well-established CMS processes, regular audits and compliance checks are critical for continued success.
In summary, the 'three amigos' play well together, and have individual strengths and competencies that complement each other, all for the greater good in the CMS. It is up to the 'director' of the movie whether this ends up a classic like the original, or a box-office flop most want to avoid.
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