Mark Thompson is Director of Product Management at Blazent
It’s an interesting and exciting time for IT organizations these days, as they not only have their tools evolved rapidly, but management processes have also improved dramatically. When it comes to the discipline of Service Management this is evident in the feature-rich set of tools and platforms available from hundreds of vendors as well as the significant updates implemented in ITIL V3 and other best practice frameworks that surround this discipline.
CMDB at the Core
At the center of Service Management is the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which can help IT professionals better understand their environment and can be used as an instrument to delight end users and accelerate the success of the business. With a CMDB in place, IT will have access to a single source of truth that can be accessed in a controlled, structured, reconciled and synchronized method. Having access to this source of truth can improve operational efficiencies, reduce costs, minimize risks and accelerate delivery of services. Without a CMDB, an organization might be able to muddle through and firefight a small volume of incidents utilizing heroic efforts, but otherwise achieving sizeable results in an efficient manner can be extremely difficult.
Data Quality is Critical
As critical as it may be to have a CMDB deployed in order to achieve value for a Service Management strategy, a CMDB by itself is simply not enough, since the CMDB is dependent on the data it contains. The reasoning for this statement becomes clear when you take into consideration all of the downstream processes such as incident management, problem management, change management, and overall Service Delivery that rely on the quality of the data in the CMDB. For example, it is impossible to perform the Change Impact Analysis necessary to execute a Request for Change (RFC) change if your CMDB contains Configuration Item (CI) data that is: old (last updated 6 months ago; incomplete (missing relationships between CI’s) or inaccurate (has the wrong version of an OS). CMDB initiatives are continually failing to meet expectations due to data quality challenges. In fact, according to Forbes magazine “85% of Companies fail at creating a CMDB due to bad or missing data.”
As advanced as many Service Management tools are today, they don’t possess the advanced data management technology and built-in best practices needed to ensure that the CMDB is populated with highest quality data available. Moreover, even though the best practices and processes for Service Management are improved and will continue down this path, many companies struggle to synchronize processes needed to ensure data management and data quality.
Ensuring data quality is a critical and constant function: Gartner estimates that poor data quality costs the average business $13.5 million each year. The avalanche of data that is coming at IT organizations is overwhelming, and will only get worse as we enter the Eras of Big Data and the Internet of Things. Very few organizations will be able to keep up, let alone have the time or discipline to validate the data before it populates a CMDB. But if the CMDB does not equate to ‘quality’ in its users’ minds, then it becomes an untrusted data source which can cause chaos and increase risk to IT and the business as a whole.
Data Quality: Job 1 for IT
For IT organizations Job 1 is ensuring the CMDB has data that is of the highest quality and purity needed to make business decisions with 100% confidence. Once the highest data quality possible is achieved, then IT organizations will be able to obtain the visibility into the IT environment needed to speed resolution of incidents and problems, perform comprehensive change management, reduce costs of assets and leverage the CMDB to ultimately drive the automation, orchestration and provisioning required to accelerate the delivery of the new services that can transform business.
When it comes to Data Quality, Blazent’s years of experience and numerous patents combine to enable us to deliver value that a Service Management tool or an in-house team can’t provide. Blazent lets you shift your CMDB from a safety net to an outright performance multiplier. We can help you keep up with speed, volume and variety and, most of all, validate the data in your environment. Our solutions can provide you the visibility needed to make informed business decisions with speed and confidence.
To learn more about the unique value Blazent provides we invite you to listen to our latest webinar Clean Up Your Data: The key to managing change in your IT infrastructure by clicking here.