Deliver a CMDB with true business value: 6 essential steps
ServicenowIntroduction
Your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) provides accurate and reliable information
about digital services and the infrastructure that supports them. But it has little or no value if it
is just a master data repository. To create value, you have to do something useful with the data.
That’s why a CMDB is a critical tool for maintaining high service availability.
Impact of an unhealthy CMDB
An unhealthy CMDB can be detrimental to your organization. Let’s look at a common scenario:
a service outage. An application isn’t responding, and hundreds of users are affected. How do
you figure out what’s wrong and get the service back up and running quickly? Has someone
upgraded the application recently? Is it the server, or is there a problem with a database
halfway around the world? Is there a network problem? So many possibilities, and so little
time. Without a CMDB, you don’t even know the application version, which server it’s running
on, or which databases it’s talking to. You spend hours gathering information—assuming that
you can find it—and meanwhile the clock is ticking.