W H I T E P A P E R Configuration Management Explained Learn more about Numara Software products and solutions. Visit us at www.numarasoftware.com W H I T E P A P E R Configuration Management Explained 1. Introduction Configuration Management is about managing change of the multiple items comprising an information system and provides a mechanism for identifying, The Basics of Configuration Management controlling and tracking the versions of each software item. In many cases earlier versions of items that are still in use must also be maintained and Effective, reliable and flexible IT services are more and more critical to the controlled. So Configuration Management offers unique identification, success of business initiatives today. Enterprises are increasingly seeking to controlled storage, change control, and status reporting of selected transform IT from a traditional technology provider to a reliable, low-cost IT intermediate work products and components during the lifecycle of a system. service provider. How can an enterprise safely transform its IT organization? Configuration Management centers around managing the assets involved in Many IT departments are turning to IT Service Management (ITSM) for answers. the organization and essentially consists of four tasks: When practiced effectively, ITSM focuses on delivering and supporting IT services that are appropriate to the business requirements of the organization, Identification – the specification, identification of all IT components and they achieve this by leveraging IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) based and their inclusion in a database, the Configuration Management best practices that promote business effectiveness and efficiency. Database (CMDB). The CMDB is more than just an ‘asset register’, and contains information that relates to the maintenance, movement, and However, ITIL practices are only guidelines to help people to understand the problems experienced with the Configuration Items. core processes, while leaving the implementation issues to the practitioners. Most of these issues will include process policies, roles and responsibilities, Control – the management of each of those Configuration Items, technology usage and more as implementation will demand far-reaching specifying who is authorized to ‘change’ it. changes that affect people, processes, and technology. Status – the recording of the status of all Configuration Items in the CMDB, and the maintenance of this information. Configuration Management is one of the most important processes in ITIL Verification – the review, auditing and updating of information contained and has been proven to be invaluable to organizations around the world as in the CMDB. The CMDB holds a much wider range of information they seek to understand their people, process, and technology problems and about items that the organization’s IT services are dependent upon, to consider possible solutions. including hardware, software, documentation and people. The Service Driver for IT 2. Providing the Glue The last eighteen months has seen the rise of the concept of IT being delivered Supporting Business Processes as a service rather than as a product. And certainly as a service differentiator. This broad move towards Cloud Computing is unstoppable, but it could take Configuration Management is the glue that bonds good service into supporting years to achieve. Similarly, managing ‘IT as a service’ is the new mantra for IT the business’s processes. departments, and their business owners, and although ‘Cloud Computing’ is predicted to take ten years to achieve, it is already happening now. Business processes are an often-overlooked element of the CMDB. The omission of business processes further exacerbates the “us and them” Rather than thinking about technology as just a pile of equipment, the IT division between IT and the business. Inclusion of business processes ensures stack is now being re-imagined as a series of services carefully mapped to more business relevance to the CMDB and enables user cases to have more the requirements of the business, ensuring the organization is more flexible value to business service management efforts. The result will help change the and responsive. language from “us and them” to just “us” in a unified journey toward business execution excellence. By applying a more service-oriented approach to the way they think about IT, today’s agile businesses are starting to leapfrog the competition. Configuration Management shouldn’t be seen in isolation. How do you know that you have delivered a good service to the business? Is your IT aligned to the business? With the right service management tools in place, IT departments Defining Configuration Management can claim to be delivering near 100 percent customer satisfaction and in Configuration Management, which appears in ITIL V3 under ‘Service Transition’ many cases they achieve their goal. But the ability to improve IT services and is the process responsible for maintaining information about the Configuration really achieve effective satisfaction levels is only really tested by the input the Items (CI) required to deliver an IT Service, including their relationships. business has in their review and implementation. So when is the service good This information is managed throughout the lifecycle of the CI within the enough and how do you know you are delivering what the business needs? organization. How are service improvements justified and can there truly be a collaborative approach between the business and IT? Is there a need for a common sense In the last few years, the growing understanding of software development as approach to improve delivery and meet organizational goals and objectives a collection of interrelated processes has influenced work on Configuration and what role do standards and best practice play in all of this? Management. This means that Configuration Management is now also considered from a process point of view. In fact, Configuration Management is a process that focuses on ensuring consistency between the functional and physical attributes of items that support a business service, and their requirements, design, and other pertinent information. Learn more about Numara Software products and solutions. Visit us at www.numarasoftware.com Triggers for Change The Importance of Process Design There are some common drivers that are influencing change within IT Having an effective vision for IT knowledge management is important, departments and these are: especially as organizations move from following the evolution from ITIL` V2 to ITIL V3. ITIL V3 calls for the creation of an enterprise model that drives the full Reining in costs – the price/performance ratio of technology is of life-cycle of provisioning IT services to the business. ever-increasing importance. IT costs have continued rising faster than hardware and software investments over the past 10 years, clearly The CMDB model defined by ITIL describes a basic repository of IT showing that IT services as a whole have not improved process-wise infrastructure components and their relationships, but now it also expands and still require as much man-power, if not more, to operate as they into a bold vision for IT knowledge management within the organization. did in the past. The key to increased business productivity is to carefully bring down the costs of doing business and IT is part of these costs. What the move from ITIL V2 to ITIL V3 has done is place a large emphasis on As companies spend most of their IT budgets on maintenance and transitioning IT from a “systems” management perspective to one of “service” support, they will naturally invest in solutions that will reduce this part management. This requires a change in mindset from one driven by an IT of the budget. technology view to one of business process. The new version places the emphasis on using a lifecycle approach (i.e. from planning to disposition), Increasing efficiency – IT managers are constantly seeking efficiency and this brings the ITIL CMDB more into the enterprise architecture arena. improvement, flexibility, integration and business alignment, with reporting and IT intelligence being a top priority. The Configuration Management process is now part of the Service Asset Following a Regulatory Agenda – the need to become compliant is and Configuration Management (SACM) process within the ITIL V3 Service fuelling best practice initiatives within organizations. Failing to integrate Transition phase. It has been integrated with asset management to provide usage and inventory data to manage software assets can cause more comprehensive management of service assets and service management companies to overbuy licenses by up to 60 percent of their software processes. In ITIL V3, Configuration Management is defined as a set of tasks portfolio. According to Gartner*, during the late 1990s, license fees under the bigger SACM process, which now oversees a broader array of were being sold at a premium, and many companies bought more assets, defined as service assets. application software licenses than they could possibly use to achieve greater volume discounts. With millions of dollars in license and Configuration Management has a tight relationship with all other ITIL processes. maintenance fees expended, often for the entire enterprise, IT budgets Indeed all ITIL processes will access the infrastructure configuration data. So for new modules of on-premise software became scarce. Also, more incorrect or badly managed