I heard something I really liked today at the Atlanta IBM Tivoli ITSM roadshow from one of our sales folks. When you introduce yourself or tell someone what you do for your company – simply add the phrase “supporting the business” afterwards.
Such a simple and powerful way for anyone in IT to really understand their purpose in life.
With the announcement today or EMC picking up NLayers (who they already heavily OEM’d for their Application Discovery product), Symantec picking up Relicore and IBM picking up Collation, the attention has obvioulsy been on the application and service layer. (where the $$$ is)
There’s been relatively little consolidation in any of the Network Change and Configuration Management (NCCM) plays out there aside from Opsware and Rendition Networks last year. I’m not too sure on the takeup rates of any one vendor’s solution (Voyance, Alterpoint, Intelliden, Emprisa Networks, etc.), but I’ve yet to see anyone really focus on one of these platforms to really complement application discovery and mapping within the CMDB other than the “we integrate with X” statement.
The CMDB of the future will need the same rich level of information just like in the application and service domains – even more so as networks become more complex with many more logical configurations (tunnels, VPNs, QoS, CoS, advanced ACL’s, routing protocols, etc.). The same can be said of security/firewall change and configuration management. (I don’t know anyone playing in this space.) Any CMDB without this type of information will be seriously incomplete.
Today’s networks may have been designed to be transparent to the applications and services they support, but Murphy is always out there and the router jockey’s having free reign in the network can’t be a good thing. The sum of all the parts must be consolidated in the CMDB with equal emphasis on depth and breadth of information, not just on the application layer.
* Another thought to ponder – does EMC/SMARTS have plans to get into the CMDB business or would they just lump this into the whole Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) story.