Hello all. I’m back from a brief blogging hiatus. I thought I would preach some today on the importance of establishing corporate data standards as it relates to Service Management and for that matter all other applications that share similar corporate data. By corporate data I am referring to things like Locations, Employees, Departments and Cost Centers. From a Service Management perspective these data elements are typically captured each and every time the service desk takes a call. In order to accurately capture this information it must be maintained in a database. Unfortunately, for most organizations this information is often maintained in many databases manually and independently with the following negative consequences:
- Manually maintaining this data is time consuming and multiplied by the number of applications where the data is maintained
- Integrating or sharing data between applications becomes very difficult and expensive if data is not synchronized because it must be translated
- Inaccurate data leads to delays in servicing the customer
- Manual verification and/or addition of data leads to delays in servicing the customer and costs additional resources
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Happy Monday, everyone, and welcome back to another week doing ITIL in the real world. If you’re new to this blog, I write once (approximately) weekly (usually on or near Friday) about the joys & sorrows of implementing ITIL ‘out there’ in corporate America. Thanks for reading!
Something funny happened on the way to ITIL nirvana this week!
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Hi Guys-
I have been a poor correspondent! I have been working on a number of client success stories, digging thru the value and clarifying it. Here’s one that might be interesting. It combines ITIL, CoBIT, good governance, good process, and efficiency gains all in one! Proof you can automate compliance with Sox 404 and gain efficiency too.
I welcome your feedback. Please forgive the more formal tone–it is a “marketing” piece. But–it really did happen!
Automate SOX 404 Compliance, Reduce Risk, Improve Quality, & Reduce Costs. A Bridge Too Far?
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Man, lately it seems like a lot of stress is being poured onto conference room tables as people debate questions like
“how is ITAM different from ITIL?”
and “what the heck is a CMDB”
and “how is CMDB different from ITAM?”
and “do we really need all three…?”
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Hey Gang…
The debate continues… the articles that I have read in regards to the subject of SOX compliance have addressed some interesting points both for and against compliance. I thought that I present them to see what everyone thinks. The points are as follows.
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Welcome back!
Before we get started with this week’s entry, we at Real World ITIL would like to recognize Ron (from http://tisgarplen.blogspot.com) for his helpful comments on our new blog format. We would also like to thank the folks at http://www.itsmexams.com for their kind supportive comments on what we’re trying to do on this blog. We’re glad that you’re reading along, and hope you will choose to contribute to the discussion.
This time, I’m writing on plane home from Peregrine’s Synergy ‘05 conference in Las Vegas. While there, I attended a roundtable discussion hosted by the Gartner Group. A prominent topic of discussion concerned what the difference was between ITIL Configuration Management and the practice of asset management in general. Apparently, many companies are requesting research and opinion from Gartner on this topic.
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Surely your company would never enter into a binding contract without reviewing the terms, right?
And of course, only authorized individuals are allowed to commit the company to binding agreements. We can’t have just anybody making deals with vendors, right?
Surprise surprise - many companies do just that every day. Here’s how - the EULAs (End-User License Agreements) that come with shrinkwrap and “free” software is a binding contract.
So everytime someone downloads freeware or shareware or trialware to a company-owned computer, they are binding the company to the terms of that EULA. Nice, huh?
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Welcome back to Friday again, everyone. It’s been another busy week doing ITIL in the Real World.
We hope you enjoy the blog’s new look! This new format is supposed to organize things a bit better and also be somewhat easier to read. Let us know what you think by clicking on the “Comment” link below.
I’m writing on the plane again, this time on the way to Las Vegas to attend the Peregrine Synergy ‘05 conference. We’re interested in seeing how Peregrine is progressing toward its Active CMDB strategy, which will benefit us on our present asset management project. No software vendor seems to have developed a complete ‘ITIL in a Box’ product yet, but at least a few, including Peregrine, seem to be on the right track.
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With the emergence of ITIL over the last couple of years, CMDB (Configuration Management Database) is becoming a popular discussion among IT Departments. I have struggled with what is the difference between Asset Management and CMDB. Maybe some of you out there could enlighten me more, but I see Asset Management as simply tracking the financials and the lifecyle of an asset. CMDB tracks relationships with assets, for example services impacted, documentation, users, etc. Therefore, if a router goes down, you can see what services and what users were impacted.
I attended a seminar this week that discussed why CMDB is becoming popular.
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So what are companies supposed to do, you ask? Faced with increase scrutiny on budgetary spending and pressure from regulators, companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Already burned by attempting to fix fundamental business issues with technology, companies understand that implementing new technology in a like for like fashion on a foundation of flawed business processes will lead to only to project failure.
So if there is not a magic box, how can companies obtain the proper controls required to alleviate SOX issues, higher audit costs, and most importantly keep Wall Street at bay?
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