Will the real CMDB please stand up? I don’t know about you but I am completely confused. What on earth is this thing called a CMDB? Is this some sort of new type of database product that will allow executives to have a life changing experience and allow them profound visibility into their organizations inner workings? Is this just some hyped up new techno vernacular that will be gone in six months so everyone should just ignore it? Whatever it is, I don’t think anyone would argue that the IT industry is a buzz talking, pushing, and promoting the CMDB as if it is the Holy Grail. So, what is a CMDB and why should one spend the time and effort to understand a CMDB?

Well Okay, here it goes- The reality is a CMDB means different things to different organizations. A common approach to a CMDB is that it is a conceptual idea which is made up of both physical and logical elements. In its normalized form a CMDB needs to be comprised of multiple layers and enterprise sources that allow an organization visibility into the relationships that make up its environment.

The reason for this structure is largely due to the environment which a CMDB is employed. A majority of organizations operate in a distributed environment which is comprised of either multiple grass roots or COTS enterprise solutions. This complexity is caused by a reluctance to organizational change and measuring political power by product ownership. Consequently, most organizations do not leverage a single enterprise solution across the organization. As a result, solutions are forced to operate within an organizational silo to avoid organizational conflict.

So within this context a CMDB needs to be structured across a complex distributed environment where each silo can provide a subset of the data. This data can then be leveraged to establish the linkage between sources and derive the metadata to gain a detail view of an organization. Rendering the metadata in a multiple dimension logical view provides a presentation layer to the end user and allows a higher degree of insight.

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