I get variations on this question all the time, and the simple answer is NO. In fact, when you start understanding how ITIL relies on the CMDB to support processes and activities, you?ll realize that the disciplines and best practices of ITAM are even more relevant and needed in the ITIL world.

Here’s an example: Service Catalogs. As you know from studying ITIL, the Service Catalog relies (among other things) on Underpinning Contracts (UCs). UCs are, by definition, a contract with an external provider, which usually means that your company is paying the external provider for a service, such as desktop break-fix support. If you’ve ever negotiated for desktop break-fix support, you know that some of the key factors in pricing the contract are:

1. The number of desktops, broken out by manufacturer, model, specifications and their current and future warranty status.
2. Their location(s).
3. The SLAs you want the vendor to meet.

Well, obviously item 3 is related to the Service Catalog and will be a key part of your Underpinning Contract. And equally obvious, items 1 and 2 are plain old traditional IT Asset Management deliverables. So the linkage is the vendor won’t (can’t) give you their best price until they have reliable data for items 1 and 2.

Back in my days working for a large outsourcing provider, we had very sophisticate models for pricing support contracts that accounted for dozens of variables and spit out resource requirements against which we could build a price. Sure, you could still get the contract done without that info - but at a considerably higher expense because the vendor will have to either perform an inventory or compensate for the risk by pricing higher.

By the way, this model applies equally to telecom pricing, server maintenance, application outsourcing or hosting? the list goes on. In fact, one of the big reasons our clients are building CMDBs is to support smarter data center management or to prepare for a large consolidation or outsourcing of their data center.

So when your CIO/CFO/CEO starts looking for ways to reduce costs, will you have the data to show, clearly, the exact relationship between cost and available SLAs?

Also, check out our new White Paper on “How To Develop a Service Catalog”.

Keep up the good work,
Scott Braden

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