To ITIL® V3 and Beyond: Travels with Rob Stroud

Of course I was delighted when CA CMDB r11.1 received a gold award in SearchDataCenter.com's Data Center Products of the Year 2007. I did think that the title of the award category, "CMDB and provisioning," was quite interesting, especially after just coming off of some itSMF USA planning meetings where we discussed, among other topics, the continued and growing interest in the CMDB and the need for automation to ensure the correct focus, timely updating, and ultimately value, of a CMDB initiative.

"Provisioning" refers to the solution's ability "to supply" or "to fit out" the CMDB-that is to automate to ensure that the appropriate data is loaded and managed.  The fact that the other award category titles (i.e. Data Center Automation and Performance Management Tools) did not include the "and provisioning" modifier, though they could have, makes me wonder why CMDB was singled out in this manner.  In a way, it was a nod towards an idea I blogged about that beyond the CMDB there is a Configuration Management System or CMS that provides the automated functionality that supports the provisioning of the CMDB.

Whether or not there was a real need to include "and provisioning," there is no doubt that CMDBs devoid of the tools needed to provision are apt to become outdated quickly. Automation of the CMDB is more than advantageous--it is essential to ensure the integrity and practicability of the CMDB.