In a few weeks, we’ll have the results of the CMDB Federation (CMDBf) interoperability tests. These tests will be conducted by the CMDBf technical committee on prototype federated CMDBs from HP, Fujitsu, IBM, BMC, Microsoft and CA. The results will let us know if the proposed standard is, in fact, a practical one.
CMDB federation is crucial to the IT industry. IT organizations need to be able to integrate asset data from across the enterprise and make it available to their various enterprise management tools. So—whether this initial test is an unqualified success or shows we have to go back to the drawing board—the Federation’s working group will have to get the job done.
BMC, CA, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and Microsoft have been running their prototypes together for weeks in advance of the official test. Some things worked right away. Others needed fixing. That’s why God created engineers. Having worked on a lot of very complex integrations, I know this stuff is never easy. In fact, some people have expressed a bit of skepticism about what we are undertaking. Others are simply impatient. But the big wins in this industry have never been achieved by either the skeptical or the impatient. They’re achieved by those who work through problems and remain persistent. I believe the skill and persistence of the CMDBf team will benefit everyone—even, in the end, those who aren’t that sure about what we’re doing.