The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Irrational exuberance in the IT industry: CMDB is going nuts"

a trifle ... er ... kind to BMC I feel

skeptic — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 23:34:58 +0000

One other thought. the wording "began offering commercial CMDB solutions only about six months ago" is a trifle ... er ... kind to BMC I feel. the implication is everyone else is johnny-come-lately.

To slate all the other vendors' solutions as not being CMDBs because they don't meet a particular standard for what is, is like saying Toyota only entered the car market once they offered the Lexus.

there is a difference between being a player and having an excellent solution. In fact in IT there is a difference between being successful and having an excellent solution too. But that is another blog topic...

occasionally I get a bit off the edge

skeptic — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 21:47:14 +0000

You have copped a bit of flak on this site Charlie but I really think you are a great thinker in this intersection between operations and architecture. You always punish me when I go out there :-)

We have agreed in the past that CM should not really be a process but rather a function like Service Desk. Being immersed in ITIL all day, and being a less rigorous thinker, I still slip back into treating it as process though. Oops.

I think the data/process, technology/process, objects/activities, nouns/verbs arguements are like the nature/nurture one: the reality is somewhere in the middle as both are important. But I believe the culture of IT as the first decade of the millenium heads to a close [already!] is off-balance, object-centric, so this gadfly hovers on the other end of the spectrum to try to restore some balance. And occasionally I get a bit off the edge. But if I do I can count on Charlie and a few others to nudge me back ;-)

It is a bit like Greenpeace. I cancelled my membership years ago because as a skeptic I could no longer tolerate their misinformation and abuse of science, yet I value their existence and acknowledge the necessity of what they do. I wouldn't have them moderate their stance. Democracy is the balance of opposites, and if nobody is on that end of the seesaw it don't work.

So, coming back to earth, your points are good.

I have an open mind on BMC having such a lead on the CMDB market. It is news to me, and I welcome views from other readers on the matter, especially those familiar with some of the niche tools like Infra and Marval. I'd also have thought that all the work CA did a couple of years ago may not be perfect but would have got a C pass.

I still can't see virtualisation as a tipping point for CMDB frenzy. It simplifies configuration by centralising servers under better management tools with much higher visibility. A friend is consolidating many hundreds of physical boxes onto virtual machines: the first challenge for the metal servers was just knowing they were there, and exactly where. Even if it is yet another confounding factor, I can't see it as a bigger one than many of the others we have wrestled with for years: server pools, dynamic everything, n-tier architectures, mobile devices, end-user computing...

Just to add another dimension to it I have lately come to see People as the first priority, then process and technology/data. IT is starting to get its process house in order, but we still have no idea about the management, development and assessment of people, nor of dealing with cultural issues in change. But yes, we can argue the process/data thing for ever.

A bit over the top

Charles T. Betz — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 03:13:14 +0000

Okay, Skeptic, you are serving up softballs again.

Ms. Colville knows whereof she speaks. It's not a misquote. She's been very consistent on this message that BMC got to the game first. I agree with her on this. (And I have no financial interest in BMC.) The issue of course is that she has re-defined CMDB to suit her analytical purposes, a re-definition that I've found useful. (I won't risk ticking Gartner off by enumerating her criteria; you'll have to pay them their pound of flesh for that.) I agree that IBM, Hewlett-Packard, CA and Managed Objects are all either partial solutions or have made recent acquisitions.

I find the virtualization argument compelling. Part of the problem is that you are confusing the origination of requirements out of the technological management domain, with "technology-centric thinking." One needs to think very carefully and precisely when applying technology to solve technology's problems. I think of it this way:

The advent of virtualization
has created a REQUIREMENT
for improved impact analysis
due to the re-centralization of processing
upon common computing platforms.

This REQUIREMENT
necessitates improved dependency mapping between IT components
to support the necessary analytics.

Dependencies are INFORMATION
which require PROCESS to create and maintain.

Unlike many others, I don't always bow down before the altar of process as the first and foremost concern. Usually, formal process is implemented so that some service is of high quality. Often, that service is one of "accurate information on demand." That is the true goal. The process is never an end in itself. In my world, often the data comes first.

Focusing on nouns may not be indicative of a technical bias - but rather a bias towards information and its underpinning data - the flip side of the process coin. As a member of DAMA, I'll arm wrestle process bigots any day. What was the value-added end state of your process? Updated, accurate data available for some other purpose? I rest my case...

I actually have concerns about thinking about Configuration Management as a process. By accepted BPM theory, it is not. It is a capability, service or function (take your pick, depending on your personal ontology). See

http://erp4it.typepad.com/erp4it/2006/09/is_configuratio.html

(But Charlie, you can't go redefining what Configuration Management is...!)

Watch me. If ITIL can call John Zachman a "Configuration Management guru" (much to his bemusement), then I can commit the heresy of questioning whether we have a true process here at all. What is a Configuration and when are you done managing it? Can you count the number you have managed today?

Whoever came up with the holy shibboleths of Configuration Management "process" needs to be hung out to dry. (Identify, Control, Account/Report, Audit). I don't care if these are MIL-SPEC things in existence for forty years, with long and distinguished aerospace lineages. I say they are at best showing significant signs of age and irrelevance - or at least, non-value-add obviousness.

The so-called "activity" of Configuration Status Accounting in particular I find ridiculous. It boils down to "maintain the configuration data, and make it available on demand for a variety of purposes." That is NOT a process. It is a service, and a rather obvious one at that, implicit in any decent data management architecture. "Control" is likewise incoherent. It is a broad and obvious requirement, not an activity or process.

Most IT systems have some form of reporting. Most systems are concerned with data integrity. Tracking the status of entities throughout a lifecycle is a core analysis exercise for any data-centric system. Again, just obvious to any competent architect.

The interesting activities to my mind are identification and verification. They are where I find I spend the majority of my time, because CIs may have type-specific workflows, e.g.:

Establish Application Service
Provision Server
Configure Database

and the corresponding verifications/audits of those. But these workflows are so heterogeneous that shoehorning them into some totalizing "Identify CI" or "Audit CI" process I have found to be an academic exercise at best.

I think I'm actually more skeptical than you in some ways; you are doubting the tool, while I have more concerns around the so-called "process." But I can harbor that doubt, while also believing that CMDBs are an essential tool. Are they going to ride the hype cycle? Of course, and with a vengeance. The trough will look something like the crash and burn of metadata repositories 20 years ago.

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
(Ecc 1:9)

Do I care? No. The value proposition is plain at least in my world.

Cordially,

Charles T. Betz
http://www.erp4it.com

Be warned about CMDB: IT'IL end in tears!

skeptic — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:44:38 +0000

Be warned about CMDB: IT'IL end in tears!