analysts

Hornbill has released an ITIL State of the Nation survey [registration required]. I think it is a good report, relative to the usual Crap Factoids we see. It doesn't try to get all worked up about any one number. Sadly I think it still suffers from all the flaws we see in these industry "research" reports. It does however point to one interesting result: ITIL V3 doesn't seem to be taking the world by storm.

The analysts can beat the drums all they like - they won't make the CMDB dead elephant dance [I'm in training for the World Mixed-Metaphor Championship]. I've talked before about how the analysts are in a symbiotic relationship with the vendor industry: they have to talk new ideas up so as to have some change to write about. Never has this been more clearly illustrated than around CMDB. For one wonderful moment I thought an analyst was going to be skeptical about CMDB but then he beat the drum, or perhaps flogged the dead elephant [there I got another one in!]

Much of what we read about CMDB is actually singing the praises of asset management, network discovery or other simpler technologies. Other benefits attributed to CMDB actually come from process improvement and do not depend on the technology at all. When all you want to sell is a hammer...

Recent "research" (in the analyst sense of the word) from EMA shows that even amongst those who say they are working on a CMDB [which other numbers indicate is 10%-30% of the ITIL population], those with functional CMDBs remain a minority. This confirms our recent assertion that CMS and SKMS and CMDB represent best practice blue sky. There is nothing "generally accepted" about CMDB practice: about 2%-5% of IT shops I reckon. In true market-hyping fashion Dennis Drogseth of EMA is fond of referring to the "CMDB tidal wave". Based on their own numbers I gotta ask: where's the wave Dennis?

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[Updated June 2009: the paper, entitled "The Total Economic Impact of the BMC Atrium CMDB Solution" is here.]

Several readers argue well that ROI is not the right measure for a CMDB, but nevertheless management want to know what they get for their money, and BMC's own research suggests "not much".

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This is a CATEGORY 1 Crap Factoid alert from Chokey the Chimp at the IT Skeptic's Crap Factoid Warning Service. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Be on EXTREME danger alert for CF "CMDB savings of more than $1 million per year". BMC and Forrester are shovelling it. [Update: the IT Skeptic's own assessment of the numbers here.]

There are a couple of fundamental causes underlying the success of analyst crap factoids as memes [a meme is an idea that propagates through the species like a gene].

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Crap Factoids are pure B.S. that almost sound like a fact, and will be presented so often that everyone will think it true. Let us look closer at a classic Crap Factoid where the results were deliberately skewed, then hyped up by marketing people, and the resulting Crap Factoid thrown to the winds like GM seed. It is time people called analysts to task for this stuff because we all suffer the consequences when decision makers fall for it.