CMDB

I have an analogy for CMDB - it is like a Swiss bank account. Allow me to paraphrase some of the conversations I've had around CMDB:

It is pernicious the way the vendors and analysts talk as if CMDB is a given. In fact it is more than a given, it is “the heart and soul of service management” apparently, according to an email about an itSMF Brighttalk. No it isn’t. 95% of sites don’t have a CMDB. Perhaps that explains why service management is so heartless and soulless. And now it is happening with CMS - which by the way doesn't exist. [Updated January 2010]

The next time you feel even the faintest twinge of believing that Microsoft are on your side, ask them why they would be wanting to patent the concept of CMDB. To advance ITSM? To create a fair and open market? To increase healthy competition? Maybe Goooogle are exhibiting a few signs of evil but Microsoft hold the franchise.

Anyone who has read my posts on CMDB and those of Troy DuMoulin on that same topic might think we disagree and they'd be right... but only partly. There is a lot we DO agree on over CMDB. Nevertheless I look forward to some brisk debate at the Pink conference in February in Vegas.

Let us summarise the skeptical arguments focused around the value of CMDB . [Updated to move some text up from comments]

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!]

Through all the talk about the wonderful benefits of a CMDB, nobody mentions the additional drag a CMDB puts on all change to the IT environment.

Can anyone who was at the Gartner conference this week confirm what I saw on Twitter? "Major takeaway from Gartner IOM event is less than 5% of fortune 2000 have an active CMDB installed "

Apparently CA are working to an entirely different standard for CMDB Federation than the rest of us are. This is the only rational conclusion to be drawn from a recent white paper from them. Either that or they are shovelling the bull excrement at a remarkable rate. The paper is called "The Value of Standards-based CMDB Federation". CA are certainly extracting more value out of the standard than most of us.