Yes you can do without CMDB, so long as you are aiming at not too high a maturity level, say 3. The trick is to remember that you don't adopt a process, you improve it. If we aspire to a moderate level of maturity, then yes we can do without a CMDB. Plenty of people do.
For a revised and expanded version of this article see ITSMWatch.
The major operations software vendors have finally released a white paper describing how they plan to cooperate on ITIL CMDB. Don't hold your breath waiting for anything to come of it.
Continuing our discussion of CMDB, let me reinforce two points: ITIL's CMDB can't be done, no-howLet me reinforce two points please: (1) CMDB can't be done because of the data and regardless of the implementation and (2) I'm talking about CMDB as specified by the ITIL books, not any old database. It can't be done."
In my country, the broadcast industry and the advertising industry both adhere to a voluntary code of practice to police the more extreme behaviours of their members.
No matter how much you store in a central CMDB repository, there will always be some data somewhere else. Don't fall for all the vendor vapourware of federation tools. Stop chasing this technological rainbow of a unified CMDB repository. These are not technology problems. Fix the congiguration management process, then apply technology to the process if it helps.
The IT Skeptic recently reported on Microsoft's attempts to patent CMDB and other obvious concepts. Now ZDNet reports they are trying to patent RSS too. This smacks of the lunacy that only lawyers can generate, but what if they actually got away with it? I can believe that as an organisation they are megalomaniac enough to think they can.
...the kind of platitudinous claptrap peddled by vendors and their analyst sycophants to lull people into adopting their lunatic ideas (and buying their products and consulting). Make it sound easy, obvious and do-able....They see CMDB is too hard, so they are trying to come up with methodological approaches that will lessen the problem, by breaking off bits and calling that a good-enough CMDB. But they are addressing the symptom not the problem.