June 22, 2005 Raising The Bar For ITIL And CMDB Implementations by Thomas Mendel, Ph.D. and Jean-Pierre Garbani with Laura Koetzle and Thomas Powell

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1 TRENDS Raising The Bar For ITIL And CMDB Implementations by Thomas Mendel, Ph.D. and Jean-Pierre Garbani with Laura Koetzle and Thomas Powell EXECUTIVE SUMMARY It seems not a day goes by without an announcement related to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and configuration management databases (CMDBs). For the past two years, demand for better control of the production side of IT has driven the demand for best practices and for the tools to go with them steadily higher. BMC Software has taken a significant lead in this area with its Atrium CMDB. BMC has built Atrium using its application-to-infrastructure mapping tools and the foundation that it inherited from its Remedy and Marimba acquisitions. Following BMC s lead, Computer Associates, IBM, Managed Objects Solutions, and Mercury Interactive have all jumped on the CMDB bandwagon. And it s only a matter of time before other competitors such as Compuware, HP, and Micromuse follow suit. RESEARCH CATALYST Over the course of the last three months, many vendors have announced interesting innovations around ITIL and CMDBs. 1 THE CHANGING FACE OF CMDB IS SPURRING THE MARKET TO ACTION CMDBs and ITIL are not exactly breaking news. But the addition of application-to-infrastructure component mapping by a few innovative companies over the past four years has changed the face of the CMDB. This technology allows the CMDB to become a foundation for all IT service management disciplines. The recent announcements from BMC Software, IDS Scheer, Managed Objects Solutions, Mercury Interactive, and Peregrine Systems actually represent three different initiatives and giants HP and IBM have also thrown their hats into the ring. Here s what the current situation boils down to: CMDB enables business service management. Managed Objects will use the multitude of connectors it has developed to provide the ability to closely link IT business process monitoring capabilities dynamically to the underlying IT infrastructure via a virtual CMDB. ITIL is available out of the box. BMC Software and IDS Scheer have launched a preconfigured ITIL reference model for IT service management that ships with an out-of-the-box integration for BMC s Remedy. Users can design processes with IDS Scheer s ARIS Toolset; the package includes best practices from BMC. Two important players are joining forces. Mercury and Peregrine have announced a partnership that s primarily targeted at creating a scalable and federated CMDB solution for big customers based on Mercury s application mapping capability plus Peregrine s ServiceCenter and CMDB. Headquarters Forrester Research, Inc., 400 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA USA Tel: / Fax: /

2 Trends Raising The Bar For ITIL And CMDB Implementations 2 IBM is signaling its interest. IBM has also announced a partnership program aimed at creating an infrastructure discovery library and a change and configuration management database (CCMDB). Application-to-infrastructure component mapping vendors such as Cendura, Collation, nlayers, and Relicore have announced their support for IBM s program and will develop links to IBM s Tivoli management products in particular to Tivoli Business Service Manager (TBSM). HP will rely on partners for the time being. HP OpenView has also made a discreet CMDB announcement based on its partnership with Relicore. The relationship with Relicore, which was the pioneer in application-to-infrastructure component mapping, is the ideal immediate response to OpenView s competition in change and configuration management. CUSTOMER NEEDS PUT ADDITIONAL PRESSURE ON MANAGEMENT VENDORS Vendors are not the only ones interested in ITIL and CMDBs. 2 Customers have a horse in this race too and they want: End-to-end service performance management. Users recognize the value of using application mapping and application models as templates for incident and problem management and for IT service management. Users are still waiting for tools that implement this concept in a practical way. Measurement and metrics for SLM. Today, business decision-makers demand a more consistent delivery of IT services which means IT needs service-level management (SLM). To maintain the service levels that business users expect, IT departments have to implement more mature and stringent processes in conjunction with better IT performance measurement systems. Reduced costs. At the same time, outsourcers, in particular from offshore, are riding the cost advantage wave. IT is now an important part of the cost of doing business and becomes a major target when business leaders are hunting for cost savings. Clients Will Benefit From This Flurry Of Activity SLM and business service management (BSM) technologies and ITIL and the CMDB will help users address these issues. Here s what the announcements will bring to users: BSM for the rest of us finally. Managed Objects virtual CMDB will resonate with many companies because it will finally enable true dynamic, end-to-end BSM: Instead of painfully mapping services to infrastructures manually, users will now automatically get continuously up-to-date service maps.

3 Trends Raising The Bar For ITIL And CMDB Implementations 3 ITIL implementations get easier and cheaper. BMC and IDS Scheer s use of preconfiguration, templates, and best practices will cut users ITIL implementation costs and hassle in half. Peregrine and Mercury present a strong alternative to BMC and Computer Associates. Together, Peregrine and Mercury provide an alternative to BMC and CA for large-scale CMDB implementations. Peregrine will have to carefully manage its long-term relationship with IBM Tivoli, which competes fiercely with Mercury in a number of markets. The major players validate the concept. Beyond the technology, the most significant aspect of this flurry of announcements and moves is the validation of the application mapping concept and its role as a basis for CMDB and BSM implementations. The very fact that all major companies have now declared their intentions to create CMDBs that include application mapping technologies legitimizes the whole concept of ITIL and BSM, and signal clients that this is now ready for prime time. R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S USE THE CMDB AS A FOUNDATION FOR IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT The widespread adoption of CMDBs and application-to-infrastructure mapping is very near. Forrester thinks that, within the next 12 months, all major management software vendors will offer their own version of a CMDB through acquisition, partnerships, or OEM agreements. However, to many companies interested in the technology, the space still appears to be in its infancy. We believe that: Automated application mapping is quickly becoming a mature technology, able to cover most of enterprise service management s critical needs. The use of standard markup languages and protocols like XML and SOAP makes the integration of critical data such as application maps relatively easy. Because the CMDB is quickly becoming the backbone of any IT service management process, you must consider the following points when implementing one: The wealth and detail of configuration item (CI) configuration information. Some CMDBs have been cobbled together in a hurry make sure that you got what you expected! The ability to reconcile all enterprise configuration data in a single gold copy of the CMDB. Multiple asset and infrastructure databases may already exist in your enterprise for example, from network discovery and asset management. If this is the case, you need to reconcile all of these with the CMDB into a single master data repository.

4 Trends Raising The Bar For ITIL And CMDB Implementations 4 The breadth of applications that can be mapped automatically. Application-toinfrastructure component mapping is constantly progressing and expanding, but some of the technologies may be limited in their discovery capabilities especially when it comes to homegrown applications. Ease of access. As a foundation for service management, a number of processes will have to use the CMDB. Change and configuration management is the obvious one, but end-toend application performance management and service-level management will also have to access the CMDB. Thus, CMDB buyers need a well-designed interface that provides a rapid way to select the right information for the right process. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Companies Interviewed For This Document BMC Software Computer Associates HP IBM Tivoli Managed Objects Mercury Interactive ENDNOTES 1 The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of standard IT terminologies such as a high-level definition of a change request that the United Kingdom Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s to address the IT service support and delivery issues faced by IT infrastructure organizations. ITIL standards were designed to establish guidelines and a common language for operational processes, such as change management, problem resolution, service delivery, and resolution of customer inquiries. ITIL is a registered trademark and a registered community trademark of the UK Office of Government Commerce and is registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office. In 2001, the United Kingdom Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency was absorbed into the Office of Government Commerce, which now owns ITIL. See uk/index.asp?id=2261 for more information. A CMDB stores details of the elements that an organization uses to provide and manage its IT services. Configuration management is responsible for identifying, recording, tracking, and reporting key IT components or assets these assets are called configuration items (CIs). The information that is captured and tracked will depend upon the specific CI, but will often include a description of the CI as well as its version, constituent components, relationships to other CIs, location/assignment, and current status. Change management is the practice of ensuring that all changes to CIs are carried out in a planned and authorized manner. This includes: ensuring that there is a business reason behind each change; identifying the specific CIs and IT services affected by the change; planning the change; testing the change; and having a rollback plan should the change result in an unexpected state of the CI. See the November 8, 2004, Market Overview Change And Configuration Management.

5 Trends Raising The Bar For ITIL And CMDB Implementations 5 2 Over the past 12 months, Forrester has interviewed 67 enterprise IT infrastructure managers at $1 billionplus companies about their key challenges in running the corporate IT infrastructure. The top five issues companies are currently struggling with: 1) consistent end-to-end application and service performance guarantees; 2) unplanned infrastructure changes resulting in incidents and downtime; 3) unanticipated infrastructure consequences of consolidation and new application projects; 4) misconfiguration of network objects; and 5) wide area network performance. See the March 10, 2005, Best Practices Top Five Challenges For Enterprise IT Infrastructure Managers And How To Resolve Them. Forrester is an independent technology research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice about technology s impact on business. Business, marketing, and IT professionals worldwide collaborate with Forrester to align their technology investments with their business goals. Established in 1983, Forrester is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. 2005, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Oval Program, Forrester Wave, WholeView 2, Technographics, and TechRankings are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Forrester clients may make one attributed copy or slide of each figure contained herein. Additional reproduction is strictly prohibited. For additional reproduction rights and usage information, go to com. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. To purchase reprints of this document, please resourcecenter@forrester.com