What is a CMDB?

In the real world, a banking customer would not write a check without first ensuring there is enough money in their account. Additionally, these same customers need to rely on their banks to accurately record their deposits and withdrawals. Each time money is withdrawn or deposited, the customer assumes the transaction was successful and any changes to the account balance were precisely updated. This level of accuracy is required to determine how much money needs to reside in the account at any given time to cover the customer’s daily expenses.

Unfortunately, IT decisions are not always based on a similar level of data integrity, and its common place to see one IT group interfere with another internal group, redundantly performing operational tasks or even making assumptions about who is handling a specific IT support activity. The IT Security Team, for example, may pick a specific time to apply patches to a cluster of servers, inadvertently disrupting automated database backups taking place on those same servers at the same time.

From a proactive standpoint, the same IT Security Team can establish an improved process for internal communications, identify the owners of the target server group and notify them prior to deployment-- alleviating issues with subsequent service support and delivery activities. 

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