One of the biggest challenges IT organizations have faced over the last decade has been establishing a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This certainly hasn’t been from lack of effort, as many authors, analysts, consultants, and vendors can easily put their children’s children through college on the strategies and solutions sold in pursuit of a single-source-of-truth from an IT infrastructure perspective. These efforts have not been frivolous. The value proposition of the CMDB has been well articulated. So why do so many IT organizations struggle with their CMDB initiatives? Before we dive into this question (and deliver some much-needed answers!), let’s make sure we are operating with the same definitions and context.

Definition and Purpose of the CMDB

At its core, the CMDB is a database that contains all relevant information about IT assets (referred to as Configuration Items, or CIs) installed across the infrastructure environment. The CMDB also contains data that describes the relationships and inter-connectivity between CIs.

SOURCE: cherwell.com