The Future of IT in a Flat World: CMDBs, Automation, and the IT Value Chain

Using automation, IT operations can emulate the domestic supply chain's cost containment successes. At the same time, by recognizing that its own struggles are mirrored in the global supply chain, IT can grasp--from a business perspective--the technological capabilities it must have now to strategically move into the next generation of automation.

A configuration management database (CMDB) empowers IT executives to be proactive: it lends complete visibility to a flat world, introducing a new way of seeing IT and with it, new ways of operating. As IT's data broker, a federated CMDB accesses the information needed to automate business services as a whole, throughout their entire life cycle, wherever this data resides and regardless of its originating vendor.

In coming years, as IT becomes more closely aligned with business, IT will be expected to change its products and services so they line up with customer demand. To achieve this, IT must have a flexible master CMDB. Its information model must be easily changeable to adapt to new security requirements, regulatory changes, asset reconfiguration, capacity adjustments, CI relationship modifications, and process alterations.

Equipped with an adaptable, federated CMDB that is also a metadata repository, IT will accomplish end-to-end, highly adaptable business service automation. This achievement will, in turn, transform the current IT landscape, making it modular, responsive, and self-managing. CIOs will see farther, deeper, and faster than ever before; global transparency will be effortless; and the business value of IT will be a given, for the simple fact that, at the end of the day, the CMDB will bring IT executives closer to the consumer.