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I thought I might do some thinking about what processes we need to implement to achieve good SAM, and I thought (just for fun!) that I would do this in the context of Critical Success Factors (CSFs)  and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). I’ve never expressly done this before, so if anyone feels they could improve [...]

I spotted a link to this webcast on LinkedIn – although a little long, I enjoyed it, particularly the IT Service Management oriented approach to SAM and Lifecycle Management.
http://www.absolute.com/resource_center/webcasts/gartner2010?aa=true

We’ve spent a couple of posts discussion the areas of Service Management that can take advantage of discovery tools and software asset management. This post will now look at how service management can take advantage of hardware asset management processes. I’ll keep it brief, as between you, me and the computer screen, it’s not the [...]

In the last post we looked at how other parts of the IT department can leverage the information provided by discovery tools to improve the efficiency of their own processes.  Now I’d like to take a look at how SAM processes can do the same.
Note the emphasis on processes.
I’ve noticed that there is a strong [...]

This post is one of several which aim to investigate ways in which we can leverage asset management processes to assist in the management of the IT department as a whole.
A discovery tool is an application which interrogates machines in order to find out what software is installed, the hardware configuration of machines, as well [...]

OK, OK, this post is not about leverage… whatever!
I wanted to quickly recommend a blog I’ve discovered by the IT Skeptic. He covers all things ITIL, but has some particularly insightful posts about the concept of CMDB.
As you may recall from an earlier post, I consider the databases that we update and maintain as IT Asset Managers to [...]

As you’re probably well aware, effective processes are at the core of IT Asset management. If our processes aren’t working properly we will find that our data is inaccurate and we make poor decisions, we make mistakes and spend time and money fixing them up, and we take longer and spend more money on accomplishing tasks [...]

This is easy! Translated into ITIL-speak, a book of record is a configuration management database (CMDB). CMDBs hold the records of every single piece of relevant data, also known as configuration items (CIs).
Welcome to ITIL!!
In the old version of ITIL  (aka v.2) there was an idealised situation where an organisation had just one CMDB, which [...]