Standard CMDB Data Models - myth or possibility?

[mikkojuola]

Is it possible to define data models that would benefit and be useful for all organizations?

Are the models always dependent on organization, services, technology or something else that would make it impossible to define "standard data models for CMDB"?

When these questions are narrowed down to ServiceNow environments, some part of the models are taken for granted. For example one should not invent new classes related to Users (=People), Groups, Configuration Items (as base element) or Locations for example, since much of the functionality is bound to those classes. But when talking about the insides of the CMDB or how to combine CMDB with other ServiceNew classes, we definitely still have same room for variance.

So, what do you think? Is it possible to define standard data models for the CMDB? 

* If yes, what do you have in mind? Which area or domain? 
* If no, please explain why?

Cheers,
--Mikko

[mikkojuola]

Hi Fogg and thanks the replying to me,

Discovery is an interesting topic in this context, and Cloud management too. One problem I've found with Discovery is that it's kind of hard to know what to expect. Meaning how will the discovery populate your CMDB? Either you see what happens, or put a lot of effort into managing which classes to use.

Or does ServiceNow provide data models that Discovery uses? Which classes expect to be populated when running Discovery on your server infrastructure for example? And this way preparing to connect the discovered data with manually maintained configuration data.

Cheers,

--Mikko