Business Application: best practices

[jna2756]

Hi all,

We're working on refining our CMDB and making sure everything in our environment is captured as required one of errors where we got a lot of conflicts internally is business applications. Can some people provide what are common examples of applications and what shouldn't be applications?

For example, I know an application like ServiceNow, ServiceNow ITSM, Salesforce, etc. are applications. However, are there any examples of things that some people might consider an application but shouldn't be consider a business application? some things that seem fuzzy to me is Microsoft Outlook, Apache, Cisco Prime wireless controller.

Thanks

Joshua Anderson

[Welshblacklab]

Hi Cassandra,

Did you manage to find the blog post written by Mark and am interested what you were saying about platforms 

Matt

[Cassandra Kittl]

It's in his blog post on Application Portfolio Management (Application Portfolio Management - Inventory Best ... - ServiceNow Community) buried in the comments.

For all the focus on desktop installations, please note that I did not state desktop applications/installation in my answer - I stated COTS (commercial off the shelf) which I was using as an indication of non-customized/developed software as my organization has very little bespoke application development.

[CMDB Whisperer]

ServiceNow would be a Business Application (cmdb_ci_business_app), NOT an Application (cmdb_ci_appl).  Business Applications represent the software product that your organization has selected, purchased, or developed to provide a business capability or solve some business problem.  And every software product can potentially meet that criteria.  Which ones to select is probably best scoped by those applications that are used to provide your key capabilities, and those that are deployed to deliver your managed technical and business services.  This may or may not include desktop applications as well.  Your enterprise architecture team is probably the best authority for what your business applications are.

"Applications" (cmdb_ci_appl) represent installed software that runs as a process on a specific Server.  This is an element of a specific instance of deployed business application, and there are multiple applications running on multiple servers within a single instance of a business application.

[jna2756]

Thanks for the insight, I agree with what you said and just typed out my community post very poorly without checking for error. I meant to say business application and not application like you mentioned. 

[Suggy]

Hi @CMDB Whisperer In the context that you have expalined, you you examples of Business apps and Apps (more number of examples would be helpful) Thank you 🙂