PC software in the CSDM

[CasperJT]

Hi all,

While reviewing the CSDM White Paper and related papers / videos, something seemed to missing or perhaps just not explicit enough for my understandning.

Let's take a simple example such as Outlook 2016. This is a piece of software that is typically installed on a white collar employees PC's.

My question is, is this considered an application? since it is a deployed piece of software on a compute infrastructure.

If it is an application, how does this fit in the data model/should it fit in the data model.
If it should, is it then part of an Application Service called 'White Collar Laptop'?

I hope the question makes sense.

Thanks,
Casper

[Paul Santaniell]

Casper,

We could treat Outlook as an "application". However, it seems like it would not be practical to manage end user compute (i.e. laptops) with this approach. Instead, I was thinking the following:

- The "service" that we're offering is the "white collar laptop" as you describe above. It's not necessarily an application service and it might map better to a business or technical service.

- Outlook is a "software CI" that is automatically discovered. No need to create "applications" for end user software.

From an incident management perspective, the incident would be flagged against a particular users laptop service. If desired, the "affected CI" could point to the software CI allowing identifications of trends related to a particular software.

Paul 

[CasperJT]

Thanks for you input Paul. Since I asked this question, I have been working on an integration with our license management tool (we do not use ServiceNow for this) and it has a standard integration.

The way the Software and Machines are managed is by:

Creating entries in cmdb_ci_spkg (Software), cmdb_software_instance (Software Instance) and cmdb_ci_computer (computer).

So from that perspective I still do not quite see software as applications, as from a class manager perspective Software and Application are two separate classes so to me they also need to be treated somewhat differently.

So like you say we can reference individual PC's or even the specific installation of software on the machine.

//Casper

[RobinR1]

Paul, if I can add on a related question ... In this scenario, would you ever see a need to log a change request to document and formally approve a large-scale roll-out of a new Outlook version?    E.g. when rolling out a major new version of PC software across the organization in waves.    [Our example was a Windows 10 operating system roll-out.]

If so, what would you reference as the CI on the change request?  

[CasperJT]

Hi Robin,

Referencing my reply to Paul's post, I would suggest using the cmdb_ci_spkg for change registration as it covers the version of the software as well as a reference to the machines on which it is installed, including OS.

//Casper