Application Type values

[RichieP]

Hi All,

Looking for community input on something minor.

The default Application Type field has the following values

• COTS
• EUC
• Home Grown
• SaaS

Have folks added Open Source as an option where they have built something on top of an opensource platform with little to no custom modules/components on top, or categorised these as Home Grown and used the software components in the CMDB to explicitly call out when something is/is not open source?

My initial thought is if we have CoTS listed, fully contained Open Source applications should probably be called out at this level too?

Or have folks taken an entirely different approach?

Thanks

[Fabian Kunzke]

Hey,

This really depends on your specific needs. If you need to differentiate between these types on the Business Application level (e.g. because of licensing topics), i think this could be the right place to add. Just make sure, that you need said differentation here. Also, keep in mind that Open Source could also be any of the ootb values in addition.

Alternatively you can always add a separate field to make sure the Application type is not flooded to heavily. Best option in my opinion would be the Application Model which can be linked in the model_id field. Here more detail about the product itself can be added. However, depending on what your actual use case is, this may lead to more overhead than needed.

Hope this helps,

Regards

Fabian

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @RichieP, 

I would say that Application type is not alone within the Business Application table in having questionable or perhaps outdated choices. Fortunately it is a choice list so you're free to edit as you see fit, and it's not questionable customization.

One of the challenges is that there are several fields on the Business Application table (more if you have Enterprise Architecture) that could end up with jumbled values if you're not careful. I've seen values mixed up between this fields before: Application type, Architecture type, Application family, Technology stack.

The key consideration is what does open source really mean? It's not a technology or architecture in of itself and it's not within a family of applications that would be designated open source. Therefore Application type is the most appropriate field, as open source is a type of application that is not generally chargeable but usually still requires acceptance of an EULA.

Hope this helps!

Mat

[RichieP]

Thanks @Fabian Kunzke @Mathew Hillyard for your inputs.

Agreed on the Business App records (we do have Enterprise Architecture) there are other fields with questionable validity of value at the level it is being defined, Tech Stack as an example can differ across subsets of the child services that make up the Business App where you are using microservices architecture across potentially multiple technical domains, whereas for a CoTS application this may or may not be more relevant, it does feel a little dated.

In our early adoption, we are looking to omit some of these fields (Tech Stack being one) as we have more mature ways of tracking these via the operational records in the CMDB and SDLC processes which can report up on what tech stack(s) are in use and eventually aligning to your comments above we should be able to see the model data surface up.

For me, in the short term, I believe if we are defining CoTS at this level then an OpenSource platform should also be called out, once we have better data from downstream models, SAM, SDLC potentially we may revisit this.

Thanks for the disucssion.

[DarinH]

This isn't directly answering the OP, but I thought it better to post here than create a new thread. We're in early stages of implementing APM and trying to align as much as possible to out-of-the-box. That said, this field is definitely problematic as others have noted. I'd be curious to know how people are actually using and what modifications they've made. 

The product documentation provides a definition of the field, though it's nearly a tautology. The main takeaway is that it's intended to define custom vs. commercial. Great, but EUC is neither, and SaaS is hosting/delivery model and usually redundant with COTS (I work for a SaaS software company, so it's possible for a solution we use to be both SaaS and homegrown!).

I think I'm going to recommend updating the choices to Homegrown and Commercial, only. Find another field to distinguish SaaS from Self-hosted, maybe Install Type. Not sure how or whether it's important to capture EUC vs. ???, but probably via Application Portfolio.

I'd appreciate any feedback on this approach, or examples of what others have done. Thanks!