Visibility into IT infrastructure is mission-critical for IT teams and the enterprise. This sought-after visibility, however, is remarkably elusive. IT infrastructure continues to grow and become more complex, making visibility a constantly moving target. For IT to gain visibility, it faces the challenge of consolidating and maintaining complex data — what this article refers to as data migration and data quality. IT must first consolidate disparate configuration item (CI) data into a single Configuration Management Database (CMDB). IT must then regularly maintain this complex data for accuracy. In general, CMDB projects to consolidate and ensure high-quality infrastructure data often result in limited business value and lots of unrewarded effort. Is consolidated, high-quality data the CMDB unicorn?
The catalyst for CMDB projects that involve data migration and data quality can come from various business initiatives. Some relevant initiatives are migrations between competitive platforms, data center migrations, cloud migrations, data center optimizations, compliance/audits, availability/quality of service, and application rationalizations. These initiatives often expose the disparate and often untrustworthy nature of infrastructure data.
The reality of many enterprises is that they rely on a range of data sources to support their various operational processes. But this often results in data source sprawl and creates the challenge of how to make this complex data environment work together as something like a single system of record. If an enterprise has a CMDB, it may not be viewed as the single source of truth, because most departments may have their own trusted data silos. When different data sources feed into the CMDB the data can easily become inconsistent, which may be due to the non-trivial task of converting CIs defined in one product into a record in the CMDB intended to be the single system of record. Some questions that arise include, how to map CI classes from one product to the CMDB? What other types of related data should be migrated to the CMDB? Which attributes should be used, eliminated, or converted? In the end, IT may leave the consolidated data in the CMDB as is, because the alternative is an overwhelming, manual data reconciliation effort.
Data in a CMDB may be old, incomplete, unverified, and inconsistent. Many enterprises in industries governed by complex compliance and regulatory requirements are compelled to maintain high-quality infrastructure data. For example, a financial institution may require full visibility into its infrastructure in order to identify and remediate assets considered to be high risk. A global defense manufacturer with assets across hundreds of locations in many countries may have to go beyond the typical required inventory accuracy threshold of 90% and meet a 97% level of accuracy across 20 different values, even as asset inventories change rapidly. For enterprises in general, the costs of inaccurate data in their CMDBs includes failed requests for change, breached service level agreements, increased resolution times due to inaccurate CI records, and significant manual effort allocated to the inspection and correction of CMDB data. In fact, according to an Institute of Configuration Management white paper, the cost of poor CMDB data quality is that IT will spend 40% of its resources trying to find the complete and accurate information it needs to deliver IT services.
The challenges faced by IT today are vast, growing, and compounded by disparate and unreliable infrastructure data. ServiceNow and its partners can help you gain visibility into your infrastructure with data migration and data quality. We're here to help ensure that your CMDB is not an unattainable unicorn but an effective single system of record for IT to power the enterprise. Learn more about best practices from a CMDB infographic, CMDB design guidance white paper, and CI data quality white paper. You may also contact ServiceNow Professional Services to learn about ServiceNow CMDB workshops.
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