Who "owns" the CMDB in your organization?

[Teri Bobst]

I would like feedback from the Community on who (person or group) owns the CMDB. Is the ownership broken out into Classes or is the CMDB centrally owned and managed?

Thanks in advance!

Teri

[Michael Ritchie]

In smaller organizations yes this has been done.  In larger organizations, especially with multi-national locations the asset process and regulations on assets can differ which causes other people to be involved.  But keep in mind asset does not equal config and there are big differences.  It really depends on how deep you plan to go as many organizations aren't that mature with one or both processes.

[scott barnard1]

The bigger the outfit the more owners there tend to be, it can be broken down by service owners or business unit, customer maybe, but there does not tend to be a single owner as you scale up.

Assets vs CMDB is a common contention point and sure they could be done by one person but you will need to understand what your company is using the data for.

Personally for me Asset management is about the management of value. The asset is an expression of value to the company. This can be an object but it does not have to be. So for me these are financial records and you can cut the fingers off of any IT guy that comes anywhere near them.

CMDB is about IT config and has absolutely nothing to do with finance. They should stick to arguing about the value of the invisible beans.

OK so the world is rarely so polarized but its good to know that there is supposed to be a difference here. Sure there is overlap and often IT will dominate Asset because they generate the data and it's often about discoverable IT assets. It doesn't have to be. 

8000 users in the US sounds like it's small enough to be a single owner but if it's made up of a loose affiliate of separate organisations all with their own balance sheets and leaders then it could be a nightmare. If is 1 org with 1 finance dept that reports on it's assets and ci's in 50 locations then you are in a good space. 

8000 users in France and I would run a mile. 🙂

Regards

[Teri Bobst]

Thanks Scott! I feel like running myself, even though we are primarily within the US. 🙂 We do have more than 30 unique businesses that range from Hospitality to Healthcare to Government Contracting!

Do you think that Change Management should be responsible for the overall CMDB process? Then each group accountable for their own CI classes?

i.e. - Server Team owns Server Class and processes, Network Team owns Network Class and processes, Client Team owns Client Class and processes?