Managing the Technology Reference Model (TRM) in Enterprise Architecture Workspace

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Managing the Technology Reference Model (TRM) in Enterprise Architecture Workspace

    The Technology Reference Model (TRM) feature within the Enterprise Architecture Workspace enables organizations to define and enforce standards for software and hardware products. This helps mitigate risks such as security vulnerabilities, support challenges, and legal issues caused by unapproved software usage. TRM supports maintaining organizational technology standards, improving security posture, reducing technical debt, and controlling costs.

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    Key Features

    • TRM Product Management: View and group all TRM products by category, and request new products or product lifecycles within the TRM library.
    • Lifecycle Management: Manage product lifecycle phases such as approved, unapproved, evaluation, and divest, each with defined start and end dates. This allows tracking and controlling software versions used in business applications.
    • Integration with Software Asset Management (SAM): Use SAM plugin to import or select products and versions for the TRM library, or define custom products if SAM is unavailable.
    • Product Capabilities: Create, view, associate, and remove product capabilities linked to TRM products, ensuring accurate representation of product functions.
    • Wildcard Lifecycle Updates: Apply lifecycle changes to multiple software product versions simultaneously using wildcard support, simplifying lifecycle management.
    • Technical Debt Management: Identify and manage technical debt arising from usage of unapproved TRM products, supporting risk mitigation.
    • Request Approval Workflow: Approve or reject requests for adding TRM products and lifecycles to maintain governance and compliance.

    What You Can Expect

    By leveraging the TRM module in Enterprise Architecture Workspace, ServiceNow customers can systematically manage technology standards and usage policies. You gain visibility into software used across business applications, detect non-compliant usage, and enforce approved technology lifecycles. This results in enhanced security, reduced technical debt, improved compliance, and optimized technology costs.

    You can use the Technology Reference Model (TRM) feature in Enterprise Architecture Workspace to define the standards for your software and hardware products and manage unapproved products in your organization.

    Overview and benefits of a TRM

    In your business enterprise, using an unapproved software can create a risk to the organization. The risks can include the following:
    • Security risks: The software might be exposed to security issues.
    • Delivery risks: There might not be sufficient knowledge on how to support the software.
    • Legal risks: A business application might use the software in illegal ways.

    You need to define the standards for the software that is to be used and the software versions that are permitted for use in your organization. Also, you need a way to explore when a non-permitted software is being used within the organization and in which business applications.

    You can use the TRM module in the Enterprise Architecture Workspace to perform the following:
    • View a list of all available TRM products. You can also view the list of TRM products grouped by product category.
    • Request a TRM product
    • Request a TRM product lifecycle
    • Create a TRM product
    • Create a TRM product lifecycle
    • Approve or reject TRM product and product lifecycle requests.

    Using the TRM module, you can manage the standards of the technology and set the right guardrail for technology usage. Setting the standards can improve the technical debt, security posture and save costs for the organization.

    TRM Product Lifecycle

    Each product in the TRM library is associated with a set of life-cycle phases with a start and end date. The life-cycle phases could be approved, unapproved, approved with constraints, Divest, and evaluation.

    The TPM home page fetches all the business applications that are being used in your organization. It helps to review the status of the software that is being used. You can understand if any business application is using the software that is not part of the TRM or a software version that is not approved for production. For more information, see TRM lifecycle timelines on Gantt chart.

    The TRM module uses a similar module to TPM to search in the TRM library. You can view the software that is part of the TRM library, and initiate a request to add the software or software version to the TRM library.

    You can also use the TRM with the Software Asset Management (SAM) plugin. This plugin helps you to fetch or select the products and versions for the TRM library. You can also define your own software products when the Software Asset Management integration module isn’t available for your instance.