Managing the Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM) in Enterprise Architecture Workspace
Summarize
Summary of Managing the Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM) in Enterprise Architecture Workspace
Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM) in the Enterprise Architecture Workspace enables ServiceNow customers to systematically manage technology lifecycle risks and exceptions associated with the software and hardware technologies underpinning their business applications. It helps Enterprise Architects create an inventory of technologies, track software versions, monitor vendor support timelines, and plan timely upgrades or retirements. This proactive management reduces risks from unsupported technologies and ensures business applications remain reliable and secure.
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Key Features
- Technology Inventory and Lifecycle Tracking: Automatically populates technology data from CMDB tables such as Computer, Docker Container, and Serverless Hardware, with configurable options to include additional CMDB tables.
- Technology Discovery and Alignment: Discovers software and hardware technologies linked to business applications and application services, generating TPM Discovered Technology records and associated lifecycle data.
- Lifecycle Risk Assessment: Calculates lifecycle risk scores for business applications, application services, software products, and hardware models, enabling early identification of risks based on lifecycle phase transitions.
- Manual and Scheduled Data Updates: Allows manual refresh of TPM lifecycle data for individual applications and supports scheduled jobs to update lifecycle information across the enterprise.
- Risk Insights and Reporting: Provides filters to view lifecycle risks over various timeframes, toggle to view only production instances, export risk data in multiple formats, and visualize risks in the EA Workspace Insights section.
- Lifecycle Timelines Visualization: Displays TPM lifecycle timelines on Gantt charts showing hierarchical relationships of applications, services, and their associated technologies.
- Customizable Software Filtering: Supports encoded queries to filter software discovery results, enabling inclusion or exclusion of licensable and non-licensable software products for lifecycle tracking.
- Audit and Log Management: Tracks audit information on technology lifecycle data accuracy and maintains logs of TPM analysis runs for troubleshooting and monitoring.
Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers
By activating the TLM plugin and integrating it with Software Asset Management (SAM) Professional, customers can enhance their Enterprise Architecture capabilities to:
- Maintain an accurate, up-to-date inventory of all software and hardware technologies supporting business applications.
- Assess and mitigate risks arising from technology lifecycle expirations, such as end of support or end of life.
- Plan and execute technology upgrades or retirements in alignment with business needs and vendor support timelines.
- Leverage visual tools like Gantt charts and dashboard widgets to monitor technology health and prioritize remediation efforts.
- Customize discovery and reporting parameters to fit their unique CMDB configurations and organizational requirements.
Implementation Considerations
- Install and activate the Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM) plugin alongside the Software Asset Management Professional plugin for full lifecycle data coverage.
- Configure system properties to include all relevant CMDB tables containing software installations.
- Use scheduled jobs to automate lifecycle data updates and risk calculations, ensuring ongoing accuracy.
- Utilize the audit tab and run logs to monitor data completeness and troubleshoot issues.
- Filter software discovery results to focus lifecycle management on relevant technology assets.
Technology Lifecycle Management helps Enterprise Architects to manage technology life-cycle risks and technology life-cycle exceptions. Enterprise Architects can evaluate all their business applications and application services by accessing the discovered technologies and auditing information in the Enterprise Architecture Workspace.
The underlying technologies of the business applications used in your business enterprise have a shelf life that must be actively managed and diligently monitored to track their versions and life-cycle.
The software products used in your business applications can be operating systems, database management systems, development tools, and middle ware, each of which has a life cycle. If these life-cycle stages aren’t tracked, there are risks where the vendor may not support them any longer and the business applications that run on these technologies are at stake.
- Track the versions of the software and manufacturer support dates for the software
- Set an internal life-cycle guidance for the software
- Assess the risks in using outdated software
- Plan to retire them just like the applications they support, at a definite date
- Support upgrade processes
The data for the software products are populated from the Computer (CMDB_CI_Computer) and all similar instances of the table, Docker Container (CMDB_CI_Docker_Container), and Serverless Hardwares (CMDB_CI_Serverless_Hardware) tables, by default. However, if you want to include other CMDB tables that contain software products, you must update the system property sn_apm_tpm.configurationItemsWithSoftwareInstalls. For information on how to update the system property, see Update the system property for CMDB software products.
Installing the Technology Lifecycle Management plugin
For instructions to install Technology Lifecycle Management, see Activate the Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM) plugin.
TLM indicators in EA Workspace
| Indicator | Description |
|---|---|
| Technology Lifecycle Risk [sn_apm_tpm_technology_risk] | Calculates the lifecycle risk score for business applications. |
TLM reference model in EA Workspace
Technology discovery process in EA Workspace
The following is the technology discovery and alignment process for business applications in the EA Workspace.
- Query and fetch the Consumes::Consumed by Application Services.Note:It must be an Application Service and these Application Services must be mapped. The Service Configuration Item Associations [svc_ci_assoc] table is populated for each Application Service and its Computers.
Figure 2. Service Configuration Item Associations - For each computer identified in the Service Configuration Item Associations [svc_ci_assoc] table, you can see the installed software by selecting the Software Installations tab. Also, if a Hardware Model is associated with the computer, you can see the Hardware type details in the TPM Discovered Technologies tab.
- For each software install, you can see the associated discovery model. The software discovery models must be of a product type Licensable or Unknown and they must be normalized or manually normalized to get any appropriate information. You can also also use the sn_apm_tpm.softwareDiscoveryModelProductFilterForTPMsystem property to gather data on non-licensable software products. For information see, Filter software results using an encoded query in TLM.
- For each discovery model, create a TPM Discovered Technology record.
- When you create a record for the TPM Discovered Technology, it triggers the creation of an associated TPM Technology Lifecycles record and it fetches the lifecycle information for the hardware or
software technology. An unique TLM lifecycle record identifier is also generated. On selecting the record identifier, more information on the TLM lifecycle record is displayed.Note:
TLM lifecycle record identifiers are automatically generated on creating a TLM record using the Technology Lifecycle Management (sn_apm_tpm) plugin version 1.9.0. However, for TLM lifecycle records generated using previous versions of the TLM plugin don't have any lifecycle record identifiers. The TLM record identifiers of these TLM lifecycle records must be generated using the Populate Number field in TPM Discovered Technologies job. For information, see Run a scheduled job to populate Technology Lifecycle Management lifecycle record identifier.
- Business Application [cmdb_ci_business_app]
- CI Relationship [cmdb_rel_ci] - Consumes::Consumed by
- Service Instance [cmdb_ci_service_auto, discovered, calculated, query_based, tag_based, manual]
- Service CI Association [svc_ci_assoc] - note: Only table used to find App Service
- Computers/Hardware Computer [cmdb_ci_computer]
- Software Installation [cmdb_sam_sw_install]
- Software Discovery Model [cmdb_sam_sw_discovery_model]
- Software Product [samp_sw_product]
- Software Product Lifecycle [sam_sw_product_lifecycle]Note:Depending on your how you have setup your instance, other tables can also contain software records. Check with your administrator.
Update TPM Data for a business application or application service
You can manually refresh the TPM life-cycle data manually for a selected business application or application service. A scheduled job Populate TPM Discovered Technologies and Life-cycles is also run on schedule or on-demand to update the life-cycle data for all business applications and application services. For more details, see Update TPM data for business applications and Run a scheduled job to generate TPM lifecycle data
View insights for technology life-cycle risks
You can track the technology lifecycle risk for business applications, application services, servers, software products, and hardware models. The Populate TPM Discovered Technologies and Life-cycles scheduled
job shows the lifecycle results in the Insights section of the EA Workspace home page. Select the Technology Portfolio tab in the Insights section and then select the View all technology lifecycle risks.
- Use this filter to see the risks for the next 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and 18 months. By default, the 1 month filter is applied.
- Use the Show only production instances toggle button to see only production instances that are having technology lifecycle risks. By default, this filter is off.
- Select the View all technology lifecycle risks link to see the list of all technology lifecycle risks sorted by earliest lifecycle date, which means the earliest date when a technology lifecycle risk is
to happen. You can also export the Technology lifecycle risks information to Excel, CSV, JSON, or PDF as required.
The data in the Technology lifecycle risks table is fetched from the TPM Discovered Technologies [sn_apm_tpm_discovered_technology] table.
- Execute the Populate Technology Lifecycle Risks scheduled job to generate the TPM technology lifecycle risks. This scheduled job populates the risk scores for business applications (BA), application services (AS), software products, and hardware models for a fiscal period of type month in the Technology lifecycle risks (sn_apm_tpm_technology_risk) table. For more details, see Schedule a job to generate TPM technology risk.
View TPM analysis run logs
You can track the progress of TPM analysis by examining the TPM Discovered Technology Run Logs [sn_apm_tpm_discovered_technology_run_log] table. Each time the analysis is run, an entry is added to this table. Navigate to section view the logs.
TPM lifecycle timelines on Gantt chart
For the Technology Portfolio Management (TPM), the business applications and their related application services (associated hardware models and software products) are displayed in a hierarchical structure. The corresponding timelines of the application services are displayed as bars on the Gantt chart.
The application services (composed of software products and hardware models) have lifecycle timelines determined for them. On the Gantt chart, the earliest TPM phase start date of either the software products or hardware models are rolled up to calculate the TPM phase start date of the overall application service. That is, the earliest TPM phase start date of any software product or hardware model is taken as the TPM phase start date of the application service, overall. For more details, see TPM lifecycle timelines on Gantt chart and View TPM and TRM lifecycle timelines on the Gantt chart.
Data visualization for TPM data
In the Enterprise Architecture Workspace Dashboard, the 'Top 10 business applications with normalized TPM risk' widget shows the top 10 business applications having normalized TPM risk. For more details, see Working with the Enterprise Architecture Workspace dashboard.