Manage the Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM) in Enterprise Architecture Workspace
Summarize
Summary of Manage the Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM) in Enterprise Architecture Workspace
Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM), formerly known as Technology Portfolio Management (TPM), enables Enterprise Architects to manage and mitigate technology lifecycle risks within their business applications and services. By tracking discovered hardware and software technologies through the Enterprise Architecture Workspace, TLM helps maintain an inventory of technologies, monitor their lifecycle stages, and plan upgrades or retirements to avoid unsupported or outdated technology risks.
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TLM requires the Enterprise Architecture Workspace application (version 9.2.1 or later) and the Technology Lifecycle Management plugin (snapmtpm, version 1.11.0 or later). Software lifecycle data additionally requires activation of the Software Asset Management (SAM) Professional plugin.
Key Features
- Technology Discovery and Alignment: Automatically discovers technologies associated with business applications via CMDB tables, including computers, software installations, and hardware models. It creates TLM Discovered Technology and Technology Lifecycles records to track lifecycle information.
- Lifecycle Risk Indicators: Calculates lifecycle risk scores for business applications, application services, software products, and hardware models, visible in the Enterprise Architecture Workspace Insights section.
- Data Update and Scheduling: Supports manual and scheduled refreshes of lifecycle data using the "Populate TPM Discovered Technologies and Life-cycles" scheduled job to keep lifecycle information current across the enterprise.
- Lifecycle Visualization: Displays hierarchical business applications and their related technologies on Gantt charts, with lifecycle timelines rolled up to show earliest lifecycle phase start dates, aiding risk and upgrade planning.
- Risk Reporting and Exporting: Provides detailed lifecycle risk reports with filters for time periods and production status; data can be exported in multiple formats including Excel, CSV, JSON, and PDF.
- Audit and Logs: Tracks audit details for lifecycle exceptions or approximations and maintains run logs for TLM analyses to ensure transparency and traceability of lifecycle data processing.
Application and Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers
ServiceNow customers can leverage TLM to proactively manage technology risks by maintaining a comprehensive inventory of technologies supporting their business applications. This enables:
- Accurate tracking of software and hardware lifecycle stages and vendor support timelines.
- Effective risk assessment at multiple levels (hardware, software, application service, and business application).
- Informed decision-making for technology upgrades, retirements, and compliance with lifecycle policies.
- Automated lifecycle data collection from CMDB sources and flexible inclusion of additional CMDB tables for software products.
- Visualization tools such as Gantt charts and dashboards to monitor lifecycle risks and prioritize remediation efforts.
By integrating TLM with SAM Professional, customers ensure comprehensive lifecycle management across both hardware and software assets, enhancing their Enterprise Architecture governance and risk management capabilities.
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.
Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM) was previously known as Technology Portfolio Management (TPM). TPM and TLM refer to the same feature. Table names and scheduled job names continue to use TPM and haven't been renamed.
Whether your instance displays TPM or TLM also depends on your application versions. TLM labels appear only when both the Enterprise Architecture Workspace application (version 9.2.1 or later) and the Technology Lifecycle Management plugin, sn_apm_tpm (version 1.11.0 or later), are installed. If either application is on an earlier version, the interface continues to show TPM.
The underlying technologies of the business applications used in your business enterprise have a shelf life. You must actively manage and monitor them 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, the vendor may not support them any longer. 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
By default, the data for the software products are populated from the Computer (CMDB_CI_Computer), Docker Container (CMDB_CI_Docker_Container), and Serverless Hardwares (CMDB_CI_Serverless_Hardware) tables and all similar instances. To include other CMDB tables that contain software products, update the system property sn_apm_tpm.configurationItemsWithSoftwareInstalls. For information on how to update the system property, see Update the system property to gather software products from a CMDB table.
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 TLM 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 TLM Discovered Technology record.
- When you create a record for the TLM Discovered Technology, it triggers the creation of an associated TLM 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:
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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.
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- 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 TLM Data for a business application or application service
You can manually refresh the TLM 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 TLM data for a business application or application service and Run a scheduled job to generate TLM 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. This is the earliest date when a technology lifecycle risk is to
happen. You can export the information to Excel, CSV, JSON, or PDF as required.
The data in the Technology lifecycle risks table is fetched from the TLM Discovered Technologies [sn_apm_tpm_discovered_technology] table.
- Execute the Populate Technology Lifecycle Risks scheduled job to generate the TLM technology lifecycle risks. This scheduled job populates the risk scores for business applications (BA), application services (AS), software products, and hardware models. The scores are calculated 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 TLM technology risk.
View TLM analysis run logs
You can track the progress of TLM 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.
TLM lifecycle timelines on Gantt chart
For the Technology Lifecycle Management (TLM), 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 TLM phase start date of either the software products or hardware models are rolled up. This calculates the TLM phase start date of the overall application service. That is, the earliest TLM phase start date of any software product or hardware model is taken as the TLM phase start date of the application service, overall. For more details, see TLM lifecycle timelines on Gantt chart and View TLM and TRM lifecycle timelines on the Gantt chart.
Data visualization for TLM data
In the Enterprise Architecture Workspace Dashboard, the 'Top 10 business applications with normalized TLM risk' widget shows the top 10 business applications having normalized TLM risk. For more details, see Explore the Enterprise Architecture Workspace dashboard.