Economic downturns often serve as catalysts for the replacement of tasks that were formally done by people with some form of automation. A good example was after September 11, when the airlines were struggling, one area they all invested in was online and kiosk based check in systems so that they could have less employees per passenger.

For some industries, they have been so successful that practically their only interaction with their customers is through IT, e.g. banks, insurance companies, online retailers etc.  

This means that in some cases the only contact that their company has with their customers is through some kind of IT system. These systems also make it easier for customers to change providers.  

In this case, the customer facing applications provided by many companies provide the make or break experience that determines revenue, retention and satisfaction of the customers. A good experience means that the customer will want to do business again. A bad experience means they will go elsewhere - and this technology makes it easier for them to do so. 

For example, I was recently interested in an online trading system. The first vendor that I tried had a convoluted system to register where certain information had to be faxed to them and verified during business hours. Even though they had the brand recognition and good pricing, I eventually went with another vendor because I could sign up and start trading on the spot.  

In all of these cases, the IT system is the ambassador for the company.  

In my experience, not a lot of IT staff really think about that. This includes all aspects of such a system, from design, implementation, release, maintenance, performance, availability, security and so on. 

Not only that, but many customers do not foster a customer mindset - not just for when internal users call in, but really thinking about who the customer is, what they are trying to do and how they can make it simpler, easier and faster for their customer. 

Are your IT systems good ambassadors for your company? Really?

While many IT organizations embark on CMDB projects.   Few succeed.   Why?   The obvious answer is that their CMDB turns into a junkyard and cannot deliver any meaningful value.

Why does this happen?

The first part is that a lot of CMDB projects start out without a clearly defined problem that they are trying to solve.   Instead, they focus more on the supposition that ITIL says a CMDB is needed, and the vendors say a CMDB is needed, so a CMDB we shall have!  Or alternatively, they try to be the silver bullet for all the ills in the IT organization.   These projects are doomed from the start.

The second is that they often over complicate the CMDB.   Instead of populating it with just enough data to solve that original problem, it becomes a dumping ground for every piece of information that they can possibly dig up - e.g. doing SNMP sweeps of the network and dumping port or NIC card information in the CMDB..   Are you going to create a change request on one NIC card?  No.. you would do it on the server, so why have it in the CMDB?

A third problem is how the CMDB is populated and updated.   A totally manual approach is also a sure route to fail except in the smallest shops because nobody can keep it up to date, and even if there is a process, during busy times people will ignore it.   Dependency mapping technologies are also not the complete answer as they are not 100% accurate and can over populate the CMDB with junk too?   So what is the answer?   Probably somewhere in the middle.    At least identifying the key infrastructure components and the software that runs on them is a good start.   Your existing monitoring tools can probably tell you this to start with.   Maybe a network scan can also identify infrastructure that is not being monitored too.   But this information should be reviewed before its just dumped into the CMDB.

In summary then, if you don't want a junkyard in your company, consider the following:

1. Do you really need a CMDB?   What is the problem that you're trying to solve?  Is there another way?     Don't listen to the CMDB vendors here.    To a man with a hammer CMDB, every problem looks like a nail sales opportunity.   
2. Clearly define the problem and make sure that its agreed and the expectations are set. 
3. What is the minimum set of data that I can populate the CMDB to solve the problem that was defined in #2
4. How can I automate the data in my CMDB in an accurate way?   Even minor inaccuracy in the CMDB makes it a junkyard
5. How can I measure the benefits and costs of the CMDB to make it worthwhile?

Over the last few years, Microsoft has entered the ITSM markeplace, both through their monitoring efforts (MOM/SCOM) and their upcoming service desk?   But are they are real player and will they be?  I'm not so sure.

Its certainly true that MS have made a lot of traction with the monitoring solutions, especially at the low end of the market.   Basic server monitoring is a commodity and they have been able to compete effectively on price.   At the end of the day, this isn't really a sustainable model in a commodity market because somebody else will come in and do it better/cheaper.   MOM/SCOM also has a reputation for struggling in enterprise class deployments so if something else were available with the right price point then MOM/SCOM would likely end up like the dodo.  

I think part of the problem is that MS seem to be in a position that the market do not understand their strategy (if they have one) for solving business problems in ITSM.   Providing a cheap and cheerful monitoring solution is not that, especially as cheap solutions from MS are rarely cheerful.   One only needs to think to MS Works or home editions of windows.  

Their service desk has still not hit the market, but has their time to market mean that they've missed the mark?   I'm sure they'll get some decent market share just through price again, but is that sustainable?   I'm not so sure.   Will it be Saas?  will it introduce groundbreaking new technologies?   Will it bundle workflows of all the best practices for a service desk?   Its doubtful that it will do all these things.  

At the end of the day, it ultimately seems that there is not a cohesive strategy for helping organizations improve their ability to deliver business services.   Its also not clear why they didn't just acquire the functionality that they wanted.    Until they can get their act together, I just don't see MS being an influential player in this market, let alone dominating.   It would be interesting if some of the bigger ITSM vendors started giving away server monitoring for free (e.g. IBM, BMC, CA, HP, CPWR etc) and making their money more on the business level solutions.  Something like this would pretty much stop the MS momentum in its tracks.

If the CMDB can claim one thing its that its been in the 'news' a lot - Nothing gets a group of ITSM consultants/practitioners going than talk about the CMDB, its value, different approaches and so on. But does the hype translate into reality, or is the CMDB just another one of a series of IT fads that explode onto the scene, but are forgotten only a few years later?  

Even with the more pragmatic approach in ITIL v3, the CMDB continues to be over hyped. Despite all its attention, I saw a statistic at the recent Gartner conference that only 5% of the fortune 500 has a fully implemented and working CMDB? 5%! What a poor hype to reality ratio!  

This ties in with my observations too. In the last five years or so, I've only seen one CMDB that was really delivering value for that business, and fully integrated into their ITSM processes. When I heard how much time, effort, resources and money they put into it, I had to go and sit down for a while and have a glass of water, so while it was adding value, the ROI was very questionable. But outside that, I had seen a litany CMDB projects that either end up being only somewhat useful, or fall by the wayside and slowly get abandoned as they are not updated or maintained. Unfortunately, I also saw quite a few projects start simply because 'ITIL says we should'. No wonder these failed. 

But back to the premise of this article - will the current financial crisis give the CMDB hype the cold shower that it deserves? I think so. 

It’s certainly not going to eliminate the CMDB, but I do believe that when IT organizations are asked to cut budget, one of the first candidates is going to be the ongoing CMDB effort. the project probably won't get scrapped yet, but it probably will get put on hold, and then die a slow death starved for resources and attention.  

I also think that new projects are going to have to demonstrate a clear ROI, and without using funny math, its pretty difficult to justify the CMDB. I think the CMDB hype has flourished mostly because of a view that the CMDB was needed for other facets of ITSM, like BSM, Change Management and so on, but I think people are waking up to the fact that to implement a CMDB to solve these problems is like using a tank to kill a cockroach.  

It is going to be interesting to see. Many ITSM vendors (BMC in particular) have aligned their considerable marketing machine around the CMDB concept. Will they be toning down the message over the next few years?

We're already seeing more and more skepticism from the analyst community too, with finally some acknowledgement that the CMDB is not the center of the universe and that its not a necessity for most IT shops.   Of course there are cases where the CMDB does make more sense, such as during major M&A activity, or data center moves, but even there,  other approaches can be considered.

In summary, I think we're going to see the hype die down, with more focus on delivering value for the business and saving costs and less on internally facing systems with questionable value.