ITAM and CCM - A Unified Approach

TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: IT ASSET AND CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

IT Asset Management andConfiguration Management: A Unified Approach

David A. Messineo CA SERVICES

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary

SECTION 1: CHALLENGE 2The Challenge of Performing Effective AssetLifecycle Management

The Division of Asset and ConfigurationManagement

SECTION 2: OPPORTUNITY 3Crossing the Chasm

Value

Processes

Management Information

People and Processes

People and Technology

SECTION 3: BENEFITS 9Achieving Interoperability to UnifyManagement Activities

SECTION 4: CONCLUSIONS 10

SECTION 5: ABOUT THE AUTHOR 11

TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: IT ASSET AND CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT 1

Executive SummaryChallenge

For decades, enterprises tracked resource investments using fixed asset managementsystems and related practices. However, as the concept of IT Asset Management grew inpopularity, greater emphasis was placed on understanding the cost of a technology assetthroughout its lifecycle. Moreover, ITIL® best practices have outlined the fundamentalprocesses of IT Asset, Configuration and Change Management and how organizationsshould implement them to better manage IT assets, resources and services over time. Yet,despite an understanding of the overarching goals of these activities, and the steps neededto achieve them, many organizations struggle to align the responsibilities surrounding ITAsset, Configuration and Change Management to the proper people, processes andtechnology.

Opportunity

In order to effectively resolve these difficulties, organizations need visibility into theunderlying differences among IT Asset, Configuration and Change Management. With thisinsight at hand, they can then allocate responsibilities specific to each activity to the properauthorities and begin to foster an environment where people, processes and technologywork in concert to improve the management of an asset’s lifecycle. To help organizationsachieve these goals, CA provides a host of IT Asset, Configuration and ChangeManagement technologies that are based on ITIL best practices and can be implementedto streamline and automate these processes. Leveraging CA’s Unified Service Model, thesesolutions build consistency in the application and integration of technology across all rolesby providing a 360-degree perspective of assets and asset-related information.

Benefits

Achieving a clear understanding of the unique organizational responsibilities for IT Asset,Configuration and Change Management helps you shrink the gap separating theseprocesses. Doing so improves decision making as it pertains to the provisioning of assets,resources and configuration items — and their impact on your organization’s serviceplatform — and allows it to be unified under a single comprehensive strategy. Utilizing CAtechnology to drive these activities helps you unify asset and service lifecycle managementand allow them to support each other as complementary processes.

The Challenge of Performing Effective Asset Lifecycle ManagementFor decades, enterprises tracked investments in physical assets, capital and other resourcesusing fixed asset management systems. However, the acceleration of IT costs over recent yearshas necessitated that technology assets be managed with a more meticulous, granular viewthat promotes greater attention to detail.

Traditional fixed asset management generally focused only on the front- and back-endprocesses of procurement and disposal, which accounts for less than 20 percent of the totalcost of an asset over time. With a concentration on tracking the costs associated with theentire asset lifecycle — the total cost of ownership (TCO) — modern IT Asset Managementwas developed as the mechanism to improve the comprehensive management of assets fromend to end.

Though it made great enhancements to the process of managing assets — and helpedbusinesses better track TCO along the way — IT Asset Management is not enough. As ITdepartments become more complex, TCO began to reflect only a fraction of the TotalEconomic Risk (TER) related to the usage of an asset. With this fact in mind, organizations arenow demanding a financial management strategy that presents opportunities tosimultaneously reduce costs and protect revenue of their technology investments.

Because assets are assembled into sets of resources that ultimately become business services,there is a direct relationship between the TER of an asset and its related IT services. Therefore,any sufficient financial strategy must manage the risks associated with not only an asset’slifecycle, but also a service’s lifecycle, as well.

To effectively protect revenue means enterprises must understand that the provisioning ofassets today impacts the service platform — and business architecture — of tomorrow.

The Division of IT Asset and Configuration ManagementITIL best practices outline the processes that should be implemented to support a service’slifecycle, especially through Change and Configuration Management. As they pertain tosupporting the configuration of services, Change Management is the mechanism to review andcontrol risks, and Configuration Management centers around managing involved assets. Withinthis context, assets are identified as Configuration Items (CIs) and are stored in a ConfigurationManagement Data Base (CMDB).

While the risks associated with an asset are assessed in terms of its capital value, ITIL definesits economic impact as a resource for the service — meaning that the cost of the CI can be manytimes its capital value. For example, a malfunctioning server worth $10,000 could be the point offailure that negatively impacts a service supporting business revenue in excess of $1 million anhour.

Understanding this connection is a critical step in effectively forging the relationships betweenassets and services. ITIL expresses these dependencies by managing the availability of assetsthrough IT Asset Management and the integrity of services through ConfigurationManagement.

SECTION 1: CHALLENGE

2 TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: IT ASSET AND CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

Unfortunately, the past several years have seen a growing rift place undue strain on the crucialconnection between IT Asset Management and Configuration Management. Furthermore,many conflicts between the concepts exist because of confusion in terminology, accountabilityand process coordination regarding implementing and leveraging technology. These conflictsare exacerbated by a fundamental misunderstanding of the roles associated each process, asexemplified by such questions as:

• What’s the difference between an asset and a CI?

• Which information repository, the asset inventory or the CMDB, is the source of “truth?”

• What information should be stored and maintained in each repository?

• What processes contribute information to each repository?

Worse yet, Change and Configuration Management are often confused, and when takentogether, seem to compete with the concept of Installs, Moves, Adds and Changes (IMACs) inIT Asset Management. Acknowledging the differences — and how they relate to tasks,accountability and responsibilities — in these very distinct practices has been a point ofstruggle for many organizations.

Crossing the ChasmTo begin fostering a greater understanding of the relationship between IT Asset andConfiguration Management, organizations must first clarify the differences and conflictsbetween the two on several levels — from functions that support services, to the datadefinitions that allow the functions to be managed — within the context of three main areas:

• Value

• Processes

• Management Information

ValueIn IT Asset Management, a given asset exists at a planned, owned (authorized) and discovered(audited) state, but its value is always rooted in time-based costing. Conversely, ConfigurationManagement establishes value in terms of the CI’s assignment in the service portfolio,recognizing that baseline value is reset as changes occur to the CI and its assignments overtime.

Processes IT Asset Management addresses the availability of assets on a per-cost and per-policy basis,while Change Management is the mechanism that reviews and controls risks as a result ofmodifications to the service make-up. Meanwhile, Configuration Management focuses onmanaging the readiness of related qualified assets, as well as the integrity of related services.


SECTION 2: OPPORTUNITY


Management InformationIT Asset Management encourages the use of standards to simplify the provisioning process.However, when an asset is tracked as a CI, it is because it requires that a specific managedprocess be in place before changes can be made to it — a direct sign that a service must beauthorized by accounting for the risks associated with the assets it encompasses. By viewing aservice this way, management requires IT to understand relationships between and amongassets as critical resources.

With an understanding of these fundamental differences at hand, crossing the chasm thenrequires addressing two simultaneously different, but interrelated, paradigms of:

• People and Processes

• People and Technology

People and Processes As they relate to people and processes, IT Asset, Configuration and Change Managementpossess unique contexts that, when understood both individually and collectively, help to fostera greater understanding of how the three work together to guide IT activities.

IT ASSET MANAGEMENT IT Asset Management utilizes the concepts of ownership and availability to gain focus from aproperty perspective. This process manages support costs by encouraging the use of standardsto simplify provisioning. By building a financial strategy that aligns cash flow and expensemanagement, IT Asset Management ensures transparency of these responsibilities andprovides visibility to shareholders, auditors and government agencies. In addition, this strategyapplies an overarching fiscal direction to the provisioning of IT resources.

CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT Configuration Management addresses the assembly of resources that build and supportservices, the importance assets bring to service resources and how asset relationshipscollectively build service value. The financial and business impacts related to ConfigurationManagement are generally much greater than that of IT Asset Management, because anydisruption in a given service can have a significant effect on the bottom line.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT Change Management acts as a complementary process to Configuration Management thatensures all changes made to a CI are approved and adhere to strict Request for Change (RFC)policies — in addition to the necessary activities of impact analysis and conditional approvals.By leveraging the CMDB to identify CIs and their interdependencies, Change and ConfigurationManagement are able to work together to manage the modification and deployment stages inthe service lifecycle.

PROCESS ALIGNMENT Finally, crossing the chasm requires that the three processes encourage IT and the business itsupports to align their efforts to meet the objectives of the organization. By simultaneouslybalancing two seemingly opposing goals — maintaining a stable, functional environment, whileadopting changes — these three management processes effectively become the engine thatdrives organizational agility and move the economics of IT from costs to investments andresources to coordination.

Aligning these processes demands an auditing structure that ensures cooperation andeffectiveness. Auditing takes place for each of the processes, and requires steps at each level tobe successful. Specifically:

• Auditing IT Asset Management requires the reconciliation of provisioned and discoveredassets to ensure the assets identified in the organization are, in fact, the ones that wereoriginally provisioned.

• Auditing Configuration Management compares a CI’s actual state to its authorized state —which is generally noted in the CMDB through the use of baselines and versioning —toidentify and reconcile the CI against a change order and ensure the proper values are beingtracked.

• Auditing Change Management identifies actual change outcomes in light of specific requestsby reviewing the planned state of assets or CIs, with the discovered state of assets or CIsand creating logs on the various systems that have been, or are expected to be, changed.

From a people and process perspective, crossing the chasm means that individuals in differingroles correctly associate the artifacts of their responsibility areas to the services dependentupon them. Because these artifacts often represent property or entitlements of the business,this requires the definition of an asset to be more highly inclusive.

In particular, management must acknowledge that assets exist in both tangible and intangibleforms — patent and service versus hardware and software, for example. Typically, theprevailing definition used in IT Asset Management does not adequately cover that range. Thebenefit of using a CI, however, is that it expands the definitions of assets to simultaneouslyrepresent management, IT, users and service providers across the value chain.

Ultimately, the importance of recognizing assets as CIs lies in the ability to proactively protectstakeholders from unnecessary risks by acknowledging that a change to an asset may impact agiven service. When an asset is managed as a CI, it assures both IT and the business that amanaged change process will be in place and that the coordination needed for service successwill not be undermined by organizational gaps in IT awareness.


People and TechnologyCrossing the chasm in terms of people and technology poses its own set of challenges. Muchof the management automation software that has been developed in the past 10 years wasbuilt around the concept that IT Asset Management and Configuration Management wereseparate duties. Often, such tools could only inconsistently support the roles of otherprocesses.

Integrating these tools did not always close the gap, because underlying data sets usuallyignore the differences between CIs and assets, making reconciling the views nearly impossible.But without the support of common sources, interoperability requires that various systems betactically accessed to build a comprehensive view.

CA’s development of a Unified Service Model alleviates many of these issues. The model buildsconsistency in the application and the integration of technology across all roles. It builds a 360-degree perspective of an asset or a CI — whichever lens you prefer to use.

Adopting this model begins by following simple rules about the distinctive responsibilities ofboth IT Asset Management and Configuration Management, to ensure that the distinction issupported by the definition of roles. From there, the task is to apply processes appropriately soservices relying on assets are valued and controlled through management of configurations andchanges.

For successful service management, CA recommends the following when discussing thedifferences between assets and CIs:

• When referring to IT Asset Management, assume the focus is on tangible assets. Ifintangible assets are managed, ensure they are directly related to IT processes.

• When referring to Configuration Management — and CIs in particular — focus on those CIsthat tend to be more intangible in nature.

CA recommends the following for implementing the practice of IT Asset Management:

• If reconciliation is executed between an owned (authorized) set of assets and a discovered(audited) set of assets, it should be performed outside of the Configuration Managementprocess, and not based on asset attributes that are managed through change control.

• Changes in asset availability — whether driven physically, logically or contractually — shouldbe reviewed to determine if the change will impact the services managed in ConfigurationManagement.

CA recommends the following for implementing the practice of Configuration Management:

• Assets should be managed as CIs only if they are under change control and present a risk tothe business from a services perspective.

• CIs should be identified through a focus on those services and the supporting infrastructurethat are critical to the business.

• Not all assets are CIs and not all CIs are assets — however, should a specific asset beidentified as a CI, the proper sequence for establishing the CI should be to associate theasset record to a CI record in the CMDB through Change Management.



• Discovery tools should not create CI records unless part of a specific strategy. CIrelationships are generally used to keep the CMDB up to date, and all applicationspossessing that authority need to be specifically identified.

• Synchronization and reconciliation of CI information should focus on the attributes andrelationships that inform the Change Management process and impact the management of aservice’s lifecycle

Currently, several CA tools leverage these recommendations to provide support for IT Asset,Configuration and Change Management, including:

• IT Asset Management — primary solutions:– CA Asset Portfolio Manager (APM) — Outlines the ownership of property information as

it relates to owned (authorized) assets.– CA Asset & Discovery — Reveals the discovered (audited) state of IT assets. – CA Software Compliance Manager (SwCM) — Understands the software licensing

characteristic of assets.

• IT Asset Management — supporting solutions:– CA Service Catalog — Supports the asset provisioning process by standardizing offerings.– CA Asset Import Tool & Data Adaptors — Imports asset-related information contained in

third-party systems.

• Configuration Management — primary solutions:– CA Service Desk — Manages Requests for Change (RFC) to ensure that CI impacts are

identified and proper approvals are in place.– CA Configuration Management Database (CMDB) — Provides reporting and visualization

into the relationships of configuration items (CI).– CA CMDB/Cohesion — Discovers CI relationships between applications and their

supporting resources.

• Configuration Management — supporting solutions:– Federated Adaptors — Imports CI data from third-party sources.– CA Software Change Manager Distributed (SwCM-D) — Supports integration with

software change management processes.– CA NSM/Spectrum/Wily — Provides integration with operational tools that discover

“physical” and “logical” CI relationships.– CMDB Mainframe Adaptors — Transmits CI-relevant mainframe info into the CMDB.

Collectively, these tools can be configured to orchestrate the proper adoption of processes thatsupport both asset lifecycle management and service lifecycle management. This includesother ITIL processes, such as Incident, Problem and Release Management.

Achieving Interoperability to Unify Management ActivitiesAchieving interoperability among the disciplines of IT Asset, Configuration and ChangeManagement allow these processes to become both meaningful and sustainable.Interoperability, however, requires a separation of process from outcome. Enabling a unifiedview of IT Asset, Configuration and Change Management helps you understand how the actsof asset lifecycle management and service lifecycle management result in specific outcomesthat improve overall business processes.

CA’s IT Asset, Configuration and Change Management technology employs an integratedUnified Service Model that helps accomplish the goals of each process independently, whileoffering the interoperability that eliminates departmental gaps and allowing these activities towork in unison to support a common goal.

By understanding the differences in organizational responsibilities for IT Asset, Configurationand Change Management, the chasm spreading among these processes can be crossed, andeven eliminated entirely. Moreover, decisions about the provisioning of assets, resources andconfiguration items — and their impact on the service platform of tomorrow — can be unifiedunder a single comprehensive strategy, instead of operating in a vacuum of disparateorganizational silos.

Leveraging CA technology to enable these processes helps you ensure that asset and servicelifecycle management are viewed as interconnected activities that can co-exist and supporteach other as equal partners. As such, the ability to continually understand how assetsassemble into resources that support critical business services will become a core competency.

About the AuthorDavid A. Messineo is an IT Service Management (ITSM) practitioner with more than 20 years'experience developing and deploying enterprise-level software solutions focused on ITmanagement. David is currently a Practice Director at CA, where he focuses on developingbest practices for the consistent delivery of large-scale implementations. David holds both anITIL Manager and an eSCM Certification.

To learn more about the CA CMDB architecture and technical approach, visit ca.com/service-mgmt.

SECTION 3: BENEFITS


David A. Messineo CA SERVICES

SECTION 5

SECTION 4: CONCLUSIONS

Notes


CA (NSD: CA), one of the world’s leading independent,enterprise management software companies, unifies andsimplifies complex information technology (IT) managementacross the enterprise for greater business results. With ourEnterprise IT Management vision, solutions and expertise,we help customers effectively govern, manage and secure IT.

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ITAM and CCM - A Unified Approach