Second, SCM can help prevent unplanned changes or misconfigurations by providing a structure for formal change-control policies and mechanisms that allow changes only from the SCM system. Unplanned changes often lead to the app outages or security breaches that cause significant hits to revenue and reputation. SCM also can let IT speed recovery by quickly rolling a system back to a previous configuration. According to an NWC reader poll on configuration management, 15 percent of respondents suffer change-related outages every month, and 32 percent experience them two or three times a year.
Third, SCM functions as a central repository for managing and tracking configurations and changes. This feature alone can be invaluable, since many IT shops track configurations manually or don't have a repository for configuration data at all. Fully 23 percent of reader poll respondents use a combination of spreadsheets, Visio diagrams, databases and other IT tools to monitor configurations. These ad hoc tracking systems must be updated manually and aren't easily shared among IT constituencies.
Finally, SCM can assist with audit and compliance. Because all server activities are recorded, IT can compare change histories against a variety of policies, industry best practices and critical vulnerabilities.
An SCM system provides these benefits through two fundamental functions: distribution (provisioning) and configuration auditing. Distribution includes installing the OS (sometimes called bare-metal provisioning) and software patches. Some SCM suites also can distribute COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) or custom applications.
Configuration auditing starts with discovery of server configurations and tracking of subsequent changes. Mature enterprises also can use SCM to enable other capabilities, such as IT services dependency mapping and change-management workflow, but these functions are beyond the scope of this article.
