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Survivor's Guide to 2007: Network and Systems Management: Page 6 of 12

Attaining this cosmic view of both desired and discovered states requires more political will than technical insight: Removing the clutter of toolset redundancy, enforcing sharing and assigning responsibilities to maintain sources of record are the greatest CMDB challenges.

Of course, this will take time. Lacking a phased approach to building a more consistent, collaborative environment, the CMDB could, in the words of one skeptic, turn out to be "a Utopian vision that will collapse of its own weight."

Maybe. But for now, CMDB adoption is steadily on the rise, despite ongoing confusion (see chart above). Most IT groups are still wrestling with what philosophers would call ontological questions--metaphysical musings about the definition and direction of the CMDB itself. What is a CMDB? What should it be? And why is it probably the single most significant bellwether of the cataclysmic transformation of IT management?

Split Personality

Enterprise Management Associates found that interest in CMDB adoption has outstripped interest and awareness in ITIL. This is both disturbing, as once again process considerations have been shoved aside for technology, and heartening because it indicates that the age-old need to integrate and reconcile management investments is finally getting, qualitatively, a new life.