Change Is The Hardest Thing

It is human nature to resist change, or at the very least be overwhelmed by it. Yet the phrase adapt or die has never been more relevant than it is to the IT organization where change is the one constant with new devices, systems, and applications constantly appearing in the enterprise either organically or by acquisition. Unfortunately, as many businesses have discovered over time, keeping up with infrastructure changes is an ongoing battle of which too many companies find they are on the losing side because they don't have a baseline understanding of what their network resources are.Simply put, if the IT department doesn't have a good handle on its assets, how can the organization make changes with any degree of confidence as to what the impact of those alterations will be on the environment? Yet I bet the majority of companies would balk at saying they have an accurate record of all their IT resources. And in today's very dynamic networking environments, companies need an exact accounting of their technology assets to use to manage changes effectively. Hence the swelling demand for configuration management databases (CMDBs), repositories of configuration information (CIs) system administrators can use to better understand how potential changes will impact the business.

Research shows that more than one-third of the largest U.S.-based businesses are already deeply entrenched in CMDB rollouts, which can be notoriously challenging and that number is expected to continue to grow at a rapid rate. However, many businesses are putting off a CMDB deployment simply because they fear the complexity. Admittedly this can be a complicated process but there is support. Check out my interview with Dustin McNabb, enterprise management software vendor and CMDB maker Managed Objects to find out how businesses can get more from their CMDB faster. And read about Managed Objects recently released federated CMDB.

Of course, no company is going to implement a CMDB overnight which is exactly McNabb's point. Instead, companies can actually deploy a CMDB over time and gain value from it in weeks instead of months.

As always, thanks for reading. Have a great week.