For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Inquiry Insight: IT Management Software

Sustained Activity In Spite Of The Economic Downturn

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, May 13, 2009

Forrester analyzed the IT management software (ITMS) inquiries received from vendors and end users in 2007 and 2008. Inquiries are a good indicator of the tactical issues faced by Forrester's clients and of the activity surrounding a given subject matter. . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Topic Overview: IT Management Software

by Natalie Lambert, November 13, 2007

Today's organizations are trying to keep up with the continuous pace of technology change and growing business requirements. The importance of management technologies to monitor and manage the wide array of hardware and software systems deployed in the . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

CMDB: Get Ready, Get Set, Go!

CMDB Is A Means To An End, Not An End In Itself

by Evelyn Hubbert, October 1, 2007

Most large organizations today use some form of IT change and incident tracking system, making an average of about 500 changes per month. With such a high number of changes, the process of change management becomes critical, and a solid base of information . . .

For Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals

The Change And Configuration Management Software Market

Efficiency Through Controlling IT Assets And Managing Change

by Evelyn Hubbert, Natalie Lambert, June 12, 2007

The challenges IT organizations are facing today in maintaining a complex and dynamically changing IT infrastructure can no longer be supported by manual change control solutions. Tasks such as operating system updates, client refreshes, server updates . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Who Has Changed My Network?

The Discipline Of Network Change And Configuration Management

by Evelyn Hubbert, February 14, 2007

Network downtime results in a significant and immediate revenue loss in today's organizations. Large enterprises can fritter away a significant chunk of their annual revenues — tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each year. In Forrester's experience, . . .

IBM Ships Its CMDB With An Extra "C"

Collation Is Now Part Of Tivoli's Change/Configuration Management Database

by Peter O'Neill, Jean-Pierre Garbani, July 20, 2006

IBM has been a latecomer to application dependency discovery. After acquiring Collation, the work of turning the technology into a full-featured CMDB and integrating it with the Tivoli product suite was a daunting task. IBM today has overcome these challenges . . .

CMDB: Let's Get Physical

Process Improvement And Current Configuration Management Databases

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, June 19, 2006

The configuration management database (CMDB) is a key ingredient of service management — whether considered in its process incarnation (IT Infrastructure Library, ITIL) or in its technology and product implementation in business service management (BSM). . . .

Mercury Announces New Change Control Management

New Solution Shows How Best Practices Can Translate Into Products

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, May 1, 2006

The net effect of Mercury Interactive's Business Technology Optimization (BTO) initiative is to bridge the gap between the two pillars of IT — development and production. Mercury aims to accomplish this with a series of solutions that manage application . . .

The Infrastructure Management Pendulum Is Still In Full Swing

by Thomas Mendel, Ph.D., Peter O'Neill, April 13, 2006

The infrastructure management market has consolidated rapidly over the past few years: The 11 largest vendors have absorbed a total of 72 smaller software companies, laying out more than $17 billion to do so. Forrester anticipates that this consolidation . . .

The "Just Enough" CMDB

Implementing A CMDB Is Not A Five-Year Project

by Thomas Mendel, Ph.D., Jean-Pierre Garbani, April 12, 2006

The convergence of more structured management processes, such as ITIL, and technical innovations like application dependency discovery has brought configuration management and the concept of the configuration management database (CMDB) to the attention . . .

Firms Must Take ITIL Beyond IT Operational Goals

Service Providers Can Help With Change Management Issues

by Richard Peynot, March 14, 2006

The ITIL concept is gaining significant traction with European enterprise IT groups. Most ITIL adopters have achieved the operational results they were looking for — in particular, better quality of delivery in IT operations — despite common internal . . .

Compuware Gets Stronger In Service Management

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, December 19, 2005

Compuware's new release of the Vantage suite reinforces the product's capabilities in key areas, such as end user experience and application server monitoring. It also introduces a configuration management database (CMDB), based on Collation's Confignia, . . .

IBM Will Add Collation To Its CMDB Toolbox

by Galen Schreck, November 17, 2005

IBM announced yesterday that it would acquire application discovery and dependency mapping specialist Collation, although the financial terms were not disclosed. Collation is one of a few firms with products that focus on the discovery of complex configuration . . .

IT Asset Management, ITIL, And The CMDB: Paving The Way For BSM

by Robert McNeill, Thomas Mendel, Ph.D., October 24, 2005

The journey toward running IT more like a business through business service management (BSM) requires the data feeds and processes that enable BSM — IT asset management data, ITIL processes, and application dependency auto-discovery technologies that . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

BMC Paves The Service Desk Road Map

CMDB At The Heart Of Integration Strategy

by Chip Gliedman, October 11, 2005

In the face of shifting customer priorities, BMC has increased its focus in IT service management (ITSM). The vendor has begun to execute on its Atrium strategy, tying tools together over a common configuration management database (CMDB), service model, . . .

Raising The Bar For ITIL And CMDB Implementations

by Thomas Mendel, Ph.D., Jean-Pierre Garbani, June 22, 2005

It seems not a day goes by without an announcement related to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and configuration management databases (CMDBs). For the past two years, demand for better control of the production side of IT has driven the demand for . . .

Centralized CMDBs: Don't Buy Into The Hype

by Thomas Mendel, Ph.D., March 16, 2005

Interest in ITIL from $1 billion-plus companies is spreading like wildfire. At the heart of ITIL lies the configuration management database (CMDB). However, it is unrealistic to expect the feasibility of a centralized CMDB for larger corporations anytime . . .

Case Study: Autonomic Software

Policy Based, Cross-Platform System Management

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, November 22, 2004

Change and configuration management is clearly emerging as one of the top investment areas for IT operations. Management software vendors have been quick at picking up the trend, as witnessed by their acquisitions of smaller players in the space; typical . . .

Change And Configuration Management

The Next Battlefield On The Road To Organic IT

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, Thomas Mendel, Ph.D., November 8, 2004

Over the past 12 months, the perceived importance of enterprise infrastructure management technologies has increased steadily within Forrester's client base. The first wave of service-level management and business services management implementations is . . .

Improving Event Management In Business Service Management

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, September 28, 2004

Events are the fundamental elements of IT infrastructure real-time monitoring. Any status changed, threshold crossed in device usage, or step performed in a process generates an event that needs to be reported, analyzed, and acted upon by IT operations. . . .

Infrastructure Change Management Is The Key To Business Service Management

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, September 10, 2004

Today's enterprise is increasingly dependent on IT, to the point that operating without its services is nearly impossible. This has two direct consequences: 1) IT presents a risk for the business that needs to be managed effectively, and 2) IT costs have . . .

Best Practices In Problem Management

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, June 23, 2004

IT's value to the business must be expressed in terms of its reduction of operational risks, not in terms of its functional advantages. This risk management approach to IT requires strong emphasis on IT service delivery. IT operations organizations must . . .

Best Practices For Infrastructure Change Management

Regain Control Of Runaway IT Infrastructures

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, March 25, 2004

In IT, change is an engine of progress, as well as a source of doom. End user applications, operational disciplines, and IT vendors are major sources of continuous change. While application software change control is a relatively mature process, many . . .

Assessing an Enterprise Change Management System

by Uttam Narsu, Kitty Bryant, July 30, 2003

Without a well-designed change management system, enterprises may err on the side of rigidity, choking the ability of IT to implement change. Without insightful impact analysis, IT may implement changes that will have to be re-implemented at great cost.

Mercury Interactive's Acquisition of Kintana Will Give Customers Integrated Resource Management

by Margo Visitacion, Uttam Narsu, June 24, 2003

Current customers of Kintana should see significant enhancements in Kintana's product lines, once the connection between Mercury's BTO initiative and Kintana becomes more fully worked out.