Generally, CMDBs populated by discovery tools alone simply aren't usable. They fail because they contain massive amounts of irrelevant information. You avoid this pitfall by correctly populating your CMDB in four simple steps.

Because business success is tightly fused with technology, IT costs are rising, and this trend is expected to continue. As a result, businesses are demanding that IT be more than a static resource. IT is expected to deliver business results with a measurable contribution to the organization's bottom line.

ITIL provides a framework of customizable best practice initiatives that help organizations consistently deliver high-quality IT services. Effective ITIL implementation adds value to the IT infrastructure and improves business and service delivery.

Composite applications can provide multiple benefits, such as business agility, better utilization of business software assets through code reuse, development efficiencies, and cost optimization. Once companies are skilled at deploying them, many find that they roll out new applications and integrations faster, while maximizing the value of "tried and true" software components.

Application management requires visibility from multiple vantage points within the IT enterprise, combined with a centralized information store that pulls the technology pieces of the application puzzle into a coherent whole.

To meet the challenges of intense competition and increasing customer demands, companies must tightly align their IT service management with business issues and priorities. This paper outlines the maturity steps involved in the progression towards proactive Business Service Management (BSM) and explains how ASG's metaCMDB helps secure its seamless adoption.

Application Portfolio Optimization (APO) provides executives with tools and information to assess the quality and condition of application assets as well as a means for understanding the impact of proposed application changes.

Improved business productivity often requires more efficient IT and more efficient IT cannot be achieved without a better understanding of the way business services are run and delivered. Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) have emerged as a central component for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and business service management (BSM).

As IT evolves towards a more business-aligned position, it must seek out new ways of working that support more effective operations, service creation, and service delivery. These include technologies, processes, and a culture that supports higher levels of accountability, as well as more dynamic responsiveness to business needs.

End-user expectations and high levels of performance against Service Level Agreements (SLAs) must be achieved or organizations risk the loss of business. This paper details key capabilities needed for successful end-user monitoring and provides critical considerations for delivering a successful end-user experience.

Targeted at IT executives responsible for both the financial and ultimate project oversight of an enterprise CMDB initiative, this white paper sets expectations for ROI calculations for CMDB initiatives, provides basic ROI best practices, and gives readers sufficient insight to move forward with their CMDB project.

Virtualization is now mainstream. Enterprises continue to heavily invest in virtualization projects and while short term hardware and cost saving benefits are being achieved, few enterprises achieve anywhere close to the full potential of virtualization as they struggle with new problems like assuring performance and availability, preventing VM sprawl, and maximizing resource utilization

Business Service Management (BSM) is of growing importance in the IT world. By managing IT systems according to the business services they support - like order entry, online sales, shipping, or customer service - IT is able to deliver on real business goals like providing competitive advantage, improving customer satisfaction, driving revenue growth, and increasing shareholder value.

Configuration Management is at the heart of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) and forms the foundation for Business Service Management (BSM). In fact, it is safe to say that neither the ITIL IT Service Management (ITSM) processes nor the BSM functions that leverage ITSM can be efficiently carried out without accurate configuration and dependency information.

Effective workload automation that provides complete management level visibility into real-time events impacting the delivery of IT services is needed by the data center more than ever before. The traditional job scheduling approach, with an uncoordinated set of tools that often requires reactive manual intervention to minimize service disruptions, is failing more than ever due to todays complex world of IT with its multiple platforms, applications and virtualized resources.

Virtualization continues to grow at 20 percent or more per year, but it is not expected to overtake existing physical architectures at least through 2010. This white paper examines the unique challenges of virtualization and offers tips for its successful management alongside IT's physical deployments.

A recent survey of CIOs found that over 75% want to develop an overall information strategy in the next three years, yet over 85% are not close to implementing an enterprise-wide content management strategy. Meanwhile, data runs rampant, slows systems, and impacts performance. Hard-copy documents multiply, become damaged, or simply disappear.

There are success stories of businesses that have implemented Business Service Management (BSM) with well-documented, bottom-line results. What do these organizations know that their discouraged counterparts don't?

Configuration Management is at the heart of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and forms the foundation for Business Service Management (BSM). In fact, it is safe to say that neither the ITIL IT Service Management (ITSM) processes nor the BSM functions that leverage ITSM can be efficiently carried out without accurate configuration and dependency information.

SCCA chose Cherwell primarily because of its ease of administration and configuration. Built-in ITIL processes facilitated the implementation of incident request, problem management, a knowledge base, and more. Cherwell’s “One-Steps” make easy work of automating repeatable and typically time-consuming processes like password resets and account unlocks. And a service catalog allows medical staff to easily request services, using custom-built forms.

This white paper explains a new approach for providing complete, affordable and easy to manage security to even smallest branch offices.

The Cisco UCS solution provides all management and configuration services at the centrally located Fabric Interconnects, so you can manage large-scale deployments from a single location. This method lets you consolidate hardware and streamline management. The IBM Flex System solution uses a distributed management model with chassis-level control. This method adds to the complexity to the hardware configuration, which can increase management needs.

The HP Flex-Bundles for Exchange 2013 are right-sized solutions including servers, storage, networking and services that have been optimized for Microsoft Exchange. There are two HP Flex-Bundles for Exchange. One has been configured for customers who have 200–499 mailboxes and another one for customers with 500-1000 mailboxes. These solutions are low risk investments because HP understands how to build infrastructures for Microsoft environments and applications. HP and Microsoft have the longest standing relationship in the IT industry spanning 30 years. During this time, HP has gained a deep and comprehensive understanding of Microsoft products. HP has more than 34,000 trained Microsoft specialists, with over 13,000 of them attaining Microsoft-certification. HP has been named Microsoft Enterprise Partner of the Year five times and is Microsoft’s largest Gold Certified partner.

Data is the lifeblood of your business. To compete in today’s global information economy, you need to keep your IT systems up and running and provide consistent and reliable access to business-critical applications at all times. Application downtime or slow performance can mean diminished employee productivity, dissatisfied customers, and lost revenue. But keeping pace with change and managing growth can be a real challenge. Increasing numbers of applications, evolving technology, and rapid data growth are pushing older IT infrastructure to the limit—demanding more storage and bandwidth, greater security and agility, and higher availability than ever before.

Data is the lifeblood of your business. To compete in today’s global information economy, you need to keep your IT systems up and running and provide consistent and reliable access to business-critical applications at all times. Application downtime or slow performance can mean diminished employee productivity, dissatisfied customers, and lost revenue. But keeping pace with change and managing growth can be a real challenge. Increasing numbers of applications, evolving technology, and rapid data growth are pushing older IT infrastructure to the limit—demanding more storage and bandwidth, greater security and agility, and higher availability than ever before.