Determining whether to store assets, CIs, or both in BMC Remedyforce CMDB 2.0

Configuration management is a service management process to manage configuration items (CIs), including their lifecycle and relationship to other CIs in the configuration management database (CMDB), to maintain a high level of service. This process is part of an overall service asset and configuration management process.

IT Infrastructure Library V3 (ITIL V3) definition: The Process responsible for maintaining information about Configuration Items required to deliver an IT Service, including their Relationships. This information is managed throughout the Lifecycle of the CI. Configuration Management is part of an overall Service Asset and Configuration Management Process.

Asset management is a process to manage assets, their lifecycle, costs, and terms to optimize or minimize costs while mitigating risk.

Gartner’s definition: IT Asset Management (ITAM) entails collecting inventory, financial and contractual data to manage the IT asset throughout its life cycle. ITAM depends on robust processes, with tools to automate manual processes. Capturing and integrating autodiscovery/inventory, financial and contractual data in a central repository for all IT assets enables the functions to effectively manage vendors and a software and hardware asset portfolio from requisition through retirement, thus monitoring the asset’s performance throughout its life cycle. (Source: Gartner IT Glossary, 2015)

A configuration item (CI) is an object stored within the CMDB that is under some level of management or change control. The primary goal is to track or manage a CI's relation with and impact on a business service. You can create a CI simply based on what is discovered by your discovery tool. Alternatively, you can focus on value, change control, and process to identify and manage CIs.

CIs can vary widely in complexity, size, and type. You must select CIs in accordance with established selection criteria and categorize them in such a way that they are manageable and traceable throughout the service lifecycle. CI types are likely to include service lifecycle CIs, service CIs, organization CIs, internal CIs, external CIs, and interface CIs.

ITIL V3 definition: Any Component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT Service. Information about each CI is recorded in a Configuration Record within the Configuration Management System and is maintained throughout its Lifecycle by Configuration Management. CIs are under the control of Change Management. They typically include IT Services, hardware, software, buildings, people, and formal documentation such as Process Documentation and SLAs.

An asset typically represents an object or item that your organization is tracking for managing cost and mitigating risk. In some cases, your source might be from procurement, advanced ship notices (ASNs), which are sources that identify ownership. Alternatively, you might lean on discovery sources to initially identify your assets and later develop more mature processes and policies to gain better control over your assets, shifting from reactive to proactive management.

ITIL V3 definition: Any Resource or Capability. Assets of a Service Provider include anything that could contribute to the delivery of a Service. Assets can be one of the following types: Management, Organization, Process, Knowledge, People, Information, Applications, Infrastructure, or Financial Capital.

CI is a term that is used within the service management and configuration management disciplines. A CI because of relationships forms a service that delivers a value to a service consumer.

The following table provides a high-level comparison of assets and CIs:

The following features are available only when you enable Asset Management:

• Tracking asset lifecycle: The Asset Status  attribute is available only for assets and enables you to track the complete lifecycle of an asset. The asset lifecycle typically starts with the request order or receipt and continues all the way through until retirement or disposal.
  The Asset Status attribute is not available for CIs because the lifecycle of a CI is a subset of the asset lifecycle, which focuses on the install, move, add, and change stages.
• Tracking asset age: The Asset Birthdate  and   Asset Age attributes are available only for assets. The asset age is automatically calculated based on the asset birthdate.
  The Asset Birthdate attribute is not available for CIs because the birthdate of an asset is not relevant from configuration management perspective.
• Simplified classification: New classes of the Asset and Rule Based Asset types are available out of the box in the BMC Helix Remedyforce CMDB Common Data Model to store asset-related data. A Rule Based Asset class enables a CI to be also classified as an asset that inherits the attributes of the CI class that it is based on.
• CMDB Views: On the Remedyforce CMDB tab, users can view, create, update, and delete instances of the out-of-the-box and custom asset classes based on their access level. System administrators can use the CI Management View and Asset Management View fields in the User and Client forms to control this access.
• Asset Management dashboard: This dashboard enables users to view key metrics related to asset management. For more information, see Viewing the asset management dashboard and reports.

Yes, there can be commonality between CIs and assets. They share core information (such as, name, model, location, and owner), but some of the extended data for a CI might not be critical or relevant to an asset, and vice versa. BMC Remedyforce CMDB supports both the overlap and separation of assets and CIs, depending on your definitions, and eliminates data duplication and synchronization issues. As a result, you have full control over the CI and asset views along with which users have access to these views. You can also choose to manage only CIs or only assets.

You can define and track both CIs and assets in BMC Remedyforce CMDB. The following table lists the primary benefits of this consolidated and flexible design:

The following table describes common scenarios to help you to decide whether to manage only assets, only CIs, or both in BMC Remedyforce CMDB 2.0: