Enterprise Configuration Management

Enterprise Configuration Management is a fairly hard topic to come to grips with. Overall, in my experience this and true Change management are the subjects that most organization ‘feel’ they have a grip on but usually don’t. One of the key things that I see is that when questioned about Configuration Management they (the Infrastructure people) will say “yes we use blah blah toolset to do that!”

Enterprise Configuration Management – where to start

So to get a grip on Enterprise Configuration management, where should you start? Well many organizations start by defining very high-level CIs. Identifying critical services and their components is, however, a useful place to start with Configuration Management in an overall way.

Some items may be more critical at particular times of the day or year. Some of the things that can be regarded as typically critical CI’s are:

• critical power supplies, server and machine rooms
• routers and communications for main sites
• executives' connections, computers and software applications
• items that could affect regulatory compliance for the organization
• connections to secure areas and systems
• security items
• Electronic Data Interchange and database feeds, e.g. payroll feeds
• external interfaces to trading partners, suppliers, Customers and business partners
• interfaces to branches with Customer systems
• New technology items that need to be tracked initially.

Enterprise Configuration Management – what to be careful of

Some organizations drown in too much detail. They assume that, just because they have low-level details in one part of the structure, this is required throughout all the other configurations. Although this may help consistency and understanding, it will result in poor control data because there could well be insufficient resources to maintain all the data.

A word for the wise – only manage the depth that adds value, not the ultimate depth because you can.

A re-planning exercise may be required to return to an appropriate level of control, using input from the CMDB. Another idea is to have a configuration clean-up or decommissioning activity to remove old kit or redundant items - it also removes the need to maintain the control details.