GoldMine Datasheet Title

Subtitle: Reinvent your Sales, Marketing and Support Proceses

Table of Contents

Chapter I:
Jumpstart IT Innovation 2

Business Expectations Rise, Pressure on IT Intensifies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

An Innovative Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Unifying Infrastructure and Service Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Jumpstarting the Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Use Case 1: Employee Provisioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Use Case 2: Software Upgrade Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Use Case 3: Remote Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Use Case 4: Reactive Break/Fix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Use Case 5: Proactive Patch Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter II:
A Prescriptive Path for Implementing the Service Catalog and CMDB Together 6

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Roles and Interrelationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

The Service Catalog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

The CMDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Service Level Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

A Prescriptive Path for Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Service Catalog: Begin with the Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

CMDB: Federated Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Service Level Management: Business-centric Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Service Example: Tying it Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

About FrontRange Solutions 11

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Chapter I: Jumpstart IT Innovation

Business Expectations Rise, Pressure on IT Intensifies

Improving business processes was the No. 1 business priority for the fourth consecutive year in Gartner’s worldwide survey
of 1,500 Chief Information Officers (CIOs).

1

Business process improvement is just one part of an overall focus on strate-

gic contribution that the business is expecting from CIOs. In addition, 83% of the CIOs in the Gartner survey anticipate
significant change in their enterprises over the next three years. These priorities and predictions pose a challenge for
overburdened IT organizations. Traditional management processes cannot scale to address an environment of change and
growing IT complexity. Workflows must become more automated and integrated to optimize efficiency. Operational ex-
ecution must more closely align with service processes to contain costs. As IT evaluates opportunities to innovate, they will
naturally look for solutions that bring together technology silos to deliver strategic differentiation.

An Innovative Approach

A new, innovative approach to IT is required: the unification of IT operations management and service management.
Combining PC lifecycle management and IT service management tools can facilitate improved business processes when
operational execution is tightly coupled with the control process. PC lifecycle management solutions are focused on opera-
tional execution, helping ensure that system availability is high and that IT assets are optimized throughout their lifecycle.
By contrast, service management products are focused on control processes and function to ensure that service quality,
customer satisfaction, and first-call resolution levels are of a consistently high standard.

Unifying Infrastructure and Service Management

Blending these critical applications and unifying infrastructure management and service management enables IT to meet
rising expectations by delivering broader and more proactive services to the business. This innovative approach benefits
customers by increasing first-contact resolution rates and enhancing infrastructure availability. Cost savings are realized
when the service desk is armed with tools to perform remote desktop support, reset passwords or redeploy problematic
software in an automated fashion. Service levels are achieved when first-line support can deploy standard changes with
automated service request fulfillment processing.

Jumpstarting the Process

Below are five tangible use cases that can jumpstart your unified infrastructure management approach. As you use these
innovative processes to solve traditional problems, you will be laying the groundwork for end-to-end automation, merging
control processes with IT operations systems. This distinctive approach will bring together the capabilities, processes, and
resources within your cross-functional IT teams to meet rising business expectations.

Use Case 1: Employee Provisioning

Use Case 2: Software Upgrade Requests

Use Case 3: Remote Control

Use Case 4: Reactive Break/Fix

Use Case 5: Proactive Patch Management

1 “Making the Difference: The 2008 CIO Agenda,” Gartner, Inc., January 2008

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Use Case 1: Employee Provisioning

In its 2008 benchmark report, Aberdeen Group observes that while many businesses focus on metrics such as time and cost
to hire an employee, it is actually the time to productivity that is critical for new employees.

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When a new employee starts

his first day with his workspace and phone, computer, required software and email fully functional, he can hit the ground
running. With the rapid pace of employee transition, you need automated tools to simplify new employee provisioning as
well as internal moves.

Your company has hired a vice president of marketing, and a “new employee setup” is requested from the Service
Catalog. Once the requester submits the service request, auto-tasks are routed to various departments including human re-
sources, facilities, and IT operations. Behind the scenes, standard provisioning policies have pre-established the appropriate
hardware and software to be issued based on the employee’s job profile: a dual-core computer with 2GB of RAM and the
entire Adobe CS3 suite of software might be appropriate in this example. Automated business processing with PC lifecycle
management identifies the new “bare metal” PC in inventory, auto-boots the system, then selects the software profile and
installs the operating system and applications defined in the standard configuration. Typically, within an hour, the configu-
ration setup is verified, and the task is automatically closed in the service desk.

The unified infrastructure management approach allowed the service desk team to access policy-based compliance to
drive provisioning. Additionally, the governance burden and costs associated with desktop configuration management are
reduced and the process transparency required for regulatory audits is achieved seamlessly.

Use Case 2: Software Upgrade Requests

Policy-based compliance is introduced to reduce unauthorized changes to a server or an employee’s PC. However, there are
many cases where individual needs dictate an addition or upgrade to the standard software profile. When a user submits
a valid request, IT must respond quickly to ensure the employee remains productive.

A marketing department employee is using Microsoft Project to manage a partner marketing campaign, and needs to col-
laborate on the project plan with the partner to hit an end-of-day deadline. Because the employee is using a different ver-
sion of Microsoft Project than the partner, collaboration has stalled. The marketing department employee calls the service
desk to request an upgrade to the latest version. Because the telephony system is integrated, the service desk receives an
auto-generated ticket pre-populated with the relevant employee information on the agent’s screen as the call is answered.
Using the integrated PC lifecycle tools, the agent verifies that Project software is authorized for this user and initiates the
standard request fulfillment process. Once the request moves to the “approved” state, the PC lifecycle management tool
remotely installs the appropriate software on the target machine, and updates the ticket with the installation status. Upon
completion, the service desk ticket is automatically closed and the telephony system phones the user, notifying her that the
software installation process is complete. The entire approval and upgrade process is completed within 15 minutes, allow-
ing the employee to meet her deadlines with minimum downtime.

The unified infrastructure management approach allowed the service desk agent to manage the end-to-end process,
without escalating the incident to IT operations. The rapid remediation reduced infrastructure management workload and
costs and improved end user satisfaction and productivity.

2 All Aboard: Effective Onboarding Techniques and Strategies, Aberdeen Group, January 2008

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Use Case 3: Remote Control

Adoption of self-service is on the rise. In fact, Gartner projects that by 2010 self-service will account for 58% of all service
interactions, up from 35% in 2005. Because self-service addresses many of the frequently asked questions, naturally calls to
the service desk are increasingly more complex and difficult to solve. Rather than frustrating the user by walking through
a set of step-by-step recovery procedures or checking detailed settings, remediation can be dramatically simplified when
the agent can take control of the end user’s machine.

A graphic designer in the marketing department is facing a tight deadline on the CEO’s board presentation. Every time
she tries to embed a movie file into a slide, her machine crashes. Based on the priority of the project, when she contacts
the service desk, the agent immediately takes control of her machine with PC lifecycle remote control tools. In the back-
ground, a service desk ticket is auto-generated and pre-populated with relevant information. Because the agent can “see”
the error situation first hand, he determines that re-installing the software is more practical than isolating and diagnosing
the problem. The PC lifecycle management tool accesses the workstation, verifies the inventory and compliance informa-
tion, and remotely removes and re-installs the appropriate software. Behind the scenes, the installation process is automat-
ically noted in the service desk ticket. The agent remains in control of the machine to verify that the reinstall solved the
user’s problem by watching the user launch the software and successfully embed the movie in the slide. With the problem
resolved, the ticket is closed.

The unified infrastructure management approach allowed the agent to resolve the problem immediately, avoiding mul-
tiple calls or email communication to gather additional information. The first-call resolution improved the end user experi-
ence and minimized the negative impact on business operations.

Use Case 4: Reactive Break/Fix

Because users are increasingly mobile and can easily bypass the network perimeter, PCs may be exposed to malicious code
and become corrupted. And despite your best efforts to lockdown PCs, users may add their own applications, exposing PCs
to further security risk. Whatever the culprit, you must isolate, diagnose, and repair issues before problems exacerbate and
spread across the entire network.

The vice president of sales is having trouble booting up his machine and calls the service desk for assistance. With integrat-
ed telephony, a ticket is auto-generated, and based on the VP’s service level agreement (SLA), his call is escalated to the
top of the queue. Using PC lifecycle management tools, the agent pings his machine and identifies the software that is out
of compliance: an unpatched application is the culprit. Automated policy compliance triggers an installation of the re-
quired patch. The agent confirms the compliance status has changed to “Yes” and the new software was installed correct-
ly. The ticket is updated with software installation status, and is closed upon confirmation of the successful installation.

The unified infrastructure management approach allowed the agent to quickly troubleshoot the problem by identifying
deviations from the standard configuration. The agent was able to automatically repair the software, thus managing the
end-to-end process, without escalating the problem to IT operations. The rapid remediation reduced infrastructure man-
agement workload and costs and improved end user satisfaction and productivity.

Use Case 5: Proactive Patch Management

Patch management has emerged as a central operational process. Organizations have found it necessary to formalize and
refine the patch management process in order to address patch multiplication and heightened security and regulatory
concerns. Yet effective patch management requires a careful choreography among many service management processes
including security, change, configuration, and asset management.

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An emergency Microsoft Windows XP security patch is available. Based on your defined compliance policy, the PC life-
cycle management tool verifies that the patch is relevant and triggers the standard change request process. By leveraging
integrated telephony, members of the approval board are immediately notified by phone that a priority change has been
requested. Each member approves the change using interactive voice response (IVR) inputs, which updates the service
desk ticket, automatically progressing the change request to the “approved” state. With integrated PC lifecycle manage-
ment, the rules-based patch implementation process is initiated automatically from the service desk. The tool identifies all
target systems, downloads the patch, tests for incompatibilities and resolves dependencies, then automatically distributes
the new patch to all identified network-based endpoints including mobile devices, laptops, desktops, servers, and storage
assets. Once successful installation is confirmed, asset, security, and configuration profiles are updated and the change
request is closed.

The unified infrastructure management approach allowed operations to manage the end-to-end patch management pro-
cess, while providing process transparency to comply with security, change, configuration, and asset management policies.
The speed of approval and deployment using integrated telephony and PC lifecycle tools delivered tremendous business
benefits including improved service levels, reduced risk, and enhanced infrastructure availability.

Conclusion

IT is challenged to meet rising business expectations while managing increasing infrastructure complexity at the lowest
cost possible. Generic IT processes are no longer effective. Unifying PC lifecycle management and IT service management
drives the process innovation required for IT to efficiently meet rising business expectations – without breaking the bank.

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Chapter II:

A Prescriptive Path for Implementing the Service Catalog and CMDB Together

Introduction

The expectation of your CEO is clear: IT must align with the business and deliver strategic value to the company. But
what’s your best course of action? The release of IT Infrastructure Library version 3 (ITIL v3) promises to ease business and
technology integration with its increased focus on service strategy. Yet meeting business value expectations can be elusive
without a pragmatic, customer-focused approach to IT, using a best practices process framework such as ITIL.

Once an organization embraces an IT service improvement mentality, they can get lost in the misguided pursuit of the per-
fect ITIL implementation. Many ITIL-mature organizations have invested significant time and money chasing “ITIL-topia”
but have failed to implement a workable solution that delivers real-world business value.

Your quest for achieving integration and increasing value requires a steadfast focus on the needs of the business. When IT
aligns with the business during the service catalog strategy and design phases, they can reach consensus on the definition
of services and the associated level of service, quality, and cost. Consensus prior to implementation will ensure that your
project execution will deliver against business expectations.

Volume VI of this executive briefing series is dedicated to helping you understand the roles and interdepencies of the
service catalog, the configuration management database (CMDB), and service level management (SLM). Through the use
of real-world service examples you will learn how these IT process areas become the three-legged stool that establishes IT
as a successful strategic business partner.

Roles and Interrelationships

You may be asking yourself, what makes the most sense to tackle first: the service catalog and service level management
or the CMDB? A solid CMDB is the key to any successful ITIL initiative. However, the service catalog is the key to initiating
IT-business alignment. While both of these efforts are complex, they are tightly interrelated. Therefore, you will need to
approach the service catalog and CMDB in a building-block fashion to keep momentum going.

The Service Catalog

Service Catalog Management received an increased focus in the ITIL v3 family of processes and plays a critical role in de-
fining the business needs of IT–in business terms. The service catalog is a published repository of all core IT service offer-
ings, which can include the business, technical, and professional services offered to both internal and external customers.
Services in the catalog are grouped logically by business customer, resulting in a clearly defined set of services offered to
the business. Creating a service catalog can involve iterative negotiations to develop service names, define service level
agreements, and identify the organizations that subscribe to services. Because services are designed and packaged from a
business customer point of view, they are aligned with each business process to meet the specific needs of the business.

Service descriptions are comprised of four major parts–Offer, Request, Activities, and Resources–each with many sub parts
and attributes:
•

Offercontainsservicelevels,pricing,termsandconditionsamongotherattributes.

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Requestcontainsordering,configuration,governanceandagreementsub-componentsandattributes.

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ActivitiesincludeallmajorITprocessessuchasrequest,change,problem,availability,financialandrelationshipman-
agement. Vendor management and provisioning might also be included.

•

Resourcesincludeelementssuchasvendors,skillsandlabor,andofcourseallmajorITsystemsthatpertaintothebusi-
ness service.

The service catalog becomes the shared vision of business and IT, transforming business goals into IT goals.

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The CMDB

The Configuration Management System and the CMDB are fundamental components of the ITIL framework. The role of
the CMDB is to provide a centralized information repository of core configurable IT components and relationships to the
associated business service hierarchy.

All information recorded in the CMDB exists to support the information technology service management (ITSM) processes
described by ITIL. Because its content is guided by ITIL, building a CMDB typically starts with mapping core IT manage-
ment processes to the configuration items (CIs), the CI attributes, and its relationships to other CIs. A CMDB will track a CI’s
configuration attributes (e.g. those parameters that help manage the CI within the IT service provider function). Attributes
could be characterized as physical, logical, organizational, or financial. Since the CMDB is primarily a support tool that
enables other ITIL processes, logical attributes that define the business purpose of the CI are required alongside the physi-
cal attributes to annotate the service. Because the CMDB is typically built to control and manage the CIs that are subject
to the IT change control process, the CMDB provides an accurate baseline for planning and compliance management.
This design approach will limit the type of CIs and attributes that are tracked to a manageable subset. Consequently, the
inventory data repository is very different than the CMDB. The inventory database tracks the current state of all discover-
able IT infrastructure items and configuration information, Alternatively, a well-designed CMDB represents the desired
state (or baseline) of the service map–the business-relevant representation of the IT infrastructure.

Therefore, the structure and relationships in your CMDB must make sense from the perspective of a service and should be
defined from the point of view of a business consumer. Establishing the service map using a bottom-up approach, starting
with individual configuration items, is typically an exercise in futility. A top-down approach in which you define services,
create your service catalog, then use the catalog to drive the structure of meaningful data and relationships in the service
map will result in a CMDB strategy that is manageable and achievable within a reasonable implementation timeframe.

Starting with the service catalog will narrow the scope of the CMDB driving your focus on high impact services that affect
your most important business consumers. Rather than trying to reconcile thousands of CIs and attributes, you can start
with the business service view and focus on just those aspects that are relevant.

Implementing a catalog first will also reduce your project risk. There are many examples of multi-year enterprise CMDB
projects that have evolved into an IT-centric technical project. By the time the CMDB project is completed, the CMDB does
not align to the services the business cares about. Furthermore, the personnel required to maintain the enormous quantity
of detailed data being tracked in the CMDB becomes an IT resource nightmare. Starting with the service catalog ensures
that the CMDB project remains aligned with the business and sets the project up for success.

Service Level Management

Service Level Management (SLM) ensures that ongoing requirements, communications, timeframes and expectations
between business and IT are established and proactively managed. SLM is also responsible for ensuring that internal IT
expectations are being met. While the service catalog defines the services, service level agreements (SLAs) and operating
level agreements (OLAs) establish the service delivery benchmarks. Proactive SLM manages and measures actual service
delivery quality against the established benchmarks. Therefore, SLM provides the standards against which expectations,
improvements, and performance metrics are measured. SLAs, OLAs and underpinning contracts (UCs) ensure that docu-
mented agreements are in place to support the offerings within the service catalog.

•

Servicelevelagreements,andtheprocessesassociatedwiththem,provideamethodologyforintroducingandimple-
menting reasonable expectations between IT and the business consumer. They establish a two-way accountability for
service, which is negotiated and mutually agreed upon. The service catalog provides context for conversations with
your customers regarding SLAs.

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Operationallevelagreementsestablishspecifictechnical,informational,andtimeframerequirementsneededforeach
IT group to provide the services that will be delivered to the customer. Logically, OLAs must be in place before negoti-
ating SLAs with the business consumer representative.

•

Underpinningcontractsincludedocumenteddeliveryrequirementsandexpectationsforanythirdpartyvendorthat
is part of the extended IT service delivery team. UCs complete the chain of accountability and control for seamless
service delivery. IT’s ability to achieve established service levels will be only as good as the weakest link. IT must hold
both internal and external delivery partners accountable for their part of the delivery cycle.

In addition to the service catalog, SLM is tightly integrated with the CMDB. When you define service agreements, there are
two steps:

•

Breaktheserviceintodiscretecomponents,anddefineacceptableperformancelevelsforeachcomponent.Thecom-
ponent information in the CMDB becomes the integration point with SLM.

•

Definetheoverallservicelevelforthefullservicebyaddingupthesumoftheparts.Eachcomponent’sestablished
performance becomes a contributing factor to the overall service SLA.

A Prescriptive Path for Implementation

Service Catalog: Begin with the Business

Nothing works better than collaborating with your business consumer representatives (“the customer”) to agree on the
initial core set of services that will be contained in the catalog. Quite often, the best approach is for IT to create the first
draft of the catalog by documenting the services they believe they provide. Once this step is complete, the catalog can
then be validated with the customers.

This approach gives you a springboard for discussion and an opportunity to obtain buy-in from your customer. Attempting
to start collaboratively from a blank slate tends to give the customer the (mistaken) impression that you do not know what
services you provide.

Consider creating an external catalog view for your customers and an internal catalog view for IT. The external catalog
is simply the “menu” that stipulates the services that are provided to the customers with an appropriate description. The
internal catalog contains all the necessary components and relationships that are needed to deliver that service to the
customer.

IT professionals need to know the components that make up the services but should not rely on the service catalog to
document every detail; instead it should be accompanied by a CMDB. There should be a record in the CMDB for each
service, and a relationship record that creates logical service groupings to represent the service hierarchy. Relationship
attributes are also created to represent the association of a business service with the set of technical and application com-
ponents that are required to keep the business service running. The CMDB is also a mechanism used to associate services to
the users of each service. The combined set of logical and physical CIs and relationship between business services, business
support systems, and business users is referred to as the service map.

CMDB: Federated Approach

When the CMDB is designed as a logical representation of the service map, drill-through access to the detailed physical
configuration is a best practices design approach. The IT resources in the CMDB are the logical (business purpose) represen-
tation of the physical (discoverable) asset information (e.g. physical inventory, such as servers, routers, switches, or storage

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devices) and of relationships between CIs. These logical elements can be automatically linked to the IT infrastructure items
(IIs), providing a business view of how IT infrastructure elements support higher-level business processes.

The best way to support drill-through data access in your CMDB architecture is with a federated approach. Construct dif-
ferent views of the data for different purposes, while at the same time storing and updating the data in local data stores.
A critical success factor for your project is to keep the CMDB data easily maintainable and manageable. Federation is the
enabler of this strategy.

Service Level Management: Business-centric Metrics

As the IT organization becomes more experienced in managing services, the perception of IT resources evolves from an
enabling infrastructure to a strategic service asset. Services and the resources for delivering them are optimized around
business objectives, and real-time economics drive decision making.

Customers care about the end result and not about the components required to deliver the service. For example, a cus-
tomer order entry system may be comprised of network access, Windows® systems, an Oracle® database and third-party
fulfillment services. A problem in any of those elements can affect the entire order entry system. The customer is not
concerned with which element impacted their order entry system, but only that the system–as advertised–is not working
according to expectations.

Therefore, truly useful SLM goes beyond component/network metrics and includes service and business metrics, such as
defining the time it takes to provision a new service (mean time to provision, or MTTP), repairing an existing one (mean
time to repair, or MTTR), or responding to a trouble-ticket call.

Service Example: Tying it Together

The IT department has a service offering of web hosting at three different levels: bronze, silver, and gold. The catalog
describes the service, what is included, the price, how the service is charged, and associated service level agreements. Also
documented are the component services including support, provisioning, maintenance, backup, and availability. Resources
“to-be provided” describes the hardware, software, and the configuration necessary to create the web hosting infrastruc-
ture based on the bronze, silver or gold service level. The associated configurations for each level will be quite different.
To provide a web hosting service designed to meet gold availability and performance requirements, IT will likely need a
hot standby environment, which will require a redundant set production servers.

Let’s see how the service catalog facilitates the service ordering process. The marketing department needs a new website
for an upcoming promotion. The marketing manager accesses the service catalog from the self service portal and views
the recommendation: Web hosting, silver level, includes Linux, one rack, 1 gigabyte per month, at $200.00 per month
plus $100.00 per gigabyte of storage. The marketing manager agrees with the recommendation and enters into a hosting
agreement with IT.

This agreement now allows requests for provisioning and configuration to be carried out such as ordering servers, de-
ploying licenses, and granting access to users, which are part of the bundled service offering “Web Hosting: Silver.” The
ordering-specifying-provisioning process is also part of the service catalog system. The service catalog integrates with the
inventory management system to confirm that the required systems and settings defined by the CMDB service map are
provisioned and discovered in the inventory management system. The catalog also integrates with an SLM system that
manages the vendors that provide underpinning services.

When the service fulfillment process is automated, the web hosting system provisioning steps are supported using a fulfill-
ment workflow system and a change management system, where appropriate. The associated infrastructure items are

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being added, discovered, and reconciled to the CMDB service map. The CMDB now has a new IT system that it will track,
and will report the main elements back to the catalog system. With integrated asset management tools, IT can also track
the actual consumption of storage and report back as a subscription service being used by the specific business unit.

Once the web hosting service is operational, the service catalog plays a different role: managing against established service
levels. Initially the service catalog is linked to the CMDB to document “resources to be provided.” Now it links to the CMDB
to identify “resources impacting service.” Service impact may be indicated by an influx of user incidents associated to a
server that is down. Or, it might be indicated by an SLA alert, proactively notifying IT that a server is precariously close to
breaching a performance SLA.

Meanwhile, the marketing executive can access the service catalog portal, which provides complete transparency to the
various services acquired, the cost drivers, the service level agreements, the history of requests, and the consumption that
service has undergone. When service levels are impacted, proactive broadcast notifications can be sent to affected busi-
ness users. The CMDB integrated with the service catalog enables this type of proactive mass communication and service
transparency.

Conclusion

The service catalog, CMDB and service level management comprise the three-legged stool that establishes IT as a strategic
business partner. Yet a prescriptive path for implementation is vital to your success. Begin by establishing a documented
service catalog, developed in coordination with the business. This serves as a catalyst for business-IT alignment and
empowers business and IT managers to make decisions on IT activities based on risk, priority, and value, rather than cost
alone.

Next, implement your CMDB, ensuring the structure and relationships make sense from the perspective of a service. Imple-
menting the service catalog as part of an IT self service portal, integrated with the CMDB establishes IT as a business service
provider. When service descriptions include CMDB content and context, the service catalog becomes the shared vision of
business and IT, transforming business goals into IT goals.

Finally, use service level management to ensure that ongoing requirements, communications, timeframes, and expecta-
tions between business and IT are established and proactively managed. While the service catalog defines the services, ser-
vice level agreements, operating level agreements, and under pinning contracts establish the service delivery benchmarks.
Remember, truly useful SLM goes beyond component/network metrics and includes service and business metrics that are
meaningful to the business.

With this pragmatic, customer-focused approach to implementing the service catalog, CMDB, and service level manage-
ment, IT is sure to meet the expectation of the CEO: delivering strategic value to the company.

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About FrontRange Solutions

FrontRange Solutions develops software and services that growing mid-size firms and distributed enterprises rely on
every day to build great customer relationships and deliver high-quality customer service. The company applies a unique
combination of innovation and automation with a standards-based approach to simplify core business processes, includ-
ing: IT service management; customer relationship and sales force management; and PC lifecycle management. More than
150,000 of the world’s best-known brands use FrontRange offerings to quickly improve their interactions with external and
internal clients and achieve better business results. For more information, call 800.776.7889 or visit www.frontrange.com.

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Copyright © 2008 FrontRange Solutions USA Inc. All Rights Reserved.

GoldMine, HEAT, Enteo, Centennial Discovery, DeviceWall and other FrontRange Solutions products, brands and trademarks are

property of FrontRange Solutions USA Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. Other products, brands

and trademarks are property of their respective owners/companies.

USE OF THE SOFTWARE DESCRIBED IN THIS PAPER AND ITS RELATED USER DOCUMENTATION IS SUBJECT TO THE TERMS AND CON-

DITIONS OF THE APPLICABLE END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT (EULA).

The information contained in this document is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by

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ability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement; and in no event shall FrontRange or its suppliers be liable for any

damages whatsoever including direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, loss of profits or data or special damages, even if advised

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