Change Impact Analysis and CMDBs

Nadeem Mohammed (Deffinity) and David Cuthbertson (Square Mile) will cover how a combination of workflow management and infrastructure documentation systems can dramatically impact the costs of managing changes at the physical layer. If you find the management of cabling and hardware changes requires an excessive amount of administration effort, site surveys and last minute coordination then you’ll find our webcast very useful. We’ll cover issues like supplier/outsource/team interfaces, project and services workflow, capacity management and improving agility to business changes. For data centres, offices, campus, branches, etc.

End user experience of IT systems depends on good change, configuration and release management (CCRM) techniques to be in place. But data centers, networks and physical infrastructure have CCRM issues just like application software development so what overlap is there? And how can new techniques like DevOps be applied beyond software development? Robert Cowham and David Cuthbertson will explain all.

This webinar shows how you can efficiently document IT infrastructure spanning multiple buildings - such as hospitals, universities, offices, airports, factories, ports, etc. We will cover the initial data capture process and then the ongoing maintenance of cabling, rack, network and other documentation presentation formats. Ideal for those who recognise that accurate IT documentation reduces project times, change costs and service disruption.

Reducing the data center footprint and cost efficiently implementing such projects is not simple, especially when dealing with the most critical IT components. Andre Belisle has planned and managed such projects in Canada with telco, finance and utilities and will highlight good practices that he has found work well. David Cuthbertson will cover how to get a baseline from which to manage the change activities.

IT technologies are changing faster than the process and practices – so expectations of improved services and cost reductions are often not realized. This presentation will cover some of the most common problems faced by organizations (both supplier and end user) and how to overcome them.

This webcast covers different ways to communicate complex risk and dependencies using impact forms and Visio visualisation amongst others. A key reason to implement a CMDB is to support improved impact and risk analysis for changes and incidents. In practice, many people find that lots of asset data doesn't help and a more focused CMDB and set of outputs is required.

Without changing the way you manage the data centre, you won’t get the benefit of DCIM toolsets. So which comes first? tools, process changes or the people changes? This talk covers the issues that affect the efficient running of data centres beyond DCIM toolsets.

Maintaining large numbers of Visio diagrams of complex IT environments is now possible using new automation techniques. We'll cover how to have overnight updates of racks, floor plans, networks, applciation service maps, etc. from an infrastructure configuration database.

Maintaining an infrastructure documentation portal has suddenly become easier for mutli-site, enterprise environments.

Join this software asset management (SAM) and service management webinar presented by the BCS Configuration Management Specialist Group. This session will cover the following key topics:

•An understanding of the principles of SAM
•How does SAM fit into Service Management
•How to assess the starting point in your company.
•How to move forward

Your Presenters:
Ian Preskett has many years of experience in IT. In the last 10 years Ian has specialized in SAM Process consultancy and, until recently, he was the SAM Process and Maturity Practice Manager for a large reseller of software. Ian’s philosophy is to ensure that SAM processes integrate with the service management processes to deliver highly effective SAM and reduce risk by maintaining software license compliance. Ian is keen to promote the value of SAM to the market place, and is a committee member of the BCS CMSG (Configuration Management Specialist Group).

David Cuthbertson is Managing Director at Square Mile Systems. David has been focused for many years on developing and applying configuration management techniques to technical and service infrastructure. More recently he has been developing techniques and toolsets that link service management CMDBs to data centers, networks, storage and other environments. He is a regular speaker for both the BCS and ITSMF covering all aspects of configuration management from strategic to tactical implementations.

This webcast looks at practical techniques to document complex host and network devices such as blades, Unix, network switches, etc. Automated deployment tools can help with the logical configuration, but much of the hardware build and planning is still done in spreadsheets, powerpoint and Visio.

As infrastructure complexity continues to increase, the risks and potential for disruption increase. This webcast looks at the emerging discipline of infrastructure configuration management.

Excel will always be used by IT teams to document their systems and environments, but it's flexibility also causes maintenance chaos. In this webcast we assess the benefits and drawbacks when compared to specialist infrastructure documentation toolsets.

Understanding power distribution in the data centre is becoming more difficult with the increasing complexity of server feeds. We will look at techniques needed for mission critical computing, that cover capacity and connectivity from the external feeds down to every IT component .

How to build a CMDB quickly from defining CIs, capturing data and then communicating dependencies to users. Examples covering business to IT component mapping, virtualisation and creation of Visio diagrams.

How to link specialist data center management toolsets with Excel and Visio. Combining the flexibility of MS office tools with the accuracy and depth of data center management systems.

Techniques to manage and optimise data center resources, with examples of process and presentation. Covering space, power, cabling, connectivity and resource management.

Techniques and methods that address the problem of assessing change impact in complex IT infrastructures. Covers the physical, logical and service dependency mapping used in CMDBs and infrastructure management systems.

Techniques and methods that enable management of infrastructure connectivity. Examples of tracing connectivity, change processes, capacity control, documenting, Visio diagams etc. Covering cabling, power, storage and other forms of physical connectivity.

Different techniques to automate the production of Visio infrastructure diagrams. We look at how spreadsheets and database can help reduce the effort in producing and maintaining network, rack, service, floorplans and other diagrams