Change and Configuration Management

The IT Infrastructure is an ever evolving environment. Whether you are building a data center from the ground up, or whether you are making changes to the existing operation, without a repeatable and consistent flow, the entire operation can become unmanageable. Putting the right tools and processes in place resolves many of the challenges; but as time has shown, it takes more than products and processes to insure the infrastructure is available to support the business.

AlignSync approaches the challenge from two different disciplines:

• Initial design and installation of the environment (whether networks, systems, or software)
• Ongoing management of the environment

In the initial design and implementation stage, creating an accurate accounting of all devices and systems are critical in insuring service delivery. As the IT environment changes and updates, the focus moves to managing the changing environment. Outages within either environment can have a significant impact on the profitability of the business and can result in significant costs and impact to customer satisfaction to the business overall.

Initial Design

During the initial design and installation phase, solutions might include products, processes, and/or integration services designed to recognize and track the infrastructure inventory based on installed configuration management capabilities, enablement, and a current configuration Management. Processes would be focused on role-based capabilities to initiate, execute, manage, and report MACD (moves/adds/changes/deletes) and Management Operation Plans (MOPs) designed to efficiently and effectively manage the addion of new devices to the environment and maintain accurate data on the company assets.  Integration services would evaluate the flow from the network and systems management systems to the upstream systems (such as a CMDB and/or a Trouble-Ticketing System). 

Ongoing Management

Once the IT Infrastructure is defined and operational, the focus moves to maintaining the environment. With a centralized Configuration Management Database (CMDB), the IT team can work from a single view of the entire operational and configuration environment (Common Operating Picture). While many CMDBs are available, most have been built on a proprietary architecture. The products offer the ability to Federate data from other systems, but it does not provide a true native view of the full operational environment and in many cases requires long consulting engagements. AlignSync recommends a more open approach. Through an open architecture solution, CMDB information can be centralized under one view. Data can include elements outside of IT (such as any item that can have a configuration assigned (i.e. people, inventory, floor plans, cabling, etc.) AND data can be viewed by location, by project, by company, etc.) The results offer a faster implementation, more flexibility in working with the data, and with the solutions we recommend, the customer can then use the data to do a true potential impact and cost analysis before a MACD saving costly errors and potential downtime.