In today’s multi-tiered, complex IT landscapes, configuration management is more critical than ever. Without actively managing your 
configuration data, your IT teams are making decisions based on incomplete or outdated information, and that could cause unexpected impacts to your business like service outages or delayed application releases.
Most organizations have configuration data scattered all over the place. It’s in discovery tools, perhaps a configuration management database (CMDB), an asset management tool, automation tools, private spreadsheets, Visio diagrams, files on SharePoint sites, etc. Most likely that information is incomplete and/or out of date in a lot of cases.
In fact, the configuration information that your IT staff has in their heads is often the most accurate, but the problem is that it’s not documented in a way that other individuals can access.
Visualize Configuration Dependencies
Import, Federate, and Manage Rich Configuration Settings
Visualize Upstream and Downstream Configuration Risks
ITinvolve gives you full visibility and control over configurations
- Bring all configuration data together in one place (through importing or federation) and represent it visually
- Enable experts to validate your configuration data continuously through social collaboration
- Fill in the gaps in systems-based configuration data by easily capturing tribal knowledge through following and social collaboration
- Create smarter automations by leveraging configuration data and bringing experts together to assess risks
- Improve change impact analysis by visualizing upstream and downstream impacts from multiple perspectives (applications, infrastructure, policies, and more)
- Support compliance efforts with a trusted source of configuration data and the details on who made configuration changes, when and why
- ITinvolve can be your CMDB or integrate with existing CMDBs both as a data source and to make updates that improve your existing CMDB data accuracy
- ITinvolve helps you get a handle on configuration drift by managing your automations, key settings, and helping you recognize and take action when drift occurs
- ITinvolve integrates with your existing Change Management process to ensure configuration changes are risk assessed and approved, as well as generate change records when configuration changes are detected out of band
CMDBs Aren’t Up To The Task
CMDBs are often inaccurate and untrusted because they contain discovered data only, are not validated by your experts, and don’t contain the valuable undocumented tribal knowledge in your organization (e.g. fragile settings that, if change, can compromise your services). CMDBs also don’t proactively alert your experts when configuration data is updated or configuration changes are planned.
Automation Alone Isn’t the Answer
Automating configurations up and down the stack helps increase configuration consistency, but not all settings can be managed via automation tools. What’s more, not all software installed in your environment is placed there by automations, meaning you likely have significant configuration work and data that resides outside of your automation tools.
There’s also the question of who or what is managing your automations as their expanding use leaves you open to exposure if an automation is changed and not effectively communicated to others, or if someone has no idea that an automation exists for a particular element and what it’s supposed to do.
“We looked at some of the big vendor CMDB packages but they were overkill and would have required additional resources just to keep them up to date.”
Director of Strategic Initiatives
“ITinvolve keeps our information up to date and gives our IT guys a clear picture of our environment—and a single version of the truth— so we’re all working off the same page.”
Senior Business Strategist