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Configuration management has moved from an after-thought to a primary concern for organizations. This year, we’ve seen record growth in configuration management platforms and solutions as more businesses grapple with IT complexity management challenges. The trend will only continue over the coming years as IT continues to expand into new business areas.
As per the CMDB Software Market report 2022, the CMDB software market is expected to grow from USD 14.40 billion in 2021 to USD 23.60 billion by 2027, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.8%.
The CMDB industry has been evolving at a rapid pace. In the past few years, we have seen many exciting changes in this space.
The emergence of cloud computing and new technologies like AI and IoT are ushering in an era where organizations are moving away from traditional IT infrastructure management (ITIM) processes to more agile and modern ones that enable them to deliver applications faster than ever before.
In today’s world of chaos automation and extreme agility, we are starting to see a shift in how enterprises manage controlling their IT infrastructures in CMDBs.
Read: The role of CMDB in IT management
Why do CMDBs still matter in a cloud-first world?
The CMDBs’ significance has changed over time. In the past, CMDBs were largely used as a source of reference data for IT teams building out their organizations’ infrastructure. Now, with organizations maintaining their own private clouds and container infrastructures and modern software-driven applications, CMDBs are used to govern the overall state of an organization’s digital presence.
Businesses are moving to a hybrid cloud model, but the CMDB should still contain information about hardware, at least once an organization migrates to the cloud. And while we may not need the extensive details of physical device inventory that we use today, assets still need to be tracked so they can be accounted for when they’re retired. This is also relevant to budgeting – you need data to show how much it will cost to procure and retire hardware as part of your ongoing operations.
CMDBs are still crucial for identifying, tracking and reporting on technology assets in your organization. An effective CMDB can reduce the chance of a company facing legal action over violations. The cloud is no different from any other IT tool that requires you to understand its usage while complying with the necessary policies.
As organizations move to cloud services, they often struggle to keep track of which services are being used and which ones can be shut down. Fortunately, there’s a better way. By integrating your CMDB with a cloud management platform (CMP), you can ensure all cloud resources are monitored, managed and tracked consistently across the organization so that you can continue providing exceptional service – while minimizing costs.
Find out: Do you need a CMDB in cloud environments?
Let us take a look at some important CMDB trends for 2023.
1. Increased automation and integrations
Automation is a key trend in the CMDB market. Organizations are looking for ways to automate their CMDB processes, which can help them with compliance and cost reduction, as well as time savings and efficiency.
Organizations that have fully automated their CMDB process will have a more accurate view of their data than those that don’t. Automating your CMDB not only makes it easier to collect data, but also allows you to streamline your process flow so that you get better insights into what’s happening inside your organization.
The demand for more automation and integration is pushing the industry toward a more integrated approach to management. This trend is similar to how IT has moved from manual installations to automated deployment systems. It will also improve consistency in data availability, quality and accuracy across the various tools used by data center pros.
Data center teams don’t need to worry about accuracy and consistency of their data. CMDB integration allows them to access a single source of truth for all assets and services, which can then be made use of by business intelligence and analytics tools to derive insights and make data-driven decisions.
IT teams are now using the data in their CMDBs to perform root-cause analysis on problems, identify gaps and realize cost savings. For example, they could use it to balance workloads by predicting upcoming servers and network upgrades, roll out patches faster by knowing which components aren’t patched yet, address security threats as they happen rather than reactively, and schedule maintenance windows efficiently by knowing the state of assets.
They can also optimize service levels more accurately based on real-time data, repurpose IT resources with up-to-the minute information about workload capacity, increase business continuity and uptime in case of a failure because there’s no guesswork about what runs where or if something has been moved from one location to another.
2. The evolution of data center CMDB
The data center is still one of the most complex and critical IT infrastructure components in an organization, which has greatly evolved from its humble beginnings. Today’s data center can host thousands of applications, tens of thousands of virtual machines, tens of thousands of physical servers or storage devices and up to millions of endpoints. Managing this massive arsenal has never been more important or challenging.
With that in mind, successful data center managers need to consider their options when it comes to choosing a tool to manage the massive amount of information associated with managing a modern-day data center.
CMDBs are evolving to provide better insights into IT assets, providing more than just the basic information on hardware, software, systems and personnel. They are moving toward capabilities that enable better management of infrastructure and supporting devices which includes the ability to visualize your entire IT infrastructure at a glance.
This is being further boosted by a trend towards federated systems of databases, where traditional IT CMDBs are merged with Data Center CMDBs to allow data to flow between them automatically. These trends will help make CMDB tools even more powerful and strategic for every organization from enterprises to SMBs.
3. Integration with cloud native tools
With the rise of cloud-native tools, there are now more options for organizations to consider. The CMDB-as-a-Service (CMDBaaS) model is becoming increasingly popular, with many vendors offering this service based on their own proprietary CMDBs.
With the growing trend for enterprise workloads to move to public cloud, securing the data in these deployments becomes essential. The modern era of hybrid cloud calls for a new approach to security that focuses on both runtime and rest protection.
Even as organizations are realizing that it is too expensive to deploy CI/CMDB solutions that require you to change your behavior around managing configuration items (CI) and other system assets, they are still struggling with the problem of having too many systems that don’t store the proper information. Again, if we think of this as a security problem, then the ideal solution should be one that can collect data from all of those disparate sources and analyze it to provide value to the CISO or IT leader.
The importance of a cloud CMDB solution is the fact that it allows you to find any problems that arise with your systems quickly and easily so they can be resolved in a timely manner. A CMDB is also great for understanding how changes to different components of your IT infrastructure can affect the performance or security of other systems.
4. CMDB-as-a-Service
CMDB-as-a-Service is a cloud-based solution that helps companies manage their IT infrastructure. It’s an affordable and easy way to manage your IT infrastructure, especially if you’re the owner of a small business.
CMDB-as-a-Service offers you the ability to store all of your CMDB data in one place, which makes it easier for users at different levels within your company to access and use this information when needed.
Because it is stored in the cloud, all updates can be made from any device or location without needing expensive hardware or software installations on each employee’s computer or mobile device. This makes it much easier for small businesses to have access to this type of technology than what was available before cloud computing existed (when they had to buy expensive servers).
Read: The benefits of a custom CMDB for IT asset management
Choose the right CMDB tool for your needs in 2023
It’s important to keep in mind that the future of CMDB will be dictated by the needs of your organization. Therefore, it’s important that you know what kind of tools and capabilities you need when choosing a CMDB solution.
Virima CMDB has been developed to provide you greater visibility of your IT ecosystem so that you can optimize the use of your resources and prevent conflicts. Virima is a modern, user-friendly, visual configuration management database (CMDB) experience that is ITIL-compliant and flexible enough to allow for automated tasks via granular business rules.
Virima CMDB is the industry’s most cost-effective CMDB solution for IT Asset Management (ITAM). It perfectly fits in your organization’s existing processes and is easy to use by all relevant stakeholders. Virima CMDB can be used for both on-premises and cloud deployments and enables processes to be streamlined across multiple data silos and environments.
Our CMDB provides a complete view of all IT assets in your environment—and the relationships between them. It shows which services depend on each other, and when they will fail. It helps you quickly identify relationships among all types of devices, software and applications in an intuitive format that makes it easy to find information.
There’s more to Virima CMDB! Find out all about it and more by scheduling a demo today.
