Configuresoft is actively working in change and configuration management landscape. It is promoting following tow products:

Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM): ECM is CMDB based technology. It offers management of configuration settings of windows based server and clients with its focus on security and IT standards. ECM also helps in Rule compliance, audits of IT infrastructure and much more. It is striving to deliver software for ITIL, SOX compliance. Some of the companies using ConfigureSoft ECM are Qwest, Clifford Chance etc. Read more about theie case studies.

Security Update Manager (SUM): SUM is aimed to automate security patch management across the enterprise. It helps install the security update patches on many systems with just one click. Not many customes are found to be using ConfigureSoft SUM. However, it is a very promising software.

ConfigureSoft ECM and SUM is aimed to acheive Change and Configuration management demand of an enterprise.

Change and configuration management should be aimed to acheived following objectives:

1. Account for all the IT assests and configurations within the organization and its services


2. Provide knowledge repository on configurations and their documentation


3. Provide a road map for IT service management such as incident management, problem management, change management, and release management


4. Verify and comply the configuration items(CI) against the infrastructure

Information on change and configuration management is centrally managed in a persistent storage. It is also called as Configuration
management database(CMDB).

Configuration management database (CMDB) has following components:

1. Physical CI: Server, switch, application, database, documents etc.


2. Logical CI: IT services, systems, baseline records etc.


3. CI attributes: CPU speed, version, patches, serial number etc.


4. CI relationships: Parent-child, hosts relationships etc.

Change and configuration management forms key to ITIL. Lets see what is ITIL all about?

ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure Library. Today, world has become aware about managing IT infrastructure. ITIL is becoming widely accepted approach in IT Service management. Hundreds of companies have already started adopting ITIL processes.

ITIL is a set of best practises aimed to achieve quality IT service management. IT service management is management of IT systems and infratsructure to accomplish quality IT services delivery.ITIL has attracted attention of IT service providers, CIOs, directors and managers.

ITIL is aimed to enable a company achieve following:

1. Reduced costs


2. Enhanced IT services by the use of best practises


3. Enhanced use of skills and experience across the organisation


4. Improved standards


5. Improved productivity


6. Enhanced availability and performance of IT services

ITIL enhances quality of service delivery and support services by doing  Change and configuration management.

Change and configuration management includes following:

1. Problem detection, quick troubleshooting


2. Release management


3. Production environment management


4. Development management


5. Availability and performance management


6. Security management

To acheive all of the above related to ITIL, an automated software is must; a software that specializes in change and configuration management.

And when the names have to be taken of those cool vendors, they are the following:

Cendura
HP
BMC
Relicore
Collation

Watch out for more discussion on ITIL and change and configuration management.

Change and configuration management solutions are all about automation of day-to-day management of software such as operating systems, various applications, patches, licenses, configuration settings. Process of managing a software applications could include the following:

• Discovery


• Deployment


• Ongoing management


• Upgrade management


• Migration management


• Asset management


• Reporting


• Rule compliance such as HIPPA, ITIL, SOX compliance

Change and configuration management solutions could be of following type:

1. Host change and configuration management


2. Server change and configuration management


3. Network devices change and configuration management

One such change and configuration management solution is HP OpenView. Read more about HP OpenView.

In change and configuration management, Relicore is one company that is a promising company. Other major competitors are Cendura, Collation, Configuresoft. These are few companies who are fighting out for a place in the multi billion dollar market for IT management. Visit Relicore right away!

Relicore is an IT service configuration management company. They are promising to provide following features:

Automated discovery and change tracking: This feature would help user to automatically discover the applications on a host machine, thereby managing them in form of tracking the changes happening over a period of time.
Server dependency mapping: Discovery and management of applications on host machines leads to understanding the dependency between these applications. One shall be able to know the incoming and outgoing links between each machine, and links between applications on/across the machine.
Enterprise scalability and integration: Enables the scalability of enterprise applications by proper management.
Reports: Provides reports on inventories etc.

Only time will tell how Relicore performs in change and configuration management landscape.

Change and configuration management starts with Host management. What got changed on my host machine? This is a troublesome task in today's IT arena where large companies are managing 1000+ servers. It is so very time consuming and companies are ending up lots of money on maintaining their Host machines at gold standard configuration. Let us take a small example:

You have got a new linux box where you need to install following to start with:

Linux operating system
Apache

You got linux installed. Perfect install! And, then got your Apache installed. Perfect configuration. And got a person to monitor! Perfect arrangement! But this perfect set up is fragile. The person got sick for one month, god forbids. And there is assigned another person to manage. He is a smart guy but got to office one fine evening with a couple of bottle of beers poured below his neckline. TGIF! He accidently changed certain configurations. Next morning is a holiday, saturday. some sincere guys wanted to work from home. However, things are broken. O boy! They waited for three days as the new person took entire monday to figure what he changed on Friday evening.

Is not that waste of time, waste of resources for nothing? Why not have a constant watch dog on this linux box? Why not have a change and configuration management tool to manage these pieces of software?

Reliable change and configuration management is going to be problem of the near future. So, sooner companies start taking a look at their configuration management strategy, better placed are they to manage their support/maintenance workforce, stress, and money above all related with configuration management problem.

Is this really hard to do? I believe no. Yes, it would have looked a wild and vague idea a couple of years before, but a responsible company could just not afford to ignore the problem of configuration management. This problem would sooner become a monster one as we are really forced to increase our IT infrastructure due to effectiveness in managing increased customer demands.

IT management is mostly about managing configuration, configuration of PC boxes, i.e.e, Host.

Host management is something that one would want to start thinking about when planning for change and configuration management. Host management is managing host consisting of operating systems, and various software applications. So, I believe Host management would start with managing operating systems and then moving to managing software applications such as databases, application servers, web servers, enterprise applications etc. Large companies have already started evaluating companies working on change and configuration management tool.