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A Final Word About CMDB/CMS

The five articles on CMDB/CMS that I provided in this issue of BSMdigest present many arguments for why you should take a fresh look at what you might achieve with the creative application of some of the better CMDB/CMS technologies.

However I would like to leave you with one reminder: just as a Configuration Management System initiative has the strong potential to be transformative in the best sense of the word -- it can’t be optimized, no matter how good the technology investment, without good leadership, communication and planning.

The list of ten areas most likely to impact CMDB/CMS deployments is from consulting and predates this research by two years. But if you’ll notice -- the first eight have nothing directly to do with technology!

1. Staff Buy-In

2. Staffing and Budget

3. Detailed Requirements

4. Executive Management Support

5. Follow Through

6. Process

7. Managing Expectations

8. Resistance to Change

9. Integration

10. Auto Discovery

But of course that’s why a true CMS can become so powerfully beneficial. Just as it holds the potential to deconstruct and reconcile many different management investments into a cohesive system, it also holds the potential to help transform how IT professionals work together, share information and optimize their time. And little else -- including cloud -- can make such a powerful and positive claim when it comes to true service management efficiencies.

About Dennis Drogseth

Dennis Drogseth is a Vice President at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) with a focus on Business Service Management and CMDB. He serves in a cross- practice area role, looking at trends across IT and related technologies -- especially those related to integrating cross domain requirements, including CMDB/CMS, automation technologies, and analytics.

Drogseth does IT consulting on request and helps clients set metrics and define phases for critical IT initiatives. He also tracks IT organizational changes, in terms of how IT is evolving structurally and culturally from an organizational perspective.

Drogseth has 29 years of experience in various aspects of marketing and business planning for systems and network solutions. Prior to joining EMA, he worked to develop marketing strategies and new business models for Cabletron’s SPECTRUM management software, and spent 13 years with IBM in marketing and communications.

Click here to read: The Quiet CMDB/CMS Revolution

Click here to read: 16 Questions to Get You Started on CMDB/CMS

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Asset Management and Financial Optimization

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Change Management and Change Impact Analysis

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Service Impact Management

Hot Topics

The Latest

Reliability is no longer proven by uptime alone, according to the The SRE Report 2026 from LogicMonitor. In the AI era, it is experienced through speed, consistency, and user trust, and increasingly judged by business impact. As digital services grow more complex and AI systems move into production, traditional monitoring approaches are struggling to keep pace, increasing the need for AI-first observability that spans applications, infrastructure, and the Internet ...

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

A Final Word About CMDB/CMS

The five articles on CMDB/CMS that I provided in this issue of BSMdigest present many arguments for why you should take a fresh look at what you might achieve with the creative application of some of the better CMDB/CMS technologies.

However I would like to leave you with one reminder: just as a Configuration Management System initiative has the strong potential to be transformative in the best sense of the word -- it can’t be optimized, no matter how good the technology investment, without good leadership, communication and planning.

The list of ten areas most likely to impact CMDB/CMS deployments is from consulting and predates this research by two years. But if you’ll notice -- the first eight have nothing directly to do with technology!

1. Staff Buy-In

2. Staffing and Budget

3. Detailed Requirements

4. Executive Management Support

5. Follow Through

6. Process

7. Managing Expectations

8. Resistance to Change

9. Integration

10. Auto Discovery

But of course that’s why a true CMS can become so powerfully beneficial. Just as it holds the potential to deconstruct and reconcile many different management investments into a cohesive system, it also holds the potential to help transform how IT professionals work together, share information and optimize their time. And little else -- including cloud -- can make such a powerful and positive claim when it comes to true service management efficiencies.

About Dennis Drogseth

Dennis Drogseth is a Vice President at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) with a focus on Business Service Management and CMDB. He serves in a cross- practice area role, looking at trends across IT and related technologies -- especially those related to integrating cross domain requirements, including CMDB/CMS, automation technologies, and analytics.

Drogseth does IT consulting on request and helps clients set metrics and define phases for critical IT initiatives. He also tracks IT organizational changes, in terms of how IT is evolving structurally and culturally from an organizational perspective.

Drogseth has 29 years of experience in various aspects of marketing and business planning for systems and network solutions. Prior to joining EMA, he worked to develop marketing strategies and new business models for Cabletron’s SPECTRUM management software, and spent 13 years with IBM in marketing and communications.

Click here to read: The Quiet CMDB/CMS Revolution

Click here to read: 16 Questions to Get You Started on CMDB/CMS

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Asset Management and Financial Optimization

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Change Management and Change Impact Analysis

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Service Impact Management

Hot Topics

The Latest

Reliability is no longer proven by uptime alone, according to the The SRE Report 2026 from LogicMonitor. In the AI era, it is experienced through speed, consistency, and user trust, and increasingly judged by business impact. As digital services grow more complex and AI systems move into production, traditional monitoring approaches are struggling to keep pace, increasing the need for AI-first observability that spans applications, infrastructure, and the Internet ...

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...