logo

NJP

New CMDB 360 feature for MultiSource CMDB data

Import · Dec 01, 2022 · video

hi everyone uh today I'm here to talk about cmdb 360. so what is cmdb 360 cmdb 360 is a fully uh Revolution Evolution and a completely overhauled of a functionality we used to call uh multi-source cmdb you know it's got an entire new UI it's got entire new front-end back-end capabilities and again this is something that is released through a servicenow store it was released in November and there'll be a lot more to come uh in terms of what we're calling CMW 360. so before we get into you know demo let me start with why in the world should anybody care right so first thing uh to talk about is you know what is the customer problem we're trying to solve and the problem is really about how does a customer go and figure out what's all the assets they have and then when I say Assets in the you know notion of things they have in their Enterprise right not just for asset management but you know for security reasons for ideas and reasons you know all the actual devices they have servers they have you know virtual machines they have containers they have how do they know what they have and how do they know they're secure when they don't actually have a notion of do I have everything in my purview right so again think about that challenge they have today with customers where they have lots of tools lots of teams lots of different things flying around but they really want to understand give me that single source of truth right and let me understand really what's going on so you know to that degree right what we've done with kind of our ongoing CMD strategy has really it has turned it from uh hey you know we're relying on this you know you know a source or two rather really bringing that more so as a Federated cmdb right so we have our own native tool like ACC service mapping and Discovery right that's going and finding things you know it's aware of but then we're also aggregating a lot of these data from different sources right the net net is that you get this single source so true Federated from different you know uh data points across the Enterprise right so that's the foundation of sort of that multi-source cmdb and we're gonna you know doing a lot more with that right so why do you care about it because again without having that notion of being able to say I have a 360 degree view of all my asset right how do you know you're actually you know have things that are secure that are still managed right so again the key is like you need that 360 view of all your sci's your asset before you can actually go and say like hey they're secure right so again and going back to kind of this UI right so what we have done is really you know the cmdb 360 is really powered by some of the multi-source data that used to be there right but what we've done is really added an UI add a lot of functionality so that out of the box customers can sort of turn it on and get a lot of value without really a lot of hassle that is really kind of what we're trying to get to so instead of me just talking let me just do a quick demo to show you uh in action right so if I go here what you will see is that you know this is cmdb workspace and within that there's this uh tab for cmdb 360. cmdb 360 still requires an item visibility license if you if a customer does not have icon visibility then you know this would sort of would not be visible right so here if you look at the screen there's a couple things I want to really quickly point out right number one is that potential issues what we're trying to do here is show you potential things that are that may be wrong from an operational perspective from a data Health perspective without really doing anything and this is just based on sort of data analysis we're doing in the background right and this report as an example is just showing you potential areas where you know their CI uh their sources they're sort of missing in action right and that just means that you know is the maybe the the data source now is misconfigured it could be like an agent has stopped reporting is it broken it could be a Discovery range has been set incorrectly in you know since it was set up for initially right so many reasons why but again this is telling to a customer that it is something wrong similarly again you know when there's a data mismatch it's just showing like hey there are multiple CIS they're supposedly the same thing but they're reporting different data values right and again those are telltale signs that something is wrong and for any of these things if you click on them right it actually gets you the actual data what's wrong like what's different right so that's all available once you click in second Point here is to Discovery Source Discovery Source really gives you a really good overview of how am I populating my cmdb here you're sort of seeing like hey there's five sources which are reporting you know 200 000 records or 200 or 2 000 records in this case right but out of that we're sort of reconciling that into 470 unique records right and that's really sort of the magic of our ire engine you know working in practice and again for all these things when you click on it you can actually get to okay which CI is coming from what source uh the the third aspect here in this UI is really coverage uh for all the coverage it's sort of giving you a notion of hey do I have more than one sort you know Source providing insight and the key gotcha there is like as you have more sources you're more confidence in the data as well as if there's a problem with you know One Source you can triangulate what to do the issue right but if you just had a single Source you're kind of running the line right whatever that Source reports is kind of your source of Truth right and like I said any all these things are clickable you can click it and understand which CIS are impacted uh one thing to show before I go into querying capability is that once you for all these settings right again their things out of box that are set up but customers can go in and tweak you know things like hey what data classes do they care about what CI you know attributes do they care about right those are all configurable within that this setting so the final thing we've done is like you know to really reimagine how do we do this querying in terms of getting really in you know informational Insight you know from the data right like I said out of the box these things already show up but if customers want to maybe like drill in into particular questions they want to answer right this is the way to do it uh so a couple of things to note is that there's really three options here number one option is really I want to just really look at my 360 data understand what's reporting what right and just basically explore you want to choose this option the last option here to the right is really what I want to understand you know show me anytime there's really a data mismatch or I'm going to understand hey is it reporting different data values for different attributes you want to use this one right and obviously the most interesting one is actually this Gap analysis which is really saying hey show me anytime you know from a different source that something is being reported while you know you know my other sources are not recording it and then to just to rephrase that right so imagine like you want to understand hey show me all the CIS that you know I want to see that are servers but I want to have an agent reporting on it and I'm realizing hey there's not an agent installed on it right or show me anytime like you know things in the cmdb that I don't have you know servicenow Discovery reporting on it right so as you can imagine those are really really interesting things to understand to manage from a you know CI perspective but it's just overall operational perspective as well right that was really not easy to do before so now it's simple as you know I click this and now I can choose a class any chat class I want and in this case I'm just going to choose uh server because again that's a pretty important class right I press continue and in this screen what it's sort of really showing is that you know show me you know first thing is like any Source that's not reporting on something right I just pick all tourists in this case right saying hey show me anything in the cmdb that's coming through ire that's not reported by Alters right I could have just done a mismatch analysis you know between a single Source or another in this case I'm just looking at all of it right and then here I can sort of look at you know all of the CI records by Discovery Source right or just look at unique Ci's right that may be missing you know from a particular Source in this case I'm going to Discovery Source because I want to say hey for these things who's reporting it and why is Alter is not reporting this exact value right I can save that right and here I'll just call it you know not reporting server right and I can save and run and what I get here is like you know all the CIS from which sources reported right but was not reported by Alters why I don't know but that's something you know customers can really kind of deem that value from and understand why is it not reporting right and as you can see you know we're going to continue to invest on this right this is really a store-based application so the next release we'll be able to sort of create reports out of this hopefully and just make right your own you know graphical burn down charts right we just click of a button right and again we'll continue to enhance but I want to just show you the demo so you're all aware of uh of what this is so moving on uh to kind of the the slide deck right so one of the things I want to just you know harp upon is like this is they're definitely a bunch of competitors in this space right they're sort of selling this as something you know customers cannot get from service now right well we want to just be able to tell customers that hey cmdb 360 it allows customers really leverage existing you know uh platform value and whatever sources they add however they use this is it really accrues to your itsm icon you know secops use cases number one point second getting started is as easy as just literally turning on multi-source capabilities right or seem to be 360 capabilities right it really doesn't take a lot it does not require to change ACC Discovery service graph connector or for that matter anything you've built using iotl right third is that we have capabilities to not just do this with you know basic CI asset you know records but we also have capabilities to just understand sort of even different software being reported right in the future it's going to be enhanced for you in other types of data sets so again this is clearly you know more than anybody else can provide today in the market uh so one of the biggest spots you'll probably hear in the market is really that hey you know we don't have as many sources right as some of our competitors and that's absolutely true some of these other Integrations have you know hundreds of uh sources but the key thing to make sure you know we can articulate is that given that this actually works with Discovery ACC right as well as sort of the service graph connections we have we should be easily be able to you know complete at least 90 you know 90 plus any customer in terms of the real sources they're using right and finally you can sort of Leverage iotl and build your own integration for these custom sources as well so the reality is that our data source should never be a hindrance because again we're pretty much already there with the sources we have right and the final two things is you know is that you know we have the capabilities to provide some of these out of box you know by value right we can leverage a lot of things in servicenow platform that nobody else can do and finally we've already had customers running this with 100 million records and more right so this is already proven to be at scale and I don't think any other competitors in the market can really say the same uh as always if there's any questions please feel to reach out right and again we'll continue to do more demos as we get you know kind of some of the enhancements coming in in in in q1 of 23.

View original source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpdXGsSoOwE