While the very first configuration management data bases (CMDBs) were simply attempts to collect, store, and consistently update configuration information that was scattered about in various spreadsheets across an organization, they have come a long way since then.

At their heart, their purpose remains the same: to accurately know the configurations of devices and software inside your IT environment, but their use has expanded—as well as the sophistication on which CIs are discovered and reconciled to create a trusted source of configuration information.  If there is a trusted source (and maybe even a single source) of configuration information for an entire organization—multiple IT departments from incident management, service management, security, etc. could be benefitting from using the same configuration data.

Hence, the goal of any CMDB should be “integration” which implies many things to many people.  The first and foremost should be integrating with other systems and sharing (and perhaps even federating) configuration data across multiple systems.  To that end, Micro Focus Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB (UCMDB) contains an Integration Studio.  The Integration Studio is where you manage your UCMDB integration points and connect and share information with external repositories, such as other CMDBs, IT Performance Suite products, or third-party products. Want to know more about Integration Studio and how to use it if you are already using UCMDB?  Just follow the linked description.

However, another important point is that your configuration data should not limit you or tie you down to any particular vendor.  To that end, Micro focus Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB is designed to work not only with Micro Focus ITSM solutions like Service Management Automation (SMAX), but also with other ITSM solutions like ServiceNow or BMC with out-of-the-box integrations in the ITOM Marketplace. 

In fact, a large chemical company in Europe, says the native integration between SMAX and UCMDB provides them with configuration items that “are available in SMAX without delay” and that “integration jobs (push/populate) between UCMDB and SMAX are not necessary” because it happens natively—all leading to reduced management efforts.

And some companies have found implementing and integrating Universal Discovery and UCMDB easier than deploying the native discovery solutions provided by other ITSM vendors too.  As a large, multi-national credit reporting agency noted:  “We have spent 18 months trying to implement ServiceNow Discovery for cloud and could not do it. We did it with Micro Focus Universal Discovery in 6 days.”

But why stop with just ITSM systems?  Check out this video about Adding Business Context through Universal Discovery for ArcSight Fusion, showing how Security Operations teams can benefit from information in Universal CMDB. 

In a nutshell, if you’re looking for a CMDB that continues to integrate with more and more systems from Micro Focus (like Hybrid Cloud Management X or Operations Bridge), as well as other non-Micro Focus ITSM system—then Universal Discovery and UCMDB is the right choice for you!