CSDM 2.0 White paper was released few weeks back and when I got eyes on it, it was surprisingly 22 pages long!

Before going through the complete white paper, these are the questions which were in my mind,

Why CSDM was introduced? What is it?

How’s it going to help organisations? 

How can we implement CSDM in the simplest way possible? 

Do you have the same questions like I had?

If you are a lazy reader like I am, it would take you days to research and understand the overview of it. To make it easier for you, below is the summary of it.

Before getting into the CSDM, let us understand the challenges which we are facing in the understanding of infrastructure data in the organization. The visibility into IT infrastructure  data and it’s health is mission-critical.

With the proliferation of hardware, software, devices, virtual machines, cloud services, mobile device technologies, the infrastructure continues to expand and become more complex. That makes visibility a constantly shifting target in infrastructure. It faces the challenges of consolidating, maintaining, and Understanding of the complex data.

So to solve this problem ServiceNow  came up with CMDB. By implementing CMDB in the organization, we can have a clear picture of the IT infrastructure data or its health. This way we can overcome the challenges in terms of service delivery or security of the organisation.

WHAT IS CMDB?

The CMDB is the database that stores information about all hardware and application information. Chiefly, a well-implemented and maintained CMDB provides an organization with complete visibility into their enterprise infrastructure, including reliable configuration data for physical and virtual servers, computers, routers, switches, applications, cloud instances, and more. 

But, people did not find it simple to implement CMDB in their organization. Since, most people did not have the proper way to implement CMDB in their organization, 85% of people believed that it was a failure. To solve this problem, a frameworks was decided to be introduced by ServiceNow team and the same was named CSDM or Common Service Data Model.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

A few years ago at Knowledge 17, a collection of product managers from various business units within ServiceNow got together. A question poped up on how can we improve reporting as it relates to services within a platform? After identifying the need for common definitions and a prescriptive CMDB data model, the CSDM as a collaboration between ServiceNow product teams was born.

WHAT IS CSDM?

CSDM stands for as the Common service Data Model. This is a framework that provides prescriptive guidance on service modeling within the CMDB. This helps us to understand a platform that will enable and support true service level reporting and which also supports multiple configuration strategies. It helps us to place the application and service-related data in a particular place which helps us to gain clear visibility in our IT infrastructure. The scope of CSDM will be extended with more prescriptive guidance in the use of the data model.

CSDM connects your CMDB from both a business and technical perspective with  recommended mappings and relationships. CSDM has three domains which are  color-coded (in three colors basically, orange blue green as highlighted) Design, Technical Manage Services, Sell/Consume. These domains  consist of OOB tables which help to organize data in a particular form

Now as we come to know what is CSDM. Let us understand, what “CSDM IS NOT”

• Product
• Automatic fix for past implementation
• Set of reports
• Code to install

Why should we follow the CSDM?

First and foremost ServiceNow has a product dependency on the CMDB framework. Many of the applications that exist today including Application Portfolio Management depends on data living in these particular tables.

Certainly, Any ServiceNow products that utilizes CMDB requires its data to be found in the CMDB framework. Without CI data in these prescribed CMDB tables, you may not receive the full value of the ServiceNow platform.

How to get started with the CSDM?

ServiceNow does not recommend trying to implement all elements of the CSDM data model at once. The approach in followed in four stages: Crawl, Walk, Run, and Fly.

Were you able to picturize the scenario?

Are you able to connect?

For any assistance regarding CSDM feel free to contact us.

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Any suggestions, let me know in the comments.

Thank you! -Mrudula Atmakuri, ServiceNow Developer @ZeTechno