Atwell Williams - Configuration Management

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Why should your company implement a CMDB? How can you cost justify it? That's the rub, says Atwell Williams, Director of IT Service Management at BMC Software, Inc. Thinking of it alone isn't what makes the CMDB valuable. But, thinking of it as a way to relate your IT infrastructure components to your business services and processes using configuration management is when its significance is truly discovered. Are you part of one of those companies that goes out and purchases technology, but then doesn't do anything with it? If you've bought CMDB technology or are implementing it, you'll be interested in what Atwell has to say.

There are a lot of terms tossed around when you're talking about this topic - like asset management, inventory, discovery, CMDB, and configuration. Atwell explains the terms in easy-to-understand language that you can grasp right away. He discusses the tool and what it does so that you can stop focusing on the technology and start to focus on the goals of your business and the process that will help you achieve your goals. Gets some instruction from an ITIL service management master.

Resources

Read Atwell Williams' blog on TalkBMC: IT Service Improvement - Are We There Yet?

Bio

Atwell Williams is presently a director of IT Service Management within BMC Software's Business School. In this role, Mr. Williams is responsible for educating customers as well as BMC staff in the areas of IT Service Management (ITSM) and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Mr. Williams is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and BMC Customer Forums. He has also published several whitepapers on the subject of ITSM and Continuous IT Service Improvement.

Production Credits

Ynema Mangum, Producer
Dana Farver, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer