Enhance IT Visibility: Integrate IBM i and IBM Z Data into ServiceNow

Key Takeaways

• Machine data created by your IBM Z and IBM i is critical for flagging anomalies that may exist in your business and meeting regulatory compliance requirements
• Automated discovery and integration tools, like a CMDB, streamline processes, reduce risks, and enhance decision-making.
• Precisely Ironstream ensures real-time updates and a holistic approach to IT service management, optimizing your operations by integrating IBM Z and IBM i machine data into ServiceNow.

Efficiently managing your IT infrastructure can be a challenging task, especially when critical systems like IBM Z and IBM i aren’t fully integrated into your configuration management database (CMDB).

Ensuring that your CMDB is accurate and up to date is vital for optimizing IT service management and minimizing operational risks.

But how do you accomplish that? By leveraging automated discovery processes and advanced integration tools that bring IBM Z and IBM i data into your CMBD – helping to provide a comprehensive and transformative view of your entire IT environment.

Understanding CMDB and ServiceNow Discovery

The ServiceNow CMDB is a collection of tables that contains descriptions of every component in your data center. While the CMDB is essential for gathering this crucial information, it might not provide a clear picture of what is happening in your systems. This is where ServiceNow Discovery comes in. ServiceNow Discovery automatically locates and maps all your IT assets.

Maintaining a well-organized CMDB is critical in your ServiceNow environment as it serves as a single source of truth for your IT infrastructure, capturing updates and reflecting changes in real time. Integrating your IBM Z and IBM i data into your ServiceNow CMDB enhances visibility, improves efficiency, and reduces risk.

To ensure your CMDB remains accurate, ServiceNow Discovery plays a vital role. It continuously populates and discovers items throughout your environment, keeping your CMDB up to date and providing a powerful, comprehensive view of your IT infrastructure.

Benefits of an Up-to-Date CMDB

Taking the proper measures to maintain an accurate CMDB has big payoffs. Here are four of those key benefits:

1. Visibility and control. Gain comprehensive visibility into your IT infrastructure, so you can track assets effectively, make informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and more.
2. Streamlined service management. Enhance service management processes, particularly in incident and change management. An accurate CMDB provides a real-time version of the truth, enabling faster, more efficient problem resolution.
3. Reduced risk. By maintaining an up-to-date CMDB, you can proactively identify potential issues, minimizing the risk of system downtime and performance problems. This proactive approach ensures your IT environment remains functional, responsive, and efficient.
4. Better asset management. The CMDB helps track ownership, maintenance schedules, and warranties, ensuring better utilization of IT assets. This holistic view allows for effective asset management and planning.

Risks of an Incomplete  CMDB

As important and valuable as the benefits are, you also need to know about the risks you’re your business is subjected to when you aren’t maintaining an accurate CMDB. If you’re not aware of data changes or new items in your environment, all kinds of issues can arise:

• Security vulnerabilities. Missing or outdated data can expose your IT environment to security threats, creating blind spots and increasing the likelihood of breaches.
• Inefficient incident resolution. Many ServiceNow users want to use the system for faster, more effective, and proactive incident resolution. But this becomes nearly impossible with an incomplete CMDB, which hinders incident resolution – leading to longer downtimes and frustrated users.
• Poor decision-making. Inadequate information means a lack of context for thorough analysis, which results in poor decisions that affect your overall IT operations.
• Compliance issues. An inaccurate CMDB makes you more vulnerable to shortcomings with ever-evolving regulatory requirements. Failure to meet these regulations can result in fines and damage to your business reputation.
• Loss of trust. All these issues discussed – a lack of compliance in particular – can lead to stakeholders losing confidence in your IT capabilities, impacting relationships and business outcomes.
• Missed opportunities. Incomplete visibility prevents you from optimizing processes and leveraging opportunities for improvement in your IT environment.

With all of these risks and benefits in mind, let’s explore the various approaches to keeping your CMDB accurate and up to date.

ServiceNow Discovery vs. Alternative Approaches to CMDB Management

ServiceNow Discovery ensures that your CMDB is always up to date. However, some organizations still rely on alternative methods, each with its drawbacks:

• Manual entry. Time-consuming and prone to human error, manual entry presents risks – especially for larger environments.
• Data import. Semi-automated but limited in scope, data imports are suitable for bulk updates but not for ongoing changes.
• Manual integration. Complex and maintenance-heavy, manual integration requires detailed knowledge and continuous updates.
• Self-service portal. Relying on human input, self-service portals work best in environments with minimal changes.
• APIs. While programmable, APIs require development resources and ongoing maintenance.

What method does your organization currently use to manage your CMDB? Have you experienced challenges or limitations similar to those outlined here?

Ultimately, these alternative approaches to ServiceNow Discovery typically take a lot of your internal resources to manage, and require an audit trail to identify who’s responsible, and when and how often they carry out those processes.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to change your approach, the bottom line is this: there are alternatives, but the automated ServiceNow Discovery process will deliver the most value while freeing up more of your resources.

Addressing CMDB Gaps: Integrating IBM Z and IBM i Systems

In addition to ensuring the data in your CMDB is correct, the other question to ask is whether you have all the data you need to meet your objectives.

IBM Z and IBM i systems are often critical to IT operations but aren’t natively integrated with ServiceNow. This gap can lead to incomplete visibility and higher operational costs and risks.

To address this and fully optimize your systems, you need a solution designed to integrate IBM machine data into your ServiceNow implementation.

The Precisely Ironstream Solution

Precisely Ironstream seamlessly integrates with ServiceNow Discovery to make it easy to incorporate IBM i and IBM Z machine data into your CMDB. You’re able to easily connect sources and targets, ensuring flexibility and visibility into your IT infrastructure.

As a result, you ensure:

• real-time updates
• comprehensive visibility
• faster incident resolution
• effective service management

All of this means you gain that critical comprehensive view of your entire IT landscape – without the complexity, time, and risk of manual processes.

Achieve Complete IT Visibility Today

Integrating IBM Z and IBM i data into your CMDB enhances IT visibility, efficiency, and risk management. With Ironstream, you can achieve a comprehensive, up-to-date view of your entire IT infrastructure, empowering you to make more powerful, informed decisions.

Ready to learn more and take the first steps toward more efficient IT operations management? Read The Guide to ServiceNow Discovery for Mainframes and IBM i.