Federation and a CMDB

> 1 Executive Summary Growing momentum behind IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) initiatives has turned the configuration management database (CMDB) into an industry reality — and the concept of data federation is at the forefront. Organic development and IT management tool implementations have increased significantly in recent years, leaving many organizations with data that is pertinent to millions of configuration items (CIs), such as servers, routers, people, business services, and processes. That data also includes relationships and management data related to the CIs. In these IT-laden environments, federation can provide the foundation for creating a CMDB that is scalable, adaptable to fit existing IT infrastructures, and addressable by all applications that need to provide or leverage CMDB data. A federated CMDB should provide an accurate, single representation of data from which to work, for all IT processes. This paper discusses the concept of federation, how federation should be approached in the context of a CMDB, and the key requirements for building a federated CMDB approach.