Service Management for Dummies®

Chapter 9. The Technical Foundation of Service Management

In This Chapter

• Seeing systems as relationships

• Understanding configuration management databases

• Managing configuration management databases

People don't find computers to be as mysterious as they once did. You can blame the PC for that fact. As PCs became ubiquitous, just about everyone came to understand roughly how a computer works. Very few people knew exactly how a computer works down at chip level, but most people know that a computer itself has electronic circuits (hardware) that execute instructions (software) and store the results (data).

Before that time, it was credible to write science-fiction stories about a computer that had exceeded the intelligence of man and was about to take over the world, exterminating those pesky humans in the process and then playing 3D chess with itself for eternity. After the PC proliferation, the story lines became a little different. The superintelligent computer still tried to take over the world, but just as it was about to send the robot armies out to exterminate us, it suffered a blue-screen event and died.

This scenario is where service management comes in. If IT professionals get things right, they reduce the possibility that this computer will suffer a blue screen, and if it does, they ensure that another one is ready to step up and take its place. But don't blame the members of the service management staff if it happens. They don't program the computers; they just try to ensure ...