Safeguarding critical IT infrastructure
Like all companies in Germany, Hapag-Lloyd AG is required by law to ensure data protection and the security of its IT systems. For this reason, the implementation of a CMDB in which all relevant configuration information (CIs) regarding the systems is consolidated and the relationships between the systems are mapped was mandatory. It was designed to improve the handling of incidents, changes and other IT service management processes in the future and to make a complete change history available. In addition, the connections between assets, applications and business processes were intended to allow criticality to be derived and parts of the IT landscape to be fully restored after a severe disruption.
From concept to project: use cases, database design and maintenance plan
The market for CMDB solutions is large and each company has its specific requirements for the right tool: “We were looking for a strategic partner who, on the one hand, offers consulting services and knows exactly how a CMDB should be perfectly designed and, on the other hand, provides support in the search for and implementation of an appropriate solution. That's exactly what we have found in SSC," explains Jan Kornfeld, Director IT Cloud Management Services. As a Serviceware company, Strategic Service Consulting GmbH gives advice on strategic and operational digitalization issues through holistic enterprise service management.
After a comprehensive analysis in which all requirements from the individual stakeholder teams were collected, the project team defined the corresponding use cases – structured according to ITIL processes. In addition, it was determined which components would be maintained in the CMDB in the future and how the whole thing could be covered with the help of a maintenance plan within the team. For this purpose, a high-level architecture was developed with which all required systems can be represented and linked.
The design of a data model suitable for processing the defined use cases and containing the necessary interfaces was also one of the project team's tasks. The worked-out elements were finally combined to an overall concept and the tender for a suitable tool as well as its implementation were accompanied by SSC: “An important requirement was that the relationships between the IT systems must be immediately visible," explains Jan Kornfeld. “If a system fails or a change is made incorrectly, what other systems or CIs are affected? This requires a deep technical understanding of a CMDB in order to be able to manage it for us. The SSC consultants involved provided perfect support in that regard."
