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CMDBuild READY2USE Logo

Application already configured for the IT Governance management, ITIL compliant


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Application already configured for the Property and Facility Management and Maintenance Processes

CMDBuild Newsletter n. 63

CMDBuild

September 2017

Summary

Rescheduled at October CMDBuild 2.5

Other previews of CMDBuild 3.0

CMDBuild Reference & Case Study

Created the Zabbix connector

Online demo of CMDBuild READY2USE

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Rescheduled at the end of October the CMDBuild 2.5 release

software

The release of CMDBuild version 2.5 has been rescheduled at the end of October.

The activities needed for enabling CMDBuild to work in cluster mode required some additional days of development, and, given the impact of the new implementation, have also been extended the related tests.

In the meantime, we summarize the main features that will be included in the next release:

  • possibility to configure CMDBuild in cluster mode (multiple independent Tomcat nodes), to ensure the availability and the scalability of the application;
  • GIS refactoring, now able to operate with a quantity of almost unlimited items, thanks to a new memory management mechanism;
  • new task type in the Administration Module Task Manager for an automatic scheduled sending of reports by mail;
  • update of BIM features to IFC4 format;
  • optimization of javascript files download policies from the browser, in order to reduce login waiting time;
  • other performance improvements.
Following CMDBuild version 2.5, we expect to release two or three 2.5.x maintaining releases, to focus then all possible resources in the CMDBuild 3.0 project.
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Other preview of CMDBuild 3.0

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Since some months we are working on the design and prototyping of version 3.0, which we plan to release at about the end of next year.

The new version's goal is not just the rewriting of the user interface, to match the graphic aspect to the latest web design trends, but also the implementation of new features and new configuration mechanisms.

Among the new features in the server-side design, we would like to remind:

  • implementation of a native multitenant system (to simplify multi-enterprise use);
  • extension of the workflow system, with the ability to use Java libraries (to facilitate reuse and testing) and migration to Shark 6.x;
  • support for user preference saving (placement on access, sorting and configuration of data grids, localization of date and currency, etc.);
  • new types of attributes: multiselect lookup, "formula" attributes (to view data calculated from other archives through extensions to CQL language);
  • implementation of a queue system to handle bidirectional messaging, usable for notifications to users, refresh of displayed data, chat functionality, etc.;
  • support to the navigation in the CMDB having set a previous date to see the information valid at that date;
  • data import from standard CSV files in MERGE mode as well as ADD mode;
  • review of log files and error handling.

Some features will be already available in version 3.0, others in later versions 3.x.

The planned implementations, while requiring significant revisions to the architecture of the CMDBuild system, will be implemented in such a way to guarantee the automatic upgrading of the previous versions, in the same simplified ways that have been used until now.
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Online Demo of CMDBuild READY2USE

Since some days, those who require access to the Online Demo from the CMDBuild Project website, receive an account that provides access to both the CMDBuild Demo and the CMDBuild READY2USE Demo.

We would like to remind that CMDBuild is a general-purpose system for configuring Asset Management applications, while CMDBuild READY2USE is a pre-configured CMDBuild application for IT Assets and Services Management.

The Online Demo of CMDBuild contains a simple example of archives and relations, useful to understand the basic mechanisms of the system, and it mainly provides access to the Administration Module, by which it is possible to extend the data model of the sample as you like.

The CMDBuild READY2USE Online Demo contains all the preconfigured functions for IT Governance: CMDB consisting of the main IT Configuration Item types, Service Catalog, ITIL processes (Incident Management, Request Fulfillment, Change Management), IT assets life-cycle management, reports, dashboards, etc. The demo does not include the Self-Service Portal (the simplified interface for non-IT users), the connectors with discovery and monitoring systems, the APP Mobile, and does not include access to the Administration Module.

The databases of both Demos are restored every night.

This new opportunity will help interested users to evaluate both the potential of the base mechanisms of the CMDBuild “core” and the features of the CMDBuild READY2USE pre-configured application.

Request demo account

Useful links

CMDBuild

SourceForge Project

Twitter @cmdbuild

Twitter @openmaint_org

LinkedIn Group

CMDBuild READY2USE

openMAINT

Tecnoteca

 

CMDBuild and openMAINT are open source software developed and maintained by Tecnoteca and released with AGPL license.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CMDBuild Reference & Case Study: The Municipality of Liège (Belgium)

Liegi

City of Liège is a local government, which has about 1800 administrative users, and a computer science department (DSI for “Information System Department”) who maintains the network, the workstations and the servers. The Company also develops applications for the needs of its 20+ departments, and has a “Processes and Procedures Service” who interacts with the departments to analyse their needs and write business specifications. The whole team is composed of 50 people.

I am the Manager of the Software Development Service. We are developing applications, supporting the business when third-party software is bought and managing consultants and sub-contracted developments. We also produce ad-hoc reports and statistics directly from the database when requested. My team is composed of 15 computer specialists, 10 baccalaureates and 5 computer science masters. We have about 80 applications running, most being developed as Java Web Applications and running under Tomcat.

Even though we are using GLPI to manage the incidents and change request from the various end-users, we do not use it for the inventory of our infrastructures and applications. We wanted a "real" CMDB system. After some benchmarking, we short-listed iTop and CMDBuild, and finally chose CMDBuild.

As Phase 1 of our project, we first needed an inventory of our home-made applications, in order to be able to rapidly identify the impacted applications when an infrastructure or server environment issue occurs (the "incident" scenario), to be able to rapidly give accurate information (property or graph), and to be able to figure the impact of a configuration change (the "change" scenario). We defined our own model, and after modelling the classes, we successfully implemented it in CMDBuild and encoded the entities, either manually of by importing csv files from various sources (wiki, Excel file, etc.). Apart from configuring the classes and encoding the entities, we did additional extensions, like linking it with our LDAP server (for a fine-tune the access rights), creating some reports (which appear as widgets in the CMDBuild tool: a global report, summarizing the entities that were modified, and a class reports, showing each entity change in a diff-like view) and implementing the already great relations graph feature with also a tree view.

As Phase 2 of the project, we also wanted an inventory of all the tools and applications that we are using, including non-Java applications, third-party software hosting internally and externally. We extended the model in that direction and started to encode the various entities and relations. At the moment we are finalizing this Phase 2, and I expect my department's colleagues to be comfortable enough with CMDBuild in order to themselves encode entities in the tool and maintain up-to-date information.

Since our current model is mostly software-oriented, the infrastructure part is limited to Operating System and Server (Host). As Phase 3 of the project, we want to extend the model to give a much more detailed description of the infrastructure part, including VMs, controllers, docks, hardware devices, network devices, etc. At the moment we are also evaluating these aspects, and considering the adoption of CMDBuild READY2USE, which should more easily help us to meet our needs, being the pre-configured version of CMDBuild for the IT Governance.

There will be also a Phase 4 of the project: our “Processes and Projects Service” has a need to formalize the missions and processes for the whole entity in a uniform way. As most of those missions end up with an application and possibly some infrastructure change, CMDBuild should be the answer to that need as well, also because they need as well a sustainable way of modelling the end-users’ processes and procedures relating to the use of the applications. As their missions are formalized in various documents, and as we are currently setting up an EDM environment with Alfresco, we would like also to link Alfresco with CMDBuild, to have those documents stored and referenced.

Dimitri Monie

Département des Systèmes d’Information,   Chef du pôle Développement, Ville de Liège.

Created the Zabbix connector for CMDBuild READY2USE

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Zabbix is ​​an open source tool used to monitor network and computer systems and to report any malfunction.

Such notifications are of particular interest for CMDBuild READY2USE, which has to collect and manage useful information for the IT Governance.

The new connector, built as well with the CMDBuild Advanced Connector framework, implements the following features:

  • collection of notifications, through the Zabbix API 3.0;
  • events saving in a new special CMDB class;
  • dispatch of a summary report of the affected CIs and impacted services;
  • opening of an Incident Management workflow;
  • automatic closure of the Incident Management workflow if the failure is solved before the process is taken charge.

The connector will be included in the standard appliance containing the next version 1.2 of CMDBuild READY2USE, but interested Customers using that application may request it right away.

We would like to thank the Quadrata Srl, Premium Partner of the Zabbix Monitoring Tool, for the technical support provided.