In general, the Multitenant feature will allow to partition the CMDBuild data into separate areas for each tenant, so that each tenant works with a custom virtual instance.
The implementation chosen for CMDBuild 3.0 allows both the possibility of a complete partitioning (for example different Companies using the same cloud instance) and partial partitioning (for example, each support group works on some customers, each customer works only on their own data).
The tenant list to be used can be defined by an application class of CMDBuild identified for this purpose (Offices, Companies, Customers, etc.) or by a custom database function (implementing for example the fact that every tenant sees the data of a site but the regional director sees the data of all the locations in a region).
For higher security, the data access control according to the tenant in use will be based on the RGS (Row Level Security) mechanism native in PostgreSQL.
In the normal use of CMDBuild, if the Multitenant mechanism is active, each user at login will log in with his tenant if it is unique, or he will choose one of the available ones, or he may decide to work with several tenants at the same time. It will then be possible to change the choice of the tenant without having to log out.
The operation of the system will then be such that data cards with valued tenant will be visible only to users associated with that tenant, data cards with non-valued tenant will be visible to all users, the inclusion of a new data card will automatically enhance the tenant with the current value for the user, or will ask to select one explicitly if the user has the possibility to work with multiple tenants active at the same time
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CMDBuild Reference & Case Study: Shropshire & Staffordshire Health Informatics Service (S&SHIS)
The Shropshire & Staffordshire Health Informatics Service (S&SHIS), is an NHS organisation which provides shared ICT infrastructure and services to many other NHS organisations within the region.
One of the biggest challenges which faces any organisation is building an effective and current reporting system of their IT asset estate.
Our approach to building a successful CMDB: we started off with what we call the “Foundation” classes, these are the base classes which almost every other class will have a relationship with; for us those were: “Location”, “Organisation” and “People”.
The quality of the data for these classes has to be from a reliable, current and managed data source. This was from an electronic staff record system, Active Directory and our in-house Service Management Tool. Federating this data and importing into the CMDBuild platform on a nightly basis, to ensure we have the most current data and the required attributes to satisfy our reporting requirements, was key to the start of our implementation.
Over the past 3 years we have developed the CMDBuild platform with automated feeds and manually managed classes, supported by internal business processes.
Currently there are 140 active users, 110.000 people records, 280 organisations, 1.300 locations and many other classes.
We have automated feeds for 21.000 live PC’s and Laptops with nightly updates showing key relationships including Owner (organisation class), Last Known User (people class), Last known Location (location class), Warranty End Dates (Dell warranty API).
We have sponsored the recent Document Management developments to include versioning features, which we use to manage our contracts and business critical policy and process documents.
The developments continue with many more on the horizon, and with the flexibility and features of the CMDBuild platform and Tecnoteca’s expertise this will continue to drive value for us and our partner organisations.