SCUG session with Nigel Cain: System Center Service Manager Integration
Hello,
Last week we had the pleasure to attend to the Microsoft partner session with Nigel Cain and in the evening there was the SCUG session where Nigel talked about the integration possibilities of System Center Service Manager.
In this post I want to high light some information that is provided during these sessions:
- In both sessions an overview is provided of the functionality in SCSM. Change management, problem management, incident management and compliance management are part of the product. Asset management can be integrated via custom management pack - http://www.provance.com/en/Solutions/Provance_and_Microsoft_System_Center.html
- SLA management is not included in SCSM V1 and will not be available in RTM version. Let’s say it with Nigel his words “Let’s ship the V1 version and start then thinking about the V2 version”
- End of February there will be a release candidate available:
- “Line manager” concept will be integrated in that version. Nice for the Review activities.
- less empty fields in management console, for the moment we have sometimes some empty action fields in the GUI.
- Populating the CMDB is an important task in the setup of an SCSM infrastructure
- SCCM and SCOM are important sources for populating the CMDB, but SCSM is not limited to that. CSV import is an easy method for importing CI’s. Simple CSV import via the mgmt console can already do the task or you can create a CSV connector.
- Important for the import of the CI’s is that the source is clean. Keep in mind to clean up the source before you do an import of the CI’s
- Ok, currently there are connectors available for importing CI’s from Windows platform, but SCSM is certainly not limited to that. SCSM is service management for your whole environment. If you want to have your beamer as a CI in SCSM, create the proper class and start importing. If you need UNIX, LINUX,… system in SCSM, import them in SCSM and so on…
- Configuring SCSM is for a big part the translation of the defined processes. It will be important to have a clear overview of this information before starting configuring SCSM.
A lot more information is provided during the sessions, thank you Nigel for sharing this information with us.
We had a “little” after session with Nigel where we discussed the service provider scenario. Below you can see the result of the brainstorm…
Another nice functionality that is discussed during the after session was the compliancy measuring. The integration with SCCM DCM is explained during the sessions, but there is an additional check that can be performed against different frameworks. Readers who are interested in this kind of functionality, please post a reply on this post. If I can gather some interest on this topic, Nigel wants to give dedicated session about it. I will start gather info about the compliancy regulations that are included in SCSM…
Hope this post provides some info for those who were not in the possibility to attend the sessions.
Kind regards,
Kurt Van Hoecke