Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) – Nirvana

The Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) within ITIL Version 3 as described in the Service Transition phase of the lifecycle is a combination of tools and databases that are used to manage information and knowledge about services.  The SKMS is the “data warehouse”/portal or presentation layer that leverages information from the Configuration Management Database and transforms Enterprise System Management systems that monitor applications, network, server and other infrastructure devices, along with the Service Desk system, access logs and various other sources of  information on operation of services and their underlying components.The meshing and synchronization of these various data sources provides the knowledge required to make service portfolio decisions, review and improve polices procedures and processes, determine training needs, monitor service level objectives track and effectively manage assets and monitor changes…among other things.  The value of the SKMS as described is unquestionable.  But does this repository exist?  Many element managers that provide domain-specific monitoring and management for network, server, application or database domains do provide robust tools and support for the particular technology silo they support.  Service desk software vendors handle incident, problem, change and perhaps service catalog and CMDB data and provide adequate integration across these various process areas.  However, even the most comprehensive tool vendors have had difficulty reaching the nirvana that pulls all of this information together to create the knowledge that is required to provide  holistic decision support across the ITSM lifecycle.The vision of SKMS is a good goal to shoot for…and tool vendors are making strides.   But with the heterogeneity of data, the diversity of tools used in most organizations choosing the “best-of-breed” approach to managing services and the fact that the most large ITSM tool vendors still suffer from truly integrating products that have been merged together through acquisition, this still remains the one of the largest ITSM automation challenges.

Tagged as: CMDB, CMS, Configuration Management, Service Knowledge Management System, SKMS