Organisations have different levels of maturity in the area of Change Management Databases (CMDB’s).

I was particularly looking to understand information like what does the WAN and LAN look like, what Servers and Client computers do we have in the estate, what Operating system and other Applications are running on these servers, etc?

I wanted this information on a regular basis (daily to weekly) so that we could observe change and query information and have confidence that it was fully up to date.

At one end of the spectrum some organisations couldn’t spell CMDB. On the other end of the spectrum an organisation might have a fully automated and integrated CMDB offering which it exposes to its Enterprise Architecture team to do “what-if” analysis, to understand the estate and to help continuously improve network and hardware designs, etc.

We discovered an excellent Software-as-a-Service offering that is not designed as a CMDB, but primarily scans the network for vulnerabilities and security information. However it generates, as a by product of its security scanning, all the base information that an Enterprise Architecture practice can use. It draws up a visual diagram of the WAN and LAN, shows all the IP addresses and categorises all the information in terms of Infrastructure Software and Applications found. This information can then be exported out and brought into the Enterprise Architecture Models.

The best part and the reason for the Blog is that except for a few strategically placed Black Box hardware items that get plugged into the wall on one end and the network on the other end, there is nothing to install!

All the real work is done on the Remote (Software-as-a-Service) Servers in the cloud, over encrypted links to your organisation. The benefits of this are that you can get this installed extremely quickly and not have to alter any ways of working in your IT Operations and Production Environments. A quick win situation all round, without upsetting the Production people and getting really useful information rapidly. Check it out – www.Qualys.com

Changes in this release are generally around:

• Introduced some Strategy Elements.
• Renamed Segment Architecture to Theme Architecture
• Made it more Service Oriented.
• Introduced a new concept to Agile EA of Supplier and Vendor Management - for Outsourcing, SaaS, Vendor Licenses, etc.  
• Refined elements of Service Governance.

Specifically the changes are: 

• Renamed the FEA term "Segment Architecture" to a more meaningful "Theme Architecture" and therefore
• Refactored the "Segment Architecture View" to "Theme Architecuture View" including all related sub-pages.
• Added a placeholder Task for "Identify Architecture Strategy for Segment"
• Defined a new Artefact called "Theme Architecture Strategy Description"
• Added a new Discipline called "Supplier & Vendor Management".
• Renamed "Define a Mission" to "Define an EA Mission"
• Renamed "Define a Vision" to "Define an EA Vision"
• Added a placeholder Task for "Manage Vendor Lisences" in the Supplier and Vendor Management discipline.
• Added a new Artefact called "Vendor License List"
• Added a new Role called "EA Vendor Architect"
• Renamed the "Logical Information Data Model" to "Information Systems Data Model" and changed some of the wording slightly.
• Added a new Artefact called "Themed Architecture Model"
• Added a new Task called "Define a Data Architecture Strategy"
• Renamed the Task "Define a Data Architecture" to "Define a Data Architecture Model"
• Renamed the Work Product "Technology Architectect" to "Infrastructure Technology Architectect"
• Renamed the Discipline "Technology Discipline" to "Infrastructure Technology Discipline"
• Created a role of "Enterprise Architect" as a generic overall role.
• Renamed the role of "Enterprise Services Architect" to "Services Architect"
• Renamed the role of "Solution Techical Architect" to "Project Solution Architect"
• Renamed the "To-Be Architecture Model View" to "Target Architecture (To-Be) Model View"
• Renamed the "As-Is Model View" to "Current (As-Is) Architecture Model View"
• Renamed the "Ensure Performance and Capacity" to "Ensure Non-Functional requirements are defined"
• Created a "Service Contract" Artefact - work product.
• Created a "Service Contract Template" Artefact - work product.
• A total of 783 elements in the Process.