IT Management Forum

Good Day,

In response to ongoing and long term discussions about how expensive and complex so many CMDB tools are, The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT) is in the processing of developing its own CMDB, called NOUNZ.

We've published a working example of this tool to the site: "http://NOUNZ.if4it.com" for public review.

In an attempt to make sure that we've covered at least the basic requirements of a good CMDB, I'm personally hoping that those of you who are familiar with CMDBs and their requirements/features can take a look and provide honest feedback, here, in this thread.

Disclosure: Before proceeding, I wanted to disclose that there is marketing/sales information on the Home page, as the tool is intended for distribution in the future, and I kindly ask that you ignore it as all we really want is feedback on how the tool works and looks. The tool is not yet available for distribution and that information, like the tool, is in flux and developing.

If you choose to assist, here are some things to keep in mind...

In NOUNZ, a Configuration Item Type is referred to as a Noun or a Noun Type (e.g. Applications, Capabilities, Services, etc.).
In NOUNZ, a Configuration Item is referred to as a Noun Instance (or an Instance of a Noun).
All Nouns or Noun Types are located in the Master Catalog (in the menu bar) or in the left Navigation bar.
A Configuration Item is referred to as a Noun Instance.
Contextual groupings of Noun Instances can be accessed by going into a Noun Specific Catalog, which is a Sub-Catalog off of the Master Catalog (or off of one of the left navigation Noun Types). Examples include alphabetic listings, full data views, dashboard views, user-defined indexes, etc.
Individual Noun Instances (i.e. CIs) can then be selected from these contextual groupings, where a user can see all details about that Noun Instance/CI.
Once a user is viewing any specific Noun Instance, he/she can see different views of that Noun Instance, along with any other related Noun Instances (i.e. Relationships) from coordinated views that are accessible in the left Navigation column.
If a user drills into a "related" Noun Instance/CI, either directly from the Default View page or from coordinated sets of views on the left, he/she should be able to also see the reverse relationship, that allows the user to go back to the originating CI, as well as to see all "net new" relationships for that new CI.
Browser Compatibility Note: Any version of Internet Explorer (IE) that is less than v8 (even v8 running in v7 compatibility mode) will not be able to see the interactive/dynamic charts in the Dashboard Views. There should be no issues for most other browsers.

If you should choose to look at it, I kindly ask that you please post your feedback, issues, and/or ideas for future improvement as responses to this thread so I can address them from one place.

Please also note that there is no guarantee that we will decide to fix any issues you highlight or build any new features you suggest, as this is more of an information gathering session to understand progress.

Also, this is all the foundation for a second phase of the tool that will start to publish far more complex, dynamic, and highly interactive graphical views of the data (trees, radial type wheels, network graphs, etc.).

Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

My Best,

Frank Guerino
Chairman
The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT)