And this brings me to a term that I would hardly try to evangelize outside of this column, but that seems useful here -- and that's the "CCS" or "Contextually Cohesive System."

The CMS should be a contextually cohesive system to support all IT service management processes. The politics and process issues categorically outweigh the technology issues in establishing such a system. This was reinforced in a note from one of my column respondents who rightly complained, "You may have the best intentions when designing a CMDB, but if the processes and buy-in from the users aren't agreed upon, then you'll just be spinning your wheels."

In this case the NOC became the "red-headed stepchild" of an initiative that seemed to have spun out of control in terms of the review process (too much formality, too little appreciation for domain expertise) and a disassociation of those who bear the burden of maintaining and updating the system from those who profit from its value.

Along the "red-headed stepchild" front, in two briefings this week I challenged two vendors - one a large platform vendor and the other a smaller, service-desk centric company - about the lack of out-of-the-box capabilities to support network devices in terms of core CMDB models, or fields, or classes. One explained that it had dedicated partners for telecommunications requirements in particular. The other responded with a classic - "Don't they have their own tools for this?" - meaning, not the CMDB.

But they got it instantly, as soon as I suggested that was exactly the problem in many environments, a CMS growing in the service desk or data center, while the NOC is left literally to its own devices, with redundant and often conflicting views of "truth."

The beginning of the CMS is not a technology purchase -- it is, not to sound too Zen, a state of mind. Just by beginning the journey to establish a cohesive fabric of sources to view changes and conditions across the infrastructure as they affect business services -- you are by definition embarking on a CMDB System (or CMS) initiative.

ITIL can and should provide good process guidelines, but they, too, are only a place to start. The goal is to facilitate collaboration, eliminate redundancy and inconsistent sources, and use common sense. Whatever you happen to buy along the way to further this progression towards a more effectively integrated system is still just an enabler, not an end in itself.