There are dozens of teams working in a data center. From the facilities group to the hardware deployment to the application operations and in-between there is no shortage of databases with information. The promise of DCIM is a data center information management solution. The question I ask is how does this work?

Schneider Electric announced a partnership with HP on DCIM.

Schneider Electric Offers Comprehensive Data Center Infrastructure and IT Management Platform Through Collaboration with HP

WEST KINGSTON, R.I. January 23, 2014 – Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, today announced collaboration with HP to deliver a comprehensive, converged data center and IT management platform. This platform will provide consistent views for both the facilities and IT professionals within any organization resulting in increased collaboration and efficiency. The joint solution will feature HP Converged Management Consulting Services (CMCS) combined with Schneider Electric’s Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution, StruxureWare™ for Data Centers. Schneider Electric and HP are uniquely positioned to offer customers the ability to link physical infrastructure assets to business processes for improved holistic business impact analysis.

“By collaborating with HP to provide a holistic approach to managing IT business process assets and workloads, we are continuing to bridge the gap between IT and facilities,” says Soeren Jensen, vice president, Enterprise Management and Software, Schneider Electric. “Enabling IT service providers to instantly view the impact of any changes in their data center, as well as the operational costs associated with these changes is an important step towards improving energy efficiency in data centers and IT.”

The how is by using a CMDB as the one source of the truth and the place to reconcile information from the different sources.

Schneider Electric and HP will integrate StruxureWare for Data Centers with HP’s Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB) which will enable communication and reconcile asset data between the solutions platforms for DCIM and IT Service Management (ITSM). Also, HP will map the functions and features of StruxureWare for Data Centers into HP’s proprietary Converged Management Consulting Framework. This mapping will allow consultants to make informed recommendations around deployment of the solution into customer’s data centers and determine the best way to integrate the overall ITSM and DCIM systems within the environment.

The approach of using a CMDB as the integration point of DCIM information with ITSM is sound and an option that can work. When you look at other DCIM solutions ask how will you store and reconcile the information from IT and Facilities? If they say in the CMDB that would work. If they say they can store the information in a Big Data environment with a NOSQL key value pair approach that could work as well. Most would go down the path of a traditional DB. I would choose ...