Introduction › The MDB Approach › Integrated IT Management Data

Integrated IT Management Data

A unified database schema for IT management data provides increased visibility into the underlying IT organization, including storage, performance, hardware, and software information. This visibility improves IT decision-making and helps to reduce costs and increase utilization of the infrastructure. Using a unified database schema enables fully-informed decisions about hardware, software and storage purchases, as well as provisioning, scheduling, data protection, and more.

The unified MDB schema enables integration of products without additional programming effort. Integration methods that do not include a single database schema require point-to-point programming efforts to access data from disparate sources. Data integration enables rapid development of new product features, because there is no need for programming interfaces to make disparate data available. Without an MDB, data is stored in multiple locations and schemas, making it difficult to integrate and to create new features that take advantage of data relationships.

Example

Without an MDB, it is difficult to determine whether a server located through a discovery process has been backed up, since the data for discovery and storage are maintained by separate products, in separate databases, and on separate servers. With an MDB, the data is always in one integrated schema. Storage and inventory management (discovery) are more tightly integrated. It is also possible to provide this feature to customers.