Case Study

ServiceNow CMDB and Discovery Implementation

A semiconductor manufacturer implements ServiceNow CMDB and discovery to optimize configuration management and product quality

A leading semiconductor manufacturing company transforms its configuration management process and enhances the quality of its products with ServiceNow CMDB and by implementing ServiceNow Discovery.
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Industry & Region: Manufacturing, US
Technology Stack: Tenable, CrowdStrike, SCCM, NetBrain, VMware, ServiceNow CMDB, ServiceNow Discovery
Client Overview
Our client is a US-based global technology company delivering semiconductor technologies to ensure high-performance electronic products and create an exceptional customer experience. The client is focused on creating a clean-power ecosystem, which enables the generation of renewable energy as well as the energy-efficient transmission and consumption of power across a wide range of applications such as appliances, computers, mobile devices, and numerous industrial applications.
Business Problem
Our client’s main goal is to make sure their products consume power efficiently and meet safety standards. To be able to achieve this, the client had set up a configuration management process in place to understand how their IT assets (Configuration Items (CIs)) are configured and how they relate to one another and behave throughout the product development lifecycle. Thus, they wanted to manage the complexity of their products and ensure consistency throughout the development process.

The client’s existing configuration management process was very basic as they were using a master server spreadsheet to track the inventory of servers and multiple third-party tools such as Tenable, CrowdStrike, SCCM, NetBrain, and VMware to discover CIs. These tools had certain limitations in their capabilities and were not enabling the client to discover the CI data and keep a record of it effectively in order to map the IT components to their products. Additionally, they were not utilizing their ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) effectively. As a result, the client was finding it difficult to manage their IT assets and operations, hindering their product development, business processes, and service delivery.

Therefore, they were looking to strengthen their configuration management process through the implementation of suitable tools.
Solution Offered
The client approached KANINI for an analysis of their existing systems, tools, and processes and for a proposal to implement an appropriate solution to overcome their configuration management challenges.
At the outset, we conducted workshop sessions to understand the client’s problem and current environment, which included analyzing their existing configuration management process and the functionality of their third-party tools. From the analysis, we deduced that implementing ServiceNow, integrating the client’s existing tools with ServiceNow CMDB and ServiceNow Discovery – to automate the discovery of IT assets or CIs and their relationships and populate the data in the CMDB – would solve the problem.

As the next step, our ServiceNow expert team commenced the process of integrating the client’s existing tools with ServiceNow CMDB by:

  • Installing relevant plugins, collecting the credentials for the tools’ server, installing the MID server, and configuring import job schedules.
  • Deploying the relevant service graph connectors to help the client import the required data seamlessly from their third-party tools into the CMDB and reconciled the required CIs.
Post the reconciliation of CIs, we undertook troubleshooting and error-handling procedures and conducted an extensive review of the imported CIs to ensure data integrity in the ServiceNow CMDB. The successful integration of the third-party tools with ServiceNow CMDB solved 70% of the client’s configuration management process challenges.
Subsequently, we kickstarted the process of implementing ServiceNow Discovery, which included:
  • Collecting Windows credentials for Windows discovery, SSH credentials for Linux discovery, VMware credentials for VCenter discovery, and SNMP credentials for Network discovery to ensure the ServiceNow discovery tool can smoothly discover data from various devices used in the client’s organization.
  • Conducting working sessions with the network and firewall teams to enable network traffic and collect information about the IP ranges, enabling a seamless discovery process (These IP ranges were configured into the client’s ServiceNow instance).
Eventually, the required troubleshooting and error-handling processes were undertaken, and CIs were reconciled. We configured discovery schedules to set up the time to scan the network and discover the CIs. Post the configuration of schedules, the discovered CIs in the CMDB were reviewed.
The successful execution of these processes provided the client with a centralized, automated, and effective configuration management process, increasing operational efficiency and reshaping their IT operations. This helped the semiconductor manufacturing company to improve the quality of their products, making them effective and energy-saving.
Value Delivered
  • Automated discovery of IT assets used in the organization.
  • Achieved the next level of CMDB maturity.
  • Increased operational efficiency and enabled effective IT operations management.
  • Enhanced quality of products, business processes, and customer experience.
Discover more about how we help manufacturers revolutionize their operations through ServiceNow implementation.
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