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Is the CMDB really dead? Charles Betz’s recent Forrester article, “CMDB is Dead. Long Live the IT Management Graph,” recently sparked this lively debate. Betz’s argument? Traditional CMDBs have failed to deliver on their promises, particularly when it comes to low-level configuration management. While it’s true that many CMDB projects have stalled or underwhelmed, declaring the CMDB “dead” is unnecessary, as it was never alive to begin with.
At Flexera, we believe the future of IT management lies in the CMDB and the IT Management Graph approaches leveraging high fidelity data on the IT ecosystem. By combining the strengths of both approaches with underlying data that provides a clear, representative view of the IT estate, organizations can finally achieve true visibility, control, and business value.
CMDB’s persistent value in modern IT
Despite its challenges, the CMDB remains a cornerstone of IT service management (ITSM). It provides a strategic foundation for problem, change and incident management. What organizations really need is accurate asset data for risk mitigation, spend optimization, and AI readiness. In today’s complex IT environments, organizations need a unified, near real-time view of their assets and dependencies. The CMDB delivers this by acting as a central inventory, mapping hardware, software, cloud resources, and their relationships.
But a CMDB is only as valuable as the data it contains. That’s where Flexera comes in. By leveraging Technopedia, Flexera enriches CMDBs with clean, normalized, and curated data. This ensures that IT teams aren’t just tracking assets—they’re making decisions based on accurate, up-to-date information. The result? Better compliance, smarter automation, and a foundation for advanced analytics and AI initiatives.
The rise of the IT Management Graph
Enter the IT Management Graph—a dynamic, interconnected model of IT assets, services, and relationships. This graph-based approach moves beyond static inventories, enabling organizations to visualize and analyze the complex web of dependencies that define modern IT.
Graph-based models are particularly powerful for supporting AI-driven automation, observability, and decision-making. They allow IT teams to see not just what assets exist, but how they interact, impact business services, and respond to change. This context is critical for incident response, root cause analysis, and strategic planning.
But it’s important to recognize that the IT Management Graph doesn’t directly replace the CMDB, it builds on it. The CMDB provides the foundational data, while the graph adds context, relationships, and dynamic analysis. Together, they offer a holistic view of the IT estate that you just can’t get with one or the other.
The CMDB-Graph hybrid model: a match made in IT heaven
The real power lies in integration. The CMDB supplies the inventory and foundational data; the IT Management Graph delivers the context, relationships, and dynamic analysis needed for modern IT operations. Flexera One IT Visibility’s business service mapping bridges these worlds, mapping dependencies and enriching service context so organizations can understand not just what they have, but how it all fits together.
Flexera supports ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC Helix and other leading ITSM platforms through certified integrations and continuous data pipelines. This means organizations can leverage their existing investments while gaining the benefits of enriched, real-time data. By connecting the dots between inventory and context, Flexera enables smarter automation, faster incident resolution, and more strategic decision-making.
Flexera’s role in enabling this hybrid model
Flexera is uniquely positioned to help organizations realize the benefits of both CMDB and the IT Management Graph. Here’s how:
- Discovery: Flexera’s bottom-up discovery finds even unknown services, ensuring nothing is missed
- Normalization: Technopedia standardizes data across platforms, eliminating silos and inconsistencies
- Data cleanliness: Flexera’s no-code IT estate scan improves CMDB accuracy and compliance, reducing manual effort and errors
- Re-integration: Enriched data is pushed back into environments for real-time use, keeping systems up-to-date and actionable
- Business service mapping: Flexera enables contextual understanding of IT services and dependencies, supporting both operational and strategic goals
This hybrid approach empowers organizations to manage complexity with clarity, driving better outcomes across the IT lifecycle.
Real-world impacts and outcomes
In practice, this approach can produce immediately-tangible benefits. Embracing the CMDB-graph hybrid model leads to:
- Reduced outages and compliance risks: Accurate, contextual data means fewer blind spots and faster response to incidents
- Faster incident resolution and smarter automation: Integrated data pipelines and service mapping enable IT teams to automate routine tasks and resolve issues quickly
- Improved AI readiness and strategic decision-making: Clean, normalized data provides the foundation for advanced analytics, machine learning, and informed planning
- Reduction in time to value and infrastructure waste: By streamlining asset management and eliminating redundant resources, organizations achieve faster ROI and lower costs
These outcomes aren’t theoretical; they’re being realized by Flexera customers today, and are built upon by organizations across the industry.
Building a unified future for IT management
The CMDB isn’t dead; it’s evolving, and it’s foundational. The IT Management Graph represents the future, but it relies on the CMDB’s data to thrive, and the two must work together if organizations want a comprehensive, proactive strategy for IT management. Flexera enables this hybrid model, empowering organizations to manage complexity, drive innovation, and achieve clarity in IT management—chat with us to learn how we can help you and your organization get there too.
