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Solutions
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TimelessMIND Enterprise Configuration Manager
Enterprise Configuration Management (ECM) collects and integrates Configuration Items (CI) to assemble software to manage your company’s services. By assembling CI’s, programs can be created to streamline processes and management techniques. Customer Relationship Management, Service Management, Asset Management software can all be created quickly through the ECM Platform. By automating all of these management methodologies company’s can realize new efficiencies and cost savings.
Configuration Management is a fundamentally different paradigm from conventional application development. In ECM every thing (including data) is a Configuration Item (CI). Anything can become a configuration item from code to service level agreements documentation to software and hardware and all documentation in between that are a critical part of running the organization. The CMDB is where CI’s are stored. This allows the ECM platform to utilize all of this data through all of its processes. The information is secured in the CMDB and can not be changed without following a rigorous change process. However all CI’s must be capable of change, which is the purpose of configuration change control.
To rapidly offer a wide array of services, organizations in last decade have often taken the path of acquisitions and mergers. Integration at both Business and Systems level has been a challenge. Acquired companies come with their own Business Processes, Information models based on different standards, Applications developed on a diverse array of technologies, unique software vendor relationships and delivery/development approaches. Some BPM companies have tried to address these challenges by selling rapid ‘integration’ of acquired disparate systems/technologies promising to ‘preserve’ the investments made in these systems. Unfortunately this ‘integration’ at BPM level has proven very costly and unsustainable – in some cases the EAI/BPM has proven more expensive than migration to one application and one business process.
Based on historical numbers, cost and complexity of adopting (or migration to) one application has often been cited as the major impediment to making the business case for a unified approach. TM ECM approach addresses this challenge by taking the complexity out of the equation. Adoption rates are very high compared to conventional waterfall approach. The end users participate in Designing their application from the very onset. Trainers get trained in the process and availability of application in the testing stages itself - for user community reviews and feedback, helps capture any business functionality gaps. The end product in essence is developed by the user community. Hence mental, functional and technical barriers disappear by the time the application goes live.
Components of ECM
Service Management, Customer Relationship Management, Provisioning, Asset Management and Volunteer Management software can all be created through ECM platform. Each of these five components is broken down further into other services for example; Service Management breaks down into incident, problem, change, release management, service desk and FMEA, which is all software easily built on the ECM Platform. Each of these components of Service Management are made up of CI’s, each CI is crucial to the service and any change can drastically affect the service. This is why the CMDB is secured and any changes to CI’s have to go through a change process in order to take effect.
The core services that enable the TimelessMIND ECM Platform’s components to function are Access Control, Internalization, Notification and Messaging, Privacy, Publishing, Reporting and Business Intelligence, Surveys and feedback, Workflow, Personalization, Transaction Management qnd Audit and History.
Features of the ECM Platform
ECM Platforms not only allow for easy collection and storage of CI’s but they help to report the status of changes to CI’s. This provides a complete audit trail on what CI’s have been changed, who changed them, when they changed them and for what reason. The ECM Platform controls the changes to CI’s to help minimize unplanned disruptions to the company. The ECM Platform takes all of this information and provides detailed reports on the status of changes to CI’s to the stakeholders of the company. The TimelessMIND ECM Platform’s user interface and CMDB are vendor independent which can run on any system and the Mid-tier is platform independent, meaning it can run on any platform for the convenience of the customer.
Benefits of ECM
The ECM Platform has many benefits, it provides a means of change management to the CI’s, so they can not be changed without proper processes being followed. This can help to avoid unplanned disruptions to the company. Security offered in the CMDB help keep CI’s secure from anyone without access to them which helps to prevent risk of damage to the structure of the company. ECM can help to evaluate vulnerabilities and provide tactful solutions before they cause an issue. One of the biggest benefits of the ECM Platform is that it provides a platform for regulatory and operational compliance. This offers a system to notify the user when changes to CI’s do not meet these standards. When Enterprise Configuration Management Platform is running, its goal is system optimization, through the consistency of performance. ECM allows for a scalable user interface which leverages both synchronous and asynchronous interactions on the platform.
With the TimelessMIND ECM Platform, development has been completed as it is an existing product waiting to be tailored to the customers needs. All that is required is assembly of the Platform for the customer. Configuration of the Platform is also needed to provide better quality of service to the customer; latency, loading time and the consistency of the product can all be adjusted through the configuration. Once the platform has been assembled and configured to the customer desire, the deployment takes place. Typically this requires a window of downtime for the customer. With our Platform deployment there is zero downtime necessary and no restart required as the clients sync up automatically once fully deployed. Improved change control is offered through the rapid prototyping of the ‘end state view’ of the product. Our ECM Platform is very extensible as new infrastructure services/engines and functional modules can be quickly assembled and tested as opposed to having to go through development and testing procedures. Access Management is improved as everything in our ECM Platform is a CI. This provides access to the platform at the application, module, function and information/data levels. Every individual user of the ECM Platform is registers as a CI. For ECM security purposes, all data records in ECM are CI’s as well. Assess to a CI from others can be managed at a much lower level of granularity than with a pattern or criteria based approach.
ECM at a Glance
ECM Platform is designed to offer a streamlined approach to management methodologies. This Platform integrates all the information of a company’s CI’s and compiles it in the CMDB. The CMDB is built for storage, and security of the CI’s as well as a platform for change. CI’s when put together make up a functional product or service the company offers. ECM is designed for optimization of your systems through streamlined management processes. ECM is the core technology platform for TimelessMIND and represents 100% of the focus of the IP of the firm going forward.
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