Continuous Transformation Blog

Leverage Your CMDB Data To Overcome Tech Obsolescence

Written by Neil Sheppard | October 24, 2024

Technology obsolescence risk is the hidden factor that's holding your organization back from innovation. Discover how your CDMB data can be leveraged to help your business thrive.

Technology obsolescence doesn't sound particularly exciting, so it's often pushed aside for ideas that make for a better PowerPoint presentation. Those innovative ideas, however, can easily be blocked by an abundance of technical debt.

How often have we seen IT landscapes that are made of part bleeding-edge, best-of-breed technology and part malfunctioning legacy systems? While the innovative tech may be attention-grabbing, its benefits are often negated by the less-glitzy areas of your IT landscape, if it works properly at all.

The key to truly leveraging innovative technologies is to build them on a solid foundation of functioning, up-to-date IT components. That may sound like an expensive investment, but you'll find removing obsolete technology from your IT landscape saves you far more expenditure very quickly.

How do you know what to replace and what to retain to optimize the efficiency and cost of your IT landscape, however? You need to leverage the intelligence that's locked away in your configuration management database (CMDB), but to do that, you need the right tool to surface that information.

Hunt down and remove technology obsolescence from your IT landscape and stay on the cutting edge with SAP LeanIX Technology Risk And Compliance. To find out more, download our white paper:

WHITE PAPER: The 5 Types Of Obsolescent Tech Holding Back Your Organization... And How To Deal With Them

 

What Is Technology Obsolescence Risk?

Technology obsolescence risk is the threat posed to your organization by accumulating too much technical debt. When you allow your hardware and software to fall behind the market standard, you lose your competitive edge.

Slow technology lacking vital capabilities can cut back your productivity and profits, while maintaining an obsolete toolset can see your costs skyrocket. Not to mention, outdated tech has greater cyber security vulnerability to attacks and exploitation.

Clunky, manual tools lacking automation and innovative features won't support your people to do their best work. Even the best talent working with 30-year-old computers and older software won't be able to compete with a company armed with the latest technology tools.

When that outdated technology breaks in a way that newer tools wouldn't, your tech team needs to fix it. This takes their time away from working to improve your overall architecture.

Lastly, 60% of data breaches are caused by unpatched vulnerabilities in existing tech. Ensuring your technology is current prevents expensive cyber security attacks and regulatory fines.

None of this is as exciting as artificial intelligence (AI) or augmented reality, but managing tech obsolescence risk is vital for your organization to succeed. Not to mention, you won't be able to get the best out of AI or any other technology without a solid foundation of up-to-date technology.

 

Manage Technology Obsolescence

Technology obsolescence is a risk to your organization's productivity, and its bottom line. So, how do you manage that risk?

It would be ideal to replace your whole tech stack with cutting edge technology every time something new is released, but few can afford that, let alone manage constant transformation. You need to balance the tech you replace with the tech you can safely retain, so you can optimize your return on investment.

To do that, you need to gain oversight on your IT landscape so you can determine what obsolete technology you have, which tech is a problem, and which is not. That way, you can find where you need to invest in new technology and when good enough is good enough.

The first step is to surface all the outdated IT components in your IT infrastructure. You need to know what servers and operating systems are no longer supported, and which will soon be reaching that point.

Next, you need to know which of those IT components are supporting mission-critical systems and which aren't worth investing in. That will allow you to create a prioritized list of IT components to update, and you can then start to build a road map for enhancing your IT landscape to get the best out of it.

How do you know when your tech is going obsolete, and how important it is to your business? Well, the good news is that you already have that information in your configuration management database (CMDB).

 

The Key Is In Your CMDB

Technology obsolescence requires oversight, and that means you need to leverage the information you have to make a plan for rooting it out. A configuration management database (CMDB) like ServiceNow will already have all the information about your IT components ready to leverage.

All you need to do is import that information into SAP LeanIX in order to assess it against your business capabilities and live vendor information. Thankfully, there's an out-of-the-box ServiceNow integration that will do that for you.

SAP LeanIX will then automatically pull in live information from your technology vendors to mark each IT component as:

  • Green - current and productive
  • Amber - approaching obsolescence
  • Red - out-of-support

SAP LeanIX will then allow you to map your IT components against the software applications they support, and on to track them against the business capabilities that the applications enable. Following this map, you'll be able to surface the obsolete IT components that are impeding mission-critical business capabilities in your organization.

SAP LeanIX will then allow you to create a prioritized list of IT components that you need to urgently update. You can even build a road map for the initiative within LeanIX, and share it with your stakeholders.

SAP LeanIX allows you to leverage the data on your landscape in ServiceNow to help root out obsolete technology from your IT landscape and optimize your infrastructure. That will then put you in a perfect position to leverage the latest tech innovations to drive your business forward.

 

Leverage The SAP LeanIX ServiceNow Integration

Technology obsolescence risk holds back your organization from achieving its potential. Paying off your technical debt without over-spending requires leveraging the data you have stored in your configuration management database (CMDB).

SAP LeanIX empowers you to leverage your CMDB data to hunt down and replace the obsolete technology that's holding your organization back, without wasting money upgrading technology that you don't need. This will give you the simple quick-wins that will make you a hero to your organization.

Use SAP LeanIX to leverage the vital intelligence hidden away in your CMDB to maintain control of your technology obsolescence risk. To find out more, download our white paper.

WHITE PAPER: The 5 Types Of Obsolescent Tech Holding Back Your Organization... And How To Deal With Them