March 2023
Work in progress on CMDBuild 3.4.2
CMDBuild Reference & Case Study: KDDI Corporation (Japan)
KDDI, Japanese Company which provides a wide range of telecommunications services, has a Platform Technology Department that is responsible for the construction and operation of data center facilities, used internally, and server infrastructure facilities, required by the company to provide services to its customers.
The Platform Technology Department is responsible for the construction and the stable operation of KCPS (KDDI Cloud Platform Service, a public cloud), and CKKB (a.k.a. “internal cloud”), with tens of thousands of servers spread across seven data centers in Japan, as well as the construction of infrastructure platforms that share IT and 5G NF. We are also promoting the development of solution platforms that fit Digital transformation (DX).
As the business expanded, there was a need to maintain stable operation of the increasingly large and complex infrastructure, while at the same time reducing costs and improving efficiency by promoting automation and unmanned operations, also expanding added value in the DX area.
While virtualization and container technology have enabled more efficient use of physical resources, application development environments have become more sophisticated and complex. This means that VM placement, the number of containers and their arrangement will be constantly changing as containers run on a large number of VMs. At the same time the number of failure points increases exponentially, therefore it has become increasingly important to accurately and quickly identify whether and to what extent services are affected when a failure occurs, and to identify the affected services.
In the past, when a failure occurred in a physical device, information had to be collected individually from each component in turn: we would start from each component of the cloud infrastructure in order, and gather information individually. This method required more than one hour to identify the impact of the failure on the upper layers.
This could not be acceptable anymore and therefore we committed to developing a new configuration management DB, which has considered 2 critical aspects: 1. The adoption of open-source, for a low-cost development; 2 an in-house production for product verification and design, for technical improvement and knowledge acquisition.
This was made possible by OpenPIE, with the open source CMDBuild solution (its CMDBuild READY2USE version) and the implementation of CMDBuild connectors, for an automatic collection of equipment inventory information.
KDDI followed DB design, investigation of API acquisition methods for various data items, in-house development of some APIs. Have been also involved VMware Japan, for technical support, confirmation and response to specifications, and OSSL Inc., which is the Japanese Partner of Tecnoteca (developer and maintainer of CMDBuild), for DB construction/testing and data collection program development. Anyhow the shift from traditional discretionary development with vendors to development using Open-Source Software has been a fundamental: KDDI conducted open-source-software product evaluation, data model design, API research and development in-house, and asked the vendor to do the least amount of product introduction only; in this way the development was achieved at 1/3 the cost of conventional methods.
The final result is that the solution allows a centralized management of tens of thousands of data, automatically collects and correlates up-to-date information on physical devices, VMs and containers every 10 minutes. In the event of physical equipment failure, the impact at the container level, the smallest unit, can be ascertained in 5 minutes only!
Since the configuration data change history is also stored, the configuration at that time can be confirmed by specifying the physical device and date/time, and the impact of the failure can be quickly ascertained based on the operational details before the failure occurred. Moreover, linkage with other systems enables more efficient operations and new service offerings.
In conclusion, KDDI is extremely glad about the solution implemented with CMDBuild, which allows to achieve a full centralized management. With other products and services it would not be possible to reach this range of management and also the critical aspects of a low-cost and an in-house development would not be matched.
openMAINT Reference & Case Study: Schneider Electric USA
To increase its diffusion, let's take a look at some case histories of the CMDBuild DAY 2022 held on November 30th 2022.
Here below there is a summary of the Schneider Electric USA case history, you can find here the complete intervention.
In Schneider Electric USA the Sustainability Business Team has been working with openMAINT for a few years and implemented a configuration of the software that they named “Capital Asset Planning”, or “CAP”. Margot Knight, Business Analyst, and Jess Davis, Client Services South Region Manager, present at the CMDBuild DAY 2022 edition their project application.
They report that “openMAINT completely changed the nature of the conversations with the clients”. Being a completely managed solution and thanks to the ease of access of all the information, filtering and customizability, they are partnering with their clients to analyze their data and bring things to attention.
So far, a common situation for customers was the following: having all information inside of one person's head or in a variety of different spreadsheets, being only reactive to the needs of the business and the buildings, considering in the budget planning sessions just the previous years’ financial picture and adding a certain level of percentage on top of that, doing the replacements of pieces of equipment retroactively and reactively, with the risk of not having then the budget necessary for the replacements and of waiting months for these replacements (especially in the current time with equipment delays…).
With the adoption of a solution like this, there is first of all a centralized database of information, a possible cloud-based databased that makes information much more accessible, then decisions are really made on data and customers can focus on what's coming down the pipe in the future. The software allows to analyze the maintenance practices and spend against pieces of equipment, not just the replacement cost but the ongoing cost for keeping pieces of equipment alive, so these could be pulled forward in the replacement process to avoid future costs just keeping them functioning.
Schneider Electric and Tecnoteca implemented a section in the “CAP” called “Deferred Maintenance Dashboard”, which helps to visualize the complete financial picture for the clients and look at dollar values that are expected in the current year, the next year, things deferred that should have been replaced already, etc. Data can be filtered to drill down into the data distribution and really understand how the data is being made up and how it is compiling into the complete budgetary roadmap.
A current and real-word example is the use of openMAINT with one of Schneider Electric biggest clients working in Food & Beverage Services, which allows to make data-driven decisions together and in collaboration with the client. A standardization process was made, to optimize the types of equipment, reduce the amount of replacement parts and storage costs, make cost savings and competitive procurement process through bulk purchasing of specific pieces of equipment, optimize operating and maintenance costs.
It can be easily understood why this initiative is so impactful for Schneider Electric’s clients: “it’s awesome how you can go from data collected, to data being in the platform, to decisions making and actually purchasing things in that short time”.
They conclude saying that “this is a solution with a significant amount of growth potential, is creating a great impact on our client conversations today and will have an even greater impact in the future, as it continues to expand and grow with new features and new knowledge within our team (for example we are currently checking the Mobile APP for data collection process by our internal field team). We are extremely excited about this platform and how it's changing the face of our business.”