Challenge
One of the largest IT outsourcing and cloud services providers, mindSHIFT has delivered tailored, trusted technology solutions for more than 15 years. From day-to-day IT to major systems modernization, the firm provides technology expertise and personalized customer care to support all its clients’ IT needs.
This innovative provider manages a huge range of devices within its own infrastructure, as well as customer environments. The mindSHIFT IT team is responsible for more than 155,000 users, 50,000 desktops, and more than 20,000 servers and network devices. Its ServiceNow configuration management database (CMDB) acts as a single system of record for the IT team.
To gain better insight into the state of its extended infrastructure and ensure that the system provided up-to-date, accurate visibility, mindSHIFT wanted to integrate its IT Service Management (ITSM) with its CMDB.
“We wanted a solution that would support discovery and inventory of devices, and would ensure that our CMDB was continually updated,” says Tom Kraus, Director of Cloud Services at mindSHIFT. “We also wanted to enhance management of our configuration items (CIs), monitor and maximize device security, and improve notifications and incident routing for device changes.”
The biggest benefit for us is knowing that our CMDB data is always accurate. We can solve problems more quickly because the data is there and we are assured that we can trust it.
Tom Kraus Director of Cloud Services, mindSHIFT
Solution
To provide the close integration between monitoring and CMDB that it required, mindSHIFT chose LogicMonitor’s comprehensive monitoring platform. LogicMonitor offers certified integrations with ServiceNow, including customizable CMDB integration and automated ticket management, to help ensure that mindSHIFT IT always has access to reliable, up-to-date data.
The integrated solution lets mindSHIFT pull its ServiceNow CMBD business data into LogicMonitor automatically. LogicMonitor supports bi-directional data synchronization, so its discovered data also flows to ServiceNow, improving the CMDB’s accuracy and overall health.
“LogicMonitor essentially acts as a discovery engine to find devices and metadata, and keep our ServiceNow CMDB up-to-date,” says Kraus.
With LogicMonitor’s customization features, mindSHIFT can fully align how the two systems share data.
“We can utilize the scripting properties within LogicMonitor to go out and find anything we want to know about a device,” says Kraus. “We can discover what we want, normalize it, apply those property sources to devices in LogicMonitor, and ensure that they are synced properly and consistently into our CMDB. It’s one area where the power of LogicMonitor really comes into play for us.”
Kraus and his IT team have developed enhanced workflows designed to take advantage of the close integration between the two systems. IT can easily view LogicMonitor-discovered items that have been added to the ServiceNow CMDB using dropdown menus. Seamless alert integration enables the team to send device alerts, create tickets, update, and close them within the ServiceNow environment.
If you’re relying on pure manpower, it’s a lot to handle, especially at this scale,” says Kraus. “Being able to pull the data we need from a trusted source, automatically, lets our people focus on higher-level responsibilities.
Tom Kraus Director of Cloud Services, mindSHIFT
Benefits
Integrating LogicMonitor with its ServiceNow CMDB solution has positioned mindSHIFT to gain more accurate visibility across all its infrastructure environments, to identify and mitigate issues faster before they impact operations.
“The biggest benefit for us is knowing that our CMDB data is always accurate,” says Kraus. “We can solve problems more quickly because the data is there and we are assured that we can trust it.”
With automated discovery and integration, mindSHIFT can also minimize manual tasks and free up its IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives. The solution lets the provider efficiently map its CMDB and monitoring systems without requiring extensive reconciliation of data.
“If you’re relying on pure manpower, it’s a lot to handle, especially at this scale,” says Kraus. “Being able to pull the data we need from a trusted source, automatically, lets our people focus on higher-level responsibilities.”
With its LogicMonitor and ServiceNow environments working smoothly together, mindSHIFT is considering extending the solution to monitor infrastructure that resides in the public cloud in the future.
“We have LogicMonitor configured to auto-discover and auto-monitor our public cloud environments,” says Kraus. “Now that our integrator is in place, it would be easy to add.”
Together, ServiceNow and LogicMonitor deliver the insights, alert, and automation capabilities that mindSHIFT requires to ensure that its infrastructure—and its customers’ environments—deliver the highest possible availability and performance, every day of the year.