Managing the Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) in Enterprise Architecture Workspace

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 6 minutes to read
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    Summary of Managing the Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) in Enterprise Architecture Workspace

    Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) in the Enterprise Architecture Workspace enables Enterprise Architects to manage and monitor the life cycles and risks associated with technologies supporting business applications. This includes tracking software and hardware technologies to ensure they remain supported and to mitigate risks from obsolete or unsupported components. TPM integrates data from Configuration Management Database (CMDB) tables and provides insights into technology lifecycle stages, helping organizations plan upgrades, retirements, and risk mitigation effectively.

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    Key Features

    • Technology Lifecycle Risk Assessment: TPM calculates lifecycle risk scores for business applications, application services, software products, and hardware models based on lifecycle data.
    • Technology Discovery and Alignment: TPM automatically discovers installed software and associated hardware for application services by querying CMDB relationships, enabling comprehensive visibility.
    • Lifecycle Data Management: TPM creates records for discovered technologies and automatically fetches lifecycle details such as end of support, end of life, and extended support dates.
    • Manual and Scheduled Updates: Users can manually refresh lifecycle data for specific business applications or application services, or rely on scheduled jobs to update lifecycle data across the enterprise.
    • Risk Visualization and Reporting: TPM provides lifecycle risk insights via the Enterprise Architecture Workspace dashboard, including Gantt chart visualizations and exportable risk reports in multiple formats.
    • Customization: The system property snapmtpm.configurationItemsWithSoftwareInstalls can be updated to include additional CMDB tables for software discovery beyond default tables.
    • Integration Requirements: TPM requires the activation of the Software Asset Management (SAM) Professional plugin to fetch software lifecycle data.

    Practical Use and Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Maintain an up-to-date inventory of all technologies supporting business applications, including hardware and software components.
    • Proactively identify and mitigate risks associated with outdated or unsupported technologies to avoid business disruption.
    • Plan technology upgrades and retirements aligned with business application lifecycles.
    • Visualize lifecycle timelines and risks at multiple levels (applications, services, components) using intuitive Gantt charts and dashboard widgets.
    • Leverage automated discovery and lifecycle data population to reduce manual efforts and improve data accuracy.
    • Track audit information to identify lifecycle data gaps or approximations for continuous data quality improvement.

    Key Actions for Implementation

    • Activate the TPM plugin and ensure the SAM Professional plugin is installed for comprehensive lifecycle data.
    • Review and, if necessary, update the system property to include additional CMDB tables for software discovery.
    • Use the scheduled job Populate TPM Discovered Technologies and Lifecycles to keep lifecycle data current.
    • Regularly monitor TPM lifecycle risk insights in the Enterprise Architecture Workspace dashboard to manage technology portfolio risks effectively.
    • Utilize lifecycle timelines and risk reports to support decision-making for technology upgrades and retirements.

    Technology Portfolio Management helps Enterprise Architects to manage technology life-cycle risks and technology life-cycle exceptions. Enterprise Architects can evaluate all their business applications and application services by accessing the discovered technologies and auditing information in the Enterprise Architecture Workspace.

    The underlying technologies of the business applications used in your business enterprise have a shelf life that must be actively managed and diligently monitored to track their versions and life-cycle.

    The software products used in your business applications can be operating systems, database management systems, development tools, and middle ware, each of which has a life cycle. If these life-cycle stages aren’t tracked, there are risks where the vendor may not support them any longer and the business applications that run on these technologies are at stake.

    Creating an inventory of all technologies used in the enterprise helps to:
    • Track the versions of the software and manufacturer support dates for the software
    • Set an internal life-cycle guidance for the software
    • Assess the risks in using outdated software
    • Plan to retire them just like the applications they support, at a definite date
    • Support upgrade processes

    The data for the software products are populated from the Computer (CMDB_CI_Computer) and all similar instances of the table, Docker Container (CMDB_CI_Docker_Container), and Serverless Hardwares (CMDB_CI_Serverless_Hardware) tables, by default. However, if you want to include other CMDB tables that contain software products, you must update the system property sn_apm_tpm.configurationItemsWithSoftwareInstalls. For information on how to update the system property, see Update the system property to gather software products from a CMDB table.

    Installing the Technology Portfolio Management plugin

    For instructions to install Technology Portfolio Management, see Activate the Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) plugin.

    Important:
    Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) fetches the hardware life-cycle data for your enterprise. To fetch the software life-cycle data, you must activate the Software Asset Management (SAM) Professional plugin. Before installing the SAM Foundation plugin, carefully review the Software Asset Management Foundation plugin migration documentation.

    TPM indicators in EA Workspace

    The following are the indicators for Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) in EA Workspace:
    Indicator Description
    Technology Lifecycle Risk [sn_apm_tpm_technology_risk] Calculates the lifecycle risk score for business applications.

    TPM reference model in EA Workspace

    In EA Workspace, the Technology Portfolio Management enables you to align technologies using the Update TPM data action from a business application record or using the schedule job Populate TPM Discovered Technologies and Lifecycles.
    Figure 1. TPM Reference Model
    TPM Reference Model in Enterprise Architecture Workspace

    Technology discovery process in EA Workspace

    The following is the technology discovery and alignment process for business applications in the EA Workspace.

    • Query and fetch the Consumes::Consumed by Application Services.
      Note:
      It must be an Application Service and these Application Services must be mapped. The Service Configuration Item Associations [svc_ci_assoc] table is populated for each Application Service and its Computers.
      Figure 2. Service Configuration Item Associations
      Service Configuration Item Associations
    • For each computer identified in the Service Configuration Item Associations [svc_ci_assoc] table, you can see the installed software by selecting the Software Installations tab. Also, if a Hardware Model is associated with the computer, you can see the Hardware type details in the TPM Discovered Technologies tab.
    • For each software install, you can see the associated discovery model. The software discovery models must be of a product type Licensable or Unknown and they must be normalized or manually normalized to get any appropriate information. You can also also use the sn_apm_tpm.softwareDiscoveryModelProductFilterForTPMsystem property to gather data on non-licensable software products. For information see, Filter software results using an encoded query in TPM.
    • For each discovery model, create a TPM Discovered Technology record.
    • When you create a record for the TPM Discovered Technology, it triggers the creation of an associated TPM Technology Lifecycles record and it fetches the lifecycle information for the hardware or software technology.
    Figure 3. Technology life-cycle discovery process in EA Workspace
    TPM lifecycle process in EA Workspace
    For successful software alignment records, you must have the following tables populated:
    • Business Application [cmdb_ci_business_app]
    • CI Relationship [cmdb_rel_ci] - Consumes::Consumed by
    • Application Service [cmdb_ci_service_auto, discovered, calculated, query_based, tag_based, manual]
    • Service CI Association [svc_ci_assoc] - note: Only table used to find App Service
    • Computers/Hardware Computer [cmdb_ci_computer]
    • Software Installation [cmdb_sam_sw_install]
    • Software Discovery Model [cmdb_sam_sw_discovery_model]
    • Software Product [samp_sw_product]
    • Software Product Lifecycle [sam_sw_product_lifecycle]
      Note:
      Depending on your how you have setup your instance, other tables can also contain software records. Check with your administrator.
    Hardware requires the Hardware Model reference on the Computer be populated.

    Update TPM Data for a business application or application service

    You can manually refresh the TPM life-cycle data manually for a selected business application or application service. A scheduled job Populate TPM Discovered Technologies and Life-cycles is also run on schedule or on-demand to update the life-cycle data for all business applications and application services​​. For more details, see Update TPM data for a business application or application service and Run a scheduled job to generate TPM lifecycle data

    View insights for technology life-cycle risks

    You can track the technology lifecycle risk for business applications, application services, servers, software products, and hardware models. The Populate TPM Discovered Technologies and Life-cycles scheduled job shows the lifecycle results in the Insights section of the EA Workspace home page. Select the Technology Portfolio tab in the Insights section and then select the View all technology lifecycle risks.Insights for Technology Lifecycle risks

    • Use this filter to see the risks for the next 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and 18 months. By default, the 1 month filter is applied.
    • Use the Show only production instances toggle button to see only production instances that are having technology lifecycle risks. By default, this filter is off.
    • Select the View all technology lifecycle risks link to see the list of all technology lifecycle risks sorted by earliest lifecycle date, which means the earliest date when a technology lifecycle risk is to happen. You can also export the Technology lifecycle risks information to Excel, CSV, JSON, or PDF as required.

      The data in the Technology lifecycle risks table is fetched from the TPM Discovered Technologies [sn_apm_tpm_discovered_technology] table.

    • Execute the Populate Technology Lifecycle Risks scheduled job to generate the TPM technology lifecycle risks. This scheduled job populates the risk scores for business applications (BA), application services (AS), software products, and hardware models for a fiscal period of type month in the Technology lifecycle risks (sn_apm_tpm_technology_risk) table. For more details, see Schedule a job to generate TPM technology risk.

    View TPM analysis run logs

    You can track the progress of TPM analysis by examining the TPM Discovered Technology Run Logs [sn_apm_tpm_discovered_technology_run_log] table. Each time the analysis is run, an entry is added to this table. Navigate to EA Workspace > Setup > Logs section view the logs.

    TPM lifecycle timelines on Gantt chart

    For the Technology Portfolio Management (TPM), the business applications and their related application services (associated hardware models and software products) are displayed in a hierarchical structure. The corresponding timelines of the application services are displayed as bars on the Gantt chart.

    The application services (composed of software products and hardware models) have lifecycle timelines determined for them. On the Gantt chart, the earliest TPM phase start date of either the software products or hardware models are rolled up to calculate the TPM phase start date of the overall application service. That is, the earliest TPM phase start date of any software product or hardware model is taken as the TPM phase start date of the application service, overall. For more details, see TPM lifecycle timelines on Gantt chart and View TPM and TRM lifecycle timelines on the Gantt chart.

    TPM Gantt chart

    Data visualization for TPM data

    In the Enterprise Architecture Workspace Dashboard, the 'Top 10 business applications with normalized TPM risk' widget shows the top 10 business applications having normalized TPM risk. For more details, see Working with the Enterprise Architecture Workspace dashboard.