Any asset or component that needs to be managed and controlled from an ITSM perspective is called a Configuration Item (CI). It could be hardware, software, documents, and even people. The characteristics describing a CI are called its Attributes, and the link, dependency, or connection between CIs are called its Relationships.
The first step of Configuration Management is to establish a logical model of the infrastructure by recording the relationships between these CIs. This logical model is often used as the single common representation of assets and their relationships, and is used by all parts of the organization, including non-IT divisions.
The supporting system to manage the service assets and their configurations is termed the Configuration Management System (CMS). It holds all the information for the CIs in scope. The physical database used to store this information is called the Configuration Management Database (CMDB...