CMDB Item Ownership Mapping

Detection

Many asset systems are able to detect the ownership of each device, most commonly desktop computers, through centralized authentication servers based around LDAP. Since we know who is using the device, it is possible to map the owner to the hardware tree and therefore, to the software on that machine.

Since LiveTime also permits centralized authentication, owners can be associated to each Item during the synchronization process. However, this depends on the following:

1. LiveTime is setup to use centralized authentication
2. The Asset management system uses centralized authentication
3. The Asset management system supports Asset ownership ties
4. The XML Descriptor is configured to bring across ownership information.

Most of these points are valid for commercial asset management systems such as ZENworks or LANDesk. LiveTime automatically provides connectors with the ownership mapping enabled in these cases. So ensuring that your system is using LDAP for authentication is the main consideration before attempting your first import.

Derivation

Item ownership is determined by the central authentication and asset discovery systems’ last logged in user record. When LiveTime synchronizes with the asset management system, it appends any new users that have been discovered for the Item .

This is an important consideration, as any user of a machine should be able to log an incident or change request against Items they use.