The Call for Papers has now closed.

The CMDB and CMS – the Powerhouse Of Service Management

Olympia Conference Centre, London, 8 & 9 July 2008

This Conference, jointly run by the British Computer Society (BCS) and the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) will be held 8 & 9 July 2008 at Olympia in London.

Call for papers also available as: PDF or Word Document

The main Conference objectives are to gain knowledge on the way successful organisations are implementing their CMDB/CMS (Configuration Management Database / Configuration Management System) and understand the benefits that can be achieved. The Conference will bring managers and practitioners working across the service lifecycle (which incorporates the application lifecycle) together in an open forum.

We are looking for presentations by world leaders in this field, vendors and practitioners to encourage the sharing and cross fertilisation of ideas between practitioners, vendors and users of the CMDB/CMS solutions and tools.

The Conference will contain interactive workshops using decision support tools that guarantee dynamic interaction, rich brainstorming and better discussion between users, practitioners and the vendor community. The knowledge gained from the workshops will create a shared understanding of today’s challenges, industry and vendor strategies to cope with these challenges and future needs.

For users and practitioners the Conference and workshops should provide a unique opportunity to get the inside track on how to approach your CMDB/CMS implementation and develop your existing solution.

The Conference will provide a unique opportunity for vendors to truly understand what practitioners and users want in an independent, interactive forum. This will help you to improve your focus and ultimately market share.

Strategic - Global trends and the CMDB/CMS

• Business and IT integration
• ITIL and the CMDB/CMS
• Collaborative initiatives and working with partners
• New architectures and technologies
• Future proofing the CMDB/CMS e.g. CMDBF
• Building the business case
• Developing an implementation strategy

Tactical - Configuration Management Implementation
Note: we encourage case studies, user experiences and benefits delivery in this stream

• Selecting, designing and implementing a CMDB and CMS – real world examples
• Discovering the truth – implementing discovery tools within the CMS
• Integrating toolsets for collaborative development e.g.Eclipse ALF
• ITIL managing service assets and configurations across the service lifecycle
• Portfolio management through the service lifecycle
• Application and information lifecycle management
• Infrastructure lifecycle management
• Managing software
• Managing old and new environments – applications, test, database
• The implementation impact of:
  • Service Oriented Architectures
  • Virtualisation
  • Web services 2.0

Interactive - Strategic
These sessions are aimed at these topics:

• Closing the gap between what CMDB/CMS users want and what vendors offer
• CMDB/CMS vendor strategies - where next?
• What do IT organisations and users need from a CMDB/CMS?
• Organisation and cultural challenges in sharing information and collaborating across the world
• Incorporating open standards and open source solutions
• Proprietary v. non proprietary strategies for CMS integration – the pros and cons

Interactive - Tactical

• Improving the requirements definition for CMDB/CMS solution?
• What is important for the CMS user interface?
• Managing disparate configuration management sources and tools
• Configuration designs and models
• Configuration management of different technologies
• Implementing an enterprise CMS solution based on a federated approach

Open Source Solutions for Enterprise Configuration Management (this stream sponsored by CollabNet)

• In this stream we welcome papers addressing any of the above themes but using open source tools (e.g. Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Darcs, etc.), and we encourage case studies, user experiences and benefits.

Olympia Conference Centre, London.

The conference programme will consist of plenary, parallel and workshop sessions, interactive industry feedback sessions, panel discussions, vendor displays, exhibits, demonstrations and other related gatherings. The conference schedule will provide time for relaxed social and professional interaction.

Submissions should be relevant to the conference themes. We would particularly like to hear from potential speakers sharing their own experiences.

If you are interested please submit a proposal for a paper and include sufficient detail to make the audience, meaning and value of the session clear. Please complete a speaker form and one of the proposal forms.

• Template for Speaker Form
• Template for Proposal for Presentation
• Template for Proposal for Interactive Session

All works submitted will be assigned to three committee members for peer review. The results of this review will determine whether a work will be accepted for presentation.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by mid March, 2008. Authors retain the copyright to all submitted work and, by submitting, grant permission for inclusion in the conference proceedings.

Materials should be submitted electronically to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

• 29 February, 2008 Final submission deadline. Interactive session and workshop proposals due.
• 15 March, 2008 Notification of acceptance.
• 1 June, 2008 Submission date for draft papers and presentations
• 16 June, 2008 Submission date for accepted papers and presentations