Description:
The proliferation of IP networks has happened in a largely uncontrolled ad hoc fashion driven by both the growth of business and the adoption of IP based applications and services. This uncontrolled growth has been compounded by a throw-hardware-at-it approach that currently drives most network problem solving. Unfortunately, networking infrastructures have become a integral part of delivering services to end-customers and delivering business value. Networks, more than any other part of IT, can denominate their value in terms of services and as result can benefit significantly from IT Governance strategies.

The goal of Network Governance is to establish business alignment for network operations. By achieving this alignment, network can deliver more reliable service to their end-customers and significantly reduce the costs of delivering services to their end-customers. Historically networks have been managed separately from the business and as a result enterprise network infrastructures are managed in highly reactive manner. This has created economics, which have largely been driven by network hardware vendors, communication service providers and labor-intensive non-repeatable practices. This has created high levels risk, unmet compliance and security requirements and uncontrolled operational costs, which are largely hidden from the business. Network Governance attempts to establish a framework for establishing processes which driving and measuring alignment.

Governance framework like ITIL and COBIT are based on establishing control framework for IT infrastructure. A CMDB strategy is highly effective for enabling:

Linkage tracking from network infrastructure to business requirements

Repeatable automated processes

Identifying areas for network optimizations by better tracking network assets and resources

Management control objectives, which can be automatically tracked and reported against