As the number of assets and relationships mapped in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) expand and scale, often to millions of records, extracting relevant and focused data requires knowledge of the CMDB structures and experience building efficient database queries and reports.
According to Gartner’s research, “An effective ITAM practice understands the relationship between the organization’s assets and its mission. It manages the organization’s most important assets throughout their life cycle and provides timely and accurate information about these assets to support and enhance IT processes and services.”*
While the Device42 Object Query Language (DOQL) provides that powerful capability for the Device42 user, the introduction of InsightsAI brings a new dimension of speed and accuracy to the data extraction process by harnessing the power and major technology advancements of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI).
DOQL provides IT Asset managers and operators with an extremely powerful tool to retrieve the data about the assets across their IT estate and relationships between assets. Fast and accurate data retrieval from the Device42 CMDB allows IT teams to accelerate problem resolution, assess the risks and dependencies of changes, or deliver compliance and IT management reporting.
InsightsAI enables IT teams to query the CMDB and generate business reports using natural language in a chat-like format, therefore skipping the time-consuming process of building and testing complex queries and designing reports required for a variety of hardware and software management use cases across the hybrid cloud.
InsightsAI uses publicly available Device42 field names and descriptions without the need to expose any data residing in the tables, including customer-specific, PII or proprietary data. It therefore does not require training the Large Language Model (LLM) on actual production IT assets data and does not consume internal data records for generating the reports.
Reports are then generated locally in the resident IT environment, alleviating potential security and privacy concerns. By providing simple, secure access to the CMDB logic, InsightsAI further democratizes essential IT data access by allowing cross functional teams, often business subject matter experts that may lack the IT environment architecture knowledge, to express their specific business needs in natural language and rely on the InsightsAI engine to securely and efficiently automate the creation of reports.
When the Windows BitLocker issue surfaced in July 2024, preventing Windows from loading after rebooting, Device42 started its response immediately by locating the machines in the IT estate that were updated with the faulty Microsoft KB security update. Quickly asking InsightsAI “Can you generate a query that returns Windows OS devices and the software component KB5040442 or KB5040427” returned immediately a report listing the Windows OS machines that were impacted in our environment and warranted IT admins immediate intervention to engage the users and proactively revert the KB hotfix, preventing costly downtime.
Windows Devices Impacted by BitLocker Faulty Upgrade
The report was generated by running the following query, composed automatically by InsightsAI and launched against our IT Asset database:
SELECT
dv.device_pk,
dv.name AS device_name,
dv.os_name AS device_os_name,
sw.name AS software_name
FROM
view_device_v2 dv
JOIN
view_deviceos_v1 dos ON dv.deviceos_fk = dos.deviceos_pk
JOIN
view_softwareinuse_v1 siu ON dv.device_pk = siu.device_fk
JOIN
view_software_v1 sw ON siu.software_fk = sw.software_pk
WHERE
dos.os_name LIKE '%Windows%' AND
(sw.name = 'KB5040442' OR sw.name = 'KB5040427')The InsightsAI interface allows users to establish “conversation” threads with the generative AI model and further optimize, expand or focus queries, often joining enriched data sets from additional tables. Users can also jump directly to generate exportable reports or create management dashboards.
DOQL AI chat interface
InsightsAI is extremely powerful in optimizing and significantly accelerating ITSM workflows, in particular incident management, problem management, and change management. Gartner states that “A CMDB is most useful when it forms a mutually beneficial relationship with the other ITSM practices. This integrated relationship allows the CMDB to enhance these other practices.”**
The ability of the IT team to use natural language to immediately access the specific data they need to isolate problems, troubleshoot incidents, or understand and assess the impact of changes, maximizes the efficiency and value of both the ITAM solution and the overall IT Service management workflow. IT staff are able to resolve problems fast and ensure stability and performance of business services.
When a change request is submitted in the enterprise ITSM system requiring a maintenance procedure on a specific device, InsightsAI quickly allows IT to identify the impacted devices and services, acting proactively to notify users or take preventive measures.
A change request for one of our devices, “oracle-90117”, a virtual Windows Server 2012 running a central Oracle Database 19c Enterprise Edition, required a vendor update to be deployed. InsightsAI was used again to help the IT team identify the business service dependencies. Asking InsightsAI – “Which business applications depend on the oracle-90117 device”, returned an answer within a few seconds, allowing business service owners and end users to be alerted and notified about the required maintenance window.
Gen AI advancements have transformed the ability of machine-assisted composition of complex queries and optimize the performance and accuracy of the results. Device42 InsightsAI accelerates IT workflows by quickly and securely generating use case-focused reporting, enabling IT engineers to engage with the Asset database in a natural language conversation. InsightsAI empowers IT teams operating in complex, large enterprise IT environments to focus on solving problems and deliver proactive service management, rather than spending time determining how to get to the information.
References:
* “How to Establish a Collaborative IT Asset Management Practice”, Gartner 2024
** ”Solution Path for Implementing Foundational ITSM Practices”, Gartner 2023
