Integrating with IBM Control Desk

IBM Control Desk is an integrated service management solution that helps you manage a comprehensive range of IT processes, services, and assets. You can use one of its components, Integration Composer, to import and then process data from external applications, like BigFix Inventory.

Integration Composer

Integration Composer is an integration tool that imports hardware and software inventory data from external databases into the Maximo database that is used by IBM Control Desk. The tool can be used to retrieve your hardware inventory from BigFix and software inventory from BigFix Inventory. The retrieved data can be then passed to IBM Control Desk to create reports and license calculations.

Integration Composer uses integration adapters to facilitate data imports. Those adapters specify how to transform and import data for a specific discovery tool. Such integration adapters are therefore required to describe the data that is being imported and to provide instructions on how to transform it.

Integration adapters

Integration adapters consist of a data schema and a mapping file. They provide instructions to Integration Composer on how to transform and import your data. Your complete inventory, consisting of information about your hardware and software, is imported in two batches which requires two adapters to be used. The adapter for BigFix must be used first and is responsible for retrieving your hardware inventory directly from the BigFix platform. After that data is imported, you use the dedicated BigFix Inventory adapter to retrieve your software inventory from BigFix Inventory. The names of the data schemas as well as the mapping files listed in the following table are needed to define the data source connections and to create proper mappings that are prerequisites for starting the import.

Table 1. Integration adapters for BigFix Inventory

This table consists of five columns, one header row and two body rows.

BigFix Inventory version Supported IBM Control Desk version Required adapters Retrieved data
Data schema Mapping file
BigFix Inventory IBM Control Desk 7.5.1.2, including Integration Composer 7.5.1.2 BigFix 9.0 IEM90ToDPA75.fsn Hardware inventory
BigFix SUA 9.1 IEMSUA91ToDPA75.fsn Software inventory, PVU and RVU data

Limitations

Importing your data to IBM Control Desk might result in some discrepancies between what you are importing and what is displayed in the application, mostly caused by different approaches to classifying software products between BigFix Inventory and IBM Control Desk. Also, because of the fact that your hardware and software inventory are imported separately, the right order of running the adapters is significant, not to mention cases in which you might want to import the data from both BigFix Inventory and other discovery tools, like Tivoli® Asset Discovery for Distributed.

Integration with BigFix Inventory and Tivoli Asset Discovery for Distributed
The BigFix Inventory adapter often imports more extensive data about software inventory than the Tivoli Asset Discovery for Distributed adapter. Because each software inventory import overwrites the data from another software inventory import, run the BigFix Inventory adapter as the last one to avoid loss of more extensive data. The following order is recommended when you run multiple adapters:
  1. Tivoli Asset Discovery for Distributed - to import software data.
  2. BigFix - to import hardware data.
  3. BigFix Inventory - to import software data.