Customer-specific artifacts

The types of services that you offer can help you decide which artifacts are customer-specific rather than global.

The only artifacts in the configuration management area that have a customer association are the actual CI and CI instances. The primary customer on the CI is used to determine which classifications and attributes can be used on the CI. You must decide whether to create customer-specific classifications and attributes, or leave them global. Customer-specific, in this case, does not necessarily mean that an artifact is associated with only one customer; you can designate these items to be used by groups of customers. When we call an artifact such as a classification customer-specific, we are saying that it is not global and can have one or more customers that are associated with it.

Classifications and class attributes are used when you promote actual CIs to create your authorized CI space, and they determine whether an authorized CI is created and which attributes are created. The authorized classification in the promotion scope that maps to the actual CI must be appropriate for the primary customer on the actual CI for the authorized CI to be created. And when the CI is created, the primary customer is used to determine which attributes are created. Only appropriate attributes are created.

Choose which types of artifacts to make customer-specific based on the types of services you offer. For example, do you manage more types of CIs for one customer than another, or perhaps a minimal set of attributes for one customer and an extensive set of attributes for another? Here are some possible ways of organizing your offerings and the implications for configuration management:

Same service for all customers

In this model, you manage the same types of CIs and attributes for each customer, and you associate CIs with customers for data security and billing purposes. You can use global authorized CI classes and attributes.

Separately tailored service for each customer

In this model, you negotiate with each customer the details of which types of CIs and which of their attributes you will manage. There might be some CI types that all customers want to manage in a similar way; the authorized CI classifications and attributes for those CI types might be global. Then, you would need customer-specific classifications and attributes to create the authorized CIs whose details are unique for this customer.

The best practice tool for creating your authorized CI space is the Deployer's Workbench. The documentation that is installed with the Deployer's Workbench includes several usage scenarios, including one for constructing customer-specific CI spaces. If you decide to make some or all of your authorized CI classifications and promotion scopes customer-specific, review that usage scenario before you start.