If you don't know what's broken, you can't control what breaks
Most organisations have no reliable source of truth for their IT assets and services. Infrastructure sprawls across cloud and on-premises environments. Multiple teams maintain duplicate asset inventories. Configuration items exist in spreadsheets, ticketing tools, and monitoring systems with no agreement. When an incident hits, you can’t assess impact because you don’t know what’s connected. When auditors ask for asset traceability, you scramble through disconnected data sources. When changes need approval, you lack visibility into dependencies. And across every practice, the absence of a reliable CMDB undermines the value you’re trying to deliver.
The ServiceNow CMDB provides a single, authoritative system of record for your IT infrastructure and services. It maps relationships between configuration items, enabling you to understand dependencies, assess risk, and make informed decisions across your entire ServiceNow platform. Pulsar delivers CMDB using ServiceNow’s CSDM as the framework to ensure data is structured in line with best practice. For existing ServiceNow clients, our Luminosity offering strengthens and governs your CMDB to unlock value you’re already paying for. For new implementations, we use our MVP roadmap to build maturity in manageable, outcome-focused phases aligned to ServiceNow’s crawl / walk / run / fly methodology.
What you can expect
Single source of truth across your platform: every team works from the same asset and service data eliminating conflicting inventories
Faster impact analysis during incidents and changes: immediately understand what's affected and what the business impact will be
Audit-ready compliance and traceability: regulators get clear, evidenced answers about what you own and who's accountable
Foundation for platform-wide value: a properly governed CMDB enables every other practice area to deliver its full potential
Transparency of ownership and costs: clear visibility of who owns business and technical services for financial management
The CSDM v5 framework journey
Foundation
We align your CMDB to the CSDM framework by establishing the core data structures, including business capabilities, service offerings, and essential CI classes. This phase involves defining taxonomy, aligning existing records, and laying a scalable foundation that supports cross-platform services.
Crawl
Following CSDM best practice, we introduce and relate foundational CIs such as applications, business services, and infrastructure components to support initial use cases like incident, change, and request. This includes mapping ownership, setting up relationships, and enabling core reporting that spans across business functions.
Walk
We expand your service model in line with CSDM maturity guidance – layering in technical services, service portfolios, and dependency relationships to support wider platform use. Activities include refining CI relationships, integrating discovery data (especially for ITOM users), and enabling connected views across areas like HR, security, and risk.
Run
At this stage, we embed the CSDM model into operational practice. The CMDB begins actively supporting use cases such as impact analysis, compliance tracking, and service health monitoring. We implement data certification, governance policies, and automation strategies to maintain model integrity and drive value across functions.
Fly
With CSDM fully embedded, your CMDB becomes a strategic enabler across the enterprise. We help align the model to broader ServiceNow capabilities such as Application Portfolio Management (APM) or Digital Product Management (DPM), supporting agile, insight-driven decisions and ongoing service optimisation.
Related capabilities
Bring CSDM & CMDB to your platform
We'll show you exactly what good looks like — with the people who've delivered it before.