The deployment and management of the service assets and configuration items is becoming increasingly more important from the legal and financial aspects. The service asset and configuration management (SACM) enables the IT management to exercise control of these IT items and assets. Up-to-date and verified information on the status of the service assets and IT infrastructure is also made available to other service management processes. The information on this data is stored on the configuration management system (CMS). The CMS should be seen as a logical model for the IT infrastructure and contains one or more physical configuration management databases (CMDB). These in turn contain all the data - the so-called relevant configuration items – which is required for the service delivery.

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The development and implementation of a SACM policy forms the basis for a functioning service asset and configuration management process. All changes to service assets and configuration items must be authorized and controlled via the change process. Adherence to this policy is the key, critical factor in a successful service management organization.

In this context there is a need for a configuration model that illustrates the services, assets and infrastructures as well as the mutual relationships. This type of logical configuration model is used for the analysis and diagnosis of faults and problems or for assessing change risks since the dependencies of the individual configuration items (CI) can be identified.