Patent ID: 8335692

Claim:
A system for supporting IT business decisions within an organization, the system comprising: at least one processor operable to execute: a business management database (BMDB), wherein the BMDB defines a plurality of services needed by the organization and a constraint on the plurality of services driven by a business policy; a configuration management database (CMDB), connected to the BMDB, wherein the CMDB defines resources required by the plurality of services; and a data correlator, coupled to the BMDB and the CMDB, the data correlator comprising: a set of data relationships, the data correlator being configured to define the set of data of data relationships as respective data relationships between data within the BMDB and the CMDB; and a data access module configured to: identify access to a particular piece of data by a data access application; identify one or more pieces of data related to the particular piece of data by analyzing the set of data relationships; and present the one or more pieces of data related to the particular piece of data to the data access application, wherein the set of data relationships includes: a first set of relationships between vendor information within the BMDB and corresponding vendors within the CMDB; a second set of relationships between asset information within the BMDB and corresponding assets within the CMDB; a third set of relationships between application information within the BMDB and corresponding applications within the CMDB; a fourth set of relationships between client information within the BMDB and corresponding clients within the CMDB; and a fifth set of relationships between service definitions within the BMDB and corresponding service components within the CMDB.