The Primary Benefit of Implementing Configuration Management for IT

D.

Configuration management is the practice of identifying, organizing, and controlling changes to IT assets to maintain their integrity, traceability, and consistency over time. Its primary goal is to ensure that IT assets are accurately identified, tracked, and controlled throughout their lifecycle, from acquisition to disposal. The benefits of implementing configuration management for IT are numerous, including improving IT governance, increasing operational efficiency, and reducing risks and costs.

Of the answer choices provided, option C is the primary benefit of implementing configuration management for IT. Providing visibility to the overall function and technical attributes of IT assets is critical in enabling an organization to make informed decisions about how to manage and use its IT resources. By establishing a single source of truth for IT assets, configuration management enables organizations to better understand the dependencies and relationships between different assets, such as hardware, software, applications, and data.

This visibility also helps organizations identify potential risks and vulnerabilities in their IT systems, allowing them to proactively manage and mitigate those risks. For example, configuration management can help identify outdated or unsupported software versions that could expose an organization to security threats or compliance violations.

In addition, configuration management can also help organizations streamline their IT processes, such as change and release management. By providing a comprehensive view of IT assets and their dependencies, configuration management enables organizations to automate these processes and reduce the risk of errors or disruptions.

While options A, B, and D are also potential benefits of implementing configuration management for IT, they are not the primary benefit. Option A refers to the use of configuration management for auditing IT conformance to business requirements, which is an important use case but not the primary benefit. Option B refers to the establishment of dependencies between application systems and IT assets, which is an important aspect of configuration management but not the primary benefit. Option D refers to the use of configuration management for automating change and release management processes, which is a valuable benefit but not the primary one.