Multiple win with a digital twin

 

What is a digital twin?

A digital twin in IT enables companies to create a virtual represenat of existing physical assets such as servers, networks, applications or other systems. This gives companies a more efficient and secure control capability. Digital twins have been used successfully in industry, manufacturing and healthcare for some time.

A key advantage of a digital twin is that it provides a centralized repository of information from a wide variety of data sources. This enables users of the digital twin to evaluate facts in their overall context. Furthermore, this creates a unique information quality and availability that enormously improves the efficiency of a variety of business processes.

The following figure shows different areas of IT with typical IT components that are mapped in a digital twin:

Figure: Typical entities of an IT landscape

 

In the Versio.io product solution, a digital twin is automatically collected and continuously updated. Using the example of a server, consisting of hardware and operating system, between 150 and 800 data attributes are then available in the digital twin, depending on the virtualized or physical configuration.

Figure: Available information about a server (excerpt)

 

The different types of IT components from different data sources can be displayed and processed in Versio.io in the overall context. The following example shows a system architecture with all its associated IT components (host, process, service, configuration, application, SSL/TLS certificate, port status):

Figure: Cross-data source representation in the context of a system architecture

 

Use scenarios in IT

The automated representation of a digital twin provided by Versio.io solves one of the most difficult problems in IT - the IT documentation. The digital capture mechanisms provide machine-processable and always up-to-date information about all IT components of an IT landscape for all IT processes. This is a dream that has been aimed at in IT for 20 years with the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) approach, but which has never been achieved.

Based on the digital twin, the following elementary IT scenarios can be easily implemented in Versio.io:

• Continuously updated IT documentation
• Recognition of changes
• Monitoring and evaluating the execution of change requests
• Verify regulatory and internal requirements for IT governance compliance
• Identify deployed and obsolete software versions (patch management) and security-related vulnerabilities (product and version-specific security vulnerabilities and configurations)
• Allocation of dynamically used IT resources
• Monitoring of specifications from Enterprise Architecture Management
• Comparison of complex topologies (e.g. database schema between TEST and PROD environment)
• Process mining based on process changes

The following figure shows a usage scenario in the form of an IT security assessment for the GitLab product in use. The processing is done entirely on the available data of the digital twin and without direct access to the executed GitLab application:

Figure: Example of an IT security assessment based on data from the digital twin

 

Benefits of using a digital twin

The use of a digital twin by means of the Versio.io asset & Configuration inventory brings several benefits for software development, IT operations and IT service management:

• Centralized and location-independent information provision across the entire IT landscape.
• Availability of information about the current status including the historization of changes to all IT components for problem analyses, audit security or recovery after a total failure.
• Mapping of the overall context of all captured IT components from the different data sources (Ex: connection between SSL/TLS certificate and related IT service).
• Increased security, as internal and external employees do not need direct access to the executed IT component, but only its digital image.
• Simple data provision or integration for third-party systems on the basis of the information held and consolidated in the digital twin. (e.g. DevSecOps, ITSM).

 

Keywords

Digital twin

 

IT

 

Landsacpe

 

Inventory

 

Repository

 

DevSecOps

 

DevOps

 

IT service management

 

ITMS

 

IT operation management

 

ITOM