Many organizations look to IT asset management (ITAM) solutions to ensure all their IT assets are discovered, tracked, secured and disposed of at the end of each asset’s lifecycle.

Some IT administrators ask if they can use a configuration management database (CMDB) for their ITAM requirements. But others worry that tracking IT assets in two solutions will require them to duplicate each asset record and increase their workload.

What is ITAM?

ITAM is a set of best practices for tracking IT asset inventory. Its objectives are to manage an IT asset’s overall cost, including ownership, contracts associated with the asset lifecycle, warranty and refresh information.

ITAM focuses on IT assets from an organization’s financial perspective. When organizations follow ITAM best practices, they can make informed decisions about technology acquisitions. Furthermore, they can avoid unexpected costs and penalties associated with software audits.

What is CMDB?

A CMDB is a central repository of information about an organization's IT assets. That includes details about hardware, software, networks and their various relationships.

Configuration management involves tracking IT assets from an operational and support perspective. Since asset availability and stability impact an organization’s day-to-day operations, assets need to be documented along with their configuration and service offerings.

Do you need ITAM if you’re using a CMDB?

Determining whether you need ITAM when using a CMDB will depend on the size of your organization and complexity of its IT service management (ITSM) needs. An organization might find it attractive to avoid purchasing a separate software solution or train employees on an additional product. Managing ITAM data in the ITSM solution could simplify building and managing request fulfillment processes.

Most CMDB solutions provide extensive customization features, so it is possible to customize a CMDB with ITAM properties and features. But CMDB objectives are much different from ITAM objectives.

Imagining your city or town’s bus service offers a basic example of how different data — route number and bus number — are used for different objectives. Buses are assigned routes, and each route is assigned a number displayed on the bus. A second number is assigned to each bus so it can be tracked through its lifecycle. Administrators assign different buses to a route without impacting the bus route number. And it would confuse things if the number used to identify a physical bus was the same number as that of a bus route.

A CMDB configuration item (CI) representing an email service — the “route” in our analogy — will most likely outlast the lifecycle of the asset, a physical server — the “bus” — used to provide the email services.

Storing ITAM data 

A CMDB could store all your ITAM data, but significant CMDB modifications would be needed to meet ITAM requirements. The CMDB lacks discovery capabilities, so connectors or integrations to external IT asset discovery tools must be implemented to ensure IT asset configuration information is discovered and kept up to date in the CMDB database.

Further customizations would need to be added to the CMDB, which may be expensive. And even after applying ITAM capabilities to the CMDB, it would still be unlikely that an organization would have a complete ITAM solution. This type of ITAM may be sufficient for a smaller organization, but the CMDB would need to be modified so it could handle contract, financial and lifecycle information.

Additionally, IT asset manager roles would need to be created in the ITSM solution, with appropriate rights to the CMDB for the ITAM administrators. Beyond this, ITSM processes would need to be modified or added to provide ITAM process functionality.

Perils of a single database

Storing excessive unrelated data in a CMDB, especially data unrelated to the specific business problem like mapping a business service into the CMDB, can result in a very large and expensive database. The more extensive the stored data is, the more time, effort and human resources are needed to maintain accurate data.

If a database isn’t accurate, it can’t be trusted. With many people maintaining and making changes to the data, you run the risk of unapproved changes – potentially to business-critical configuration items (CIs). Limiting the amount of data will also limit the number of people who can make changes to the data, maintaining its integrity. This is a solid argument for having separate tools for CMDB and ITAM.

Plus, putting too much data that might be irrelevant to relationships or business services into a database creates the risk of overloading anyone trying to interpret or view that data with unnecessary information.

What about asset reports?

Incorporating complete details about IT assets into the CMDB can simplify the creation of IT asset reports. A CMDB provides insights into the relationships among IT assets, including their configurations, the risks of changes and the impacts of those changes. It also differentiates from standard ITAM solutions, which typically track the hierarchical associations between IT assets.

Centralizing all ITIL and ITAM asset relationship data within the CMDB may make reporting more straightforward and cost-effective than using disparate databases. But this would demand extensive modifications to the CMDB.

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Why two solutions to track IT assets?

Change management is vital for ITSM solutions that follow ITIL best practices. ITIL provides guidance and best practices for handling changes to an IT environment to reduce risk associated with IT configuration changes.

ITIL best practices suggest that IT assets providing operational services be documented and tracked using a CMDB. Each asset tracked using a CMDB is a CI that could be a hardware asset, a software asset or multiple assets combined to provide an IT service. Each CI is tracked to ensure it’s operational.

An ITAM solution addresses different goals and provides its own benefits. Many organizations want to centralize all data in a single source of truth, but it might not be the best place to store every type of data. For instance, some want to put contracts, process guidebooks and policies into their CMDB. Storing this sort of very specific data in a tool that specializes in managing it ensures the right functionality is in place.

In the case of contracts, an ITAM tool or contract lifecycle management system would store them in a proper format so they can be imaged, key dates pulled out and workflows created or associated with cost centers or groups.

CMDBs aren’t designed to support this level of detail without extensive customization. Selecting the right management tool for certain types of data and then linking or integrating it to the CMDB can ensure functionality isn’t sacrificed for centralized convenience.

Does it make sense to track an IT asset in both a CMDB and an ITAM solution? Not really, when there’s a way to avoid duplicating IT asset records with a solution that integrates the CMDB with an ITAM solution.

Imagine the database that manages the bus route services. That database would track service-related items such as schedules, drivers and the bus assigned to the route. With integration, administrators would simply assign a bus to a bus route using a lookup table that shows available buses. When the CMDB is integrated with the ITAM solution, the IT asset can be directly linked to the CI instead of being recreated and duplicated.

ITAM vs. CMDB: It’s not about “versus”

Trying to use CMDB to take on the asset management role of ITAM has sizable downsides. It’s not really about “CMDB vs. asset management,” then, because ITAM and the CMDB are critical for any enterprise leveraging technology at a high level.

IT assets providing services to the organization need to be tracked using a configuration management process, per ITIL best practices. Those IT assets also need to be tracked using ITAM best practices to avoid unexpected costs that result from lost or stolen assets, uninformed acquisition decisions and unlicensed software. To ensure seamless integration, organizations should consider using an ITAM solution integrated into a service management platform.