Skip to main content

CMDB/CMS Use Cases: Asset Management and Financial Optimization

Asset Management is often the fastest use case to deploy for an initial phase CMDB/CMS because, as one vendor put it, “It’s the most linear use case” and generally speaking the least time sensitive. As a result it’s probably the most popular initial use case for CMDB/CMS initiatives -- which doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right first phase deployment for you. You should start where your needs, and your readiness, combine to give you greatest value –- which could be any one of the three here.

Some specific use cases for asset management include:

Asset and Inventory Analysis: This most often comes up in broadly based asset management initiatives, but it is also relevant to the other use cases – and ALWAYS a challenge.

Asset Lifecycle Management: This includes SLAs, maintenance windows, and service contracts, and is central to managing assets effectively across their lifecycles. Strong support for SW license management is also important. This is often achieved through separate but well integrated solutions –- including third-party solutions.

Compliance Audits: These can now be far more effectively automated and structured based on consistent policies once assets are mapped into a CMDB/CMS system.

Financial Optimization: This is essentially optimizing your IT mission from a dollars-and-cents perspective. CMDB/CMS-driven asset and service management initiatives lay the core foundation for capturing and analyzing cost and value metrics in a substantive and contextually consistent way.


Figure 2: The darker the color, the more central the capability is to the use case. As you can see, the core CMDB, asset management and configuration management are all in black. Next in line are application dependency mapping, capacity, usage and optimization, and application development (as new application services can also be viewed as assets and relevant to asset planning and financial optimization).

EMA had four categories for assessing vendors in its radar: Value Leader, Strong Value, Specific Value, and Limited Value –- from highest to lowest. The value leaders from the radar in Asset Management and Financial Optimization were:

ASG

ASG is arguably the most platform-like of all the vendors in the radar in terms of breadth of capability and function, ASG was one of four Value Leaders in Asset Management where it received the highest overall score of any vendor. Relevant to this, ASG-Trackbird for asset management also received a Value Leader ranking in EMA’s May, 2011 radar on Software Asset Management. ASG offers a CMDB design that’s matured to focus on real needs and use cases -- with an exceptional ability to take in third-party information from a wide variety of sources.

iET Solutions

iET Solutions received especially high ratings in Cost Advantage but clear dominance in all function-related and cost-related vectors. The company’s strengths come in part from well thought out process flows to support asset lifecycle management along with its solid integration capabilities for third-party sources. It was really a balanced solution -- and offered the only deployment where the CMDB was working across a fully third-party management landscape.

LANDesk

LANDesk Service Desk Suite excelled across all areas for Asset Management and scored a first place total score (closely followed by ASG) across all eleven vendors for Asset Management and Financial Optimization. LANDesk’s Service Desk Suite is enhanced by integrations with its own Asset Lifecycle Manager which was one of the Value Leaders in EMA’s Software Asset Management Radar from May, 2011.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow's CMDB outperformed the vendor average in all areas -- with especially strong support for Integration and Interoperability and top-ranked scores for automation in Functionality. ServiceNow’s capabilities to assimilate relevant third-party sources, map them via strong discovery and inventory, and set up process automation for lifecycle control are all impressive. As you may know, ServiceNow also shook the industry by successfully establishing the SaaS model in this space –- and it continues to grow at a dramatic pace.

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Change Management and Change Impact Analysis

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Service Impact Management

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...

CMDB/CMS Use Cases: Asset Management and Financial Optimization

Asset Management is often the fastest use case to deploy for an initial phase CMDB/CMS because, as one vendor put it, “It’s the most linear use case” and generally speaking the least time sensitive. As a result it’s probably the most popular initial use case for CMDB/CMS initiatives -- which doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right first phase deployment for you. You should start where your needs, and your readiness, combine to give you greatest value –- which could be any one of the three here.

Some specific use cases for asset management include:

Asset and Inventory Analysis: This most often comes up in broadly based asset management initiatives, but it is also relevant to the other use cases – and ALWAYS a challenge.

Asset Lifecycle Management: This includes SLAs, maintenance windows, and service contracts, and is central to managing assets effectively across their lifecycles. Strong support for SW license management is also important. This is often achieved through separate but well integrated solutions –- including third-party solutions.

Compliance Audits: These can now be far more effectively automated and structured based on consistent policies once assets are mapped into a CMDB/CMS system.

Financial Optimization: This is essentially optimizing your IT mission from a dollars-and-cents perspective. CMDB/CMS-driven asset and service management initiatives lay the core foundation for capturing and analyzing cost and value metrics in a substantive and contextually consistent way.


Figure 2: The darker the color, the more central the capability is to the use case. As you can see, the core CMDB, asset management and configuration management are all in black. Next in line are application dependency mapping, capacity, usage and optimization, and application development (as new application services can also be viewed as assets and relevant to asset planning and financial optimization).

EMA had four categories for assessing vendors in its radar: Value Leader, Strong Value, Specific Value, and Limited Value –- from highest to lowest. The value leaders from the radar in Asset Management and Financial Optimization were:

ASG

ASG is arguably the most platform-like of all the vendors in the radar in terms of breadth of capability and function, ASG was one of four Value Leaders in Asset Management where it received the highest overall score of any vendor. Relevant to this, ASG-Trackbird for asset management also received a Value Leader ranking in EMA’s May, 2011 radar on Software Asset Management. ASG offers a CMDB design that’s matured to focus on real needs and use cases -- with an exceptional ability to take in third-party information from a wide variety of sources.

iET Solutions

iET Solutions received especially high ratings in Cost Advantage but clear dominance in all function-related and cost-related vectors. The company’s strengths come in part from well thought out process flows to support asset lifecycle management along with its solid integration capabilities for third-party sources. It was really a balanced solution -- and offered the only deployment where the CMDB was working across a fully third-party management landscape.

LANDesk

LANDesk Service Desk Suite excelled across all areas for Asset Management and scored a first place total score (closely followed by ASG) across all eleven vendors for Asset Management and Financial Optimization. LANDesk’s Service Desk Suite is enhanced by integrations with its own Asset Lifecycle Manager which was one of the Value Leaders in EMA’s Software Asset Management Radar from May, 2011.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow's CMDB outperformed the vendor average in all areas -- with especially strong support for Integration and Interoperability and top-ranked scores for automation in Functionality. ServiceNow’s capabilities to assimilate relevant third-party sources, map them via strong discovery and inventory, and set up process automation for lifecycle control are all impressive. As you may know, ServiceNow also shook the industry by successfully establishing the SaaS model in this space –- and it continues to grow at a dramatic pace.

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Change Management and Change Impact Analysis

Click here to read the CMDB/CMS use cases for Service Impact Management

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...