Skip to main content

No, You Don't Already Have a Tool that Does This: Asset Versus Service-Centric Discovery

Tom Molfetto

It is not uncommon that we hear from a prospect some variation of “We already have a tool that does discovery.” However, as of yet, we haven’t run into a situation where this wound up being true.

All of the discovery tools on the market are asset-focused. Their purpose is not necessarily to help operations. In order to help operations, the relationship between components – and sometimes many components – must be understood within the context of how these related components combine to power business services.

This is not to suggest that there’s not a valid case for asset/component management. In fact, there are several valid use cases for an asset-focused discovery tool. An asset-focused tool may help you effectively manage software license compliance, or keep track of the software deployed in a data center. But asset management and service-centric management are two very distinct end goals, and require two very distinct tools.

But there are tools out there that pick up where asset or component focused discovery ends, and ties those components into the business services that they enable.

Take the analogy of a car. If an asset-focused discovery was performed on a car, you’d find out that the car has a door, a steering wheel, a transmission, an antenna, hood, intake valve, etc. You’d wind up with a list of all of the individual components that comprise a car. And this can be an important body of knowledge for any number of purposes. But it is not going to provide meaningful insight into the operational viability of the vehicle.

Our perspective on this topic is rather than starting with the components, first start with the system that the components power.

Using the car analogy, first start with the drivetrain (e.g., the “service” of delivering power to the driving wheels) and discover the individual components included within that service, such as: torque converter, transmission, propeller shaft, etc. So, you may first map all of these components to the drivetrain “service” and then monitor them from the perspective of the overall service. So if the transmission were to fail, the “user” would know that the drivetrain was being impacted. Or, conversely, if the drivetrain were to fail, the user would then be able to isolate the root cause of the failure to the individual components that power it.

See the difference in this top-down approach? It may be subtle, but the impact can be massive. An asset-focused tool just cannot be harnessed for the same use cases as a tool that ties those assets to services or systems. It can be summarized in the difference between these two hypothetical conversations between you and a member of your IT team.

Using an asset-focused discovery and monitoring tool:

IT Team: “This router died.”

You: “What does that mean?”

IT Team: “I’m not sure. Has anyone called to complain about anything yet?”

Using a top-down approach for a service -focused discovery and monitoring tool:

IT Team: “The login portal is down because this router failed.”

You: “How long until functionality is restored?”

IT Team: “Should be back up ... now!”

Again – asset management is a valid use case and an asset-focused discovery tool will satisfy that use case in the majority of deployments. But tools that focus on the assets as opposed to the services are not equipped to help bridge the gap between IT and Operations. Two tools. Two purposes.

In short: no, you really don’t already have something that does this.

Tom Molfetto is Marketing Director for Neebula.

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

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 ...

No, You Don't Already Have a Tool that Does This: Asset Versus Service-Centric Discovery

Tom Molfetto

It is not uncommon that we hear from a prospect some variation of “We already have a tool that does discovery.” However, as of yet, we haven’t run into a situation where this wound up being true.

All of the discovery tools on the market are asset-focused. Their purpose is not necessarily to help operations. In order to help operations, the relationship between components – and sometimes many components – must be understood within the context of how these related components combine to power business services.

This is not to suggest that there’s not a valid case for asset/component management. In fact, there are several valid use cases for an asset-focused discovery tool. An asset-focused tool may help you effectively manage software license compliance, or keep track of the software deployed in a data center. But asset management and service-centric management are two very distinct end goals, and require two very distinct tools.

But there are tools out there that pick up where asset or component focused discovery ends, and ties those components into the business services that they enable.

Take the analogy of a car. If an asset-focused discovery was performed on a car, you’d find out that the car has a door, a steering wheel, a transmission, an antenna, hood, intake valve, etc. You’d wind up with a list of all of the individual components that comprise a car. And this can be an important body of knowledge for any number of purposes. But it is not going to provide meaningful insight into the operational viability of the vehicle.

Our perspective on this topic is rather than starting with the components, first start with the system that the components power.

Using the car analogy, first start with the drivetrain (e.g., the “service” of delivering power to the driving wheels) and discover the individual components included within that service, such as: torque converter, transmission, propeller shaft, etc. So, you may first map all of these components to the drivetrain “service” and then monitor them from the perspective of the overall service. So if the transmission were to fail, the “user” would know that the drivetrain was being impacted. Or, conversely, if the drivetrain were to fail, the user would then be able to isolate the root cause of the failure to the individual components that power it.

See the difference in this top-down approach? It may be subtle, but the impact can be massive. An asset-focused tool just cannot be harnessed for the same use cases as a tool that ties those assets to services or systems. It can be summarized in the difference between these two hypothetical conversations between you and a member of your IT team.

Using an asset-focused discovery and monitoring tool:

IT Team: “This router died.”

You: “What does that mean?”

IT Team: “I’m not sure. Has anyone called to complain about anything yet?”

Using a top-down approach for a service -focused discovery and monitoring tool:

IT Team: “The login portal is down because this router failed.”

You: “How long until functionality is restored?”

IT Team: “Should be back up ... now!”

Again – asset management is a valid use case and an asset-focused discovery tool will satisfy that use case in the majority of deployments. But tools that focus on the assets as opposed to the services are not equipped to help bridge the gap between IT and Operations. Two tools. Two purposes.

In short: no, you really don’t already have something that does this.

Tom Molfetto is Marketing Director for Neebula.

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

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 ...