network discovery

"With the mobility of today's IT assets and frequency of those moves, software network discovery tools and manual data collection methods simply cannot provide 100 percent accurate inventories," says Walter Darrough of the International Association of IT Asset Managers, Inc. (IAITAM).

Why not? Moves, changes and additions that are unauthorized or undocumented can compromise the integrity of projects that might ordinarily benefit from automation. Outdated or incorrect inventories can contribute to long audit cycles and divert resources from more pressing projects. Annual inventories that are weeks or months old are worthless for reconciliation purposes.