What it is (plain English)
Automated scanning that finds the servers, applications, network devices, and cloud resources running in your environment and keeps the CMDB populated and current — without anyone maintaining a spreadsheet. It's how a CMDB stays trustworthy at scale.
Problems it solves
- A CMDB that goes stale the moment it's built because updates are manual.
- No reliable picture of what's actually running, especially in the cloud.
- Change and incident impact analysis undermined by inaccurate CI data.
What must exist first
CMDB Foundation — Discovery fills and maintains the CMDB, so the CMDB structure (and CSDM alignment) should be established first.
What the customer needs to provide
- Network access and credentials for the systems to be scanned (a major coordination item with security/infra teams).
- MID Server hosts (the on-prem agents Discovery runs through) and firewall arrangements.
- Cloud account access for cloud discovery (AWS/Azure/GCP).
- Scope decisions: which network ranges and CI classes to discover first.
Where it can go next
Service Mapping builds business-service maps on discovered data; Event Management correlates alerts against discovered CIs; accurate CIs sharpen Change Management risk and Incident Management impact analysis.