Enhance Visibility and Control with Unified Asset Discovery

Your network assets are now everywhere—spread across on-premise data centers, private clouds, public clouds, and virtual machines. This growing complexity has made it increasingly difficult for IT teams to maintain full visibility into their environments. The result? Unmanageable asset costs, compliance gaps, security vulnerabilities, and operational inefficiencies.

Fortunately, it’s possible to regain control. Solutions such as EfficientIP’s Unified Asset Discovery give organizations a single, consolidated view of every asset across all environments. By improving visibility and data quality, Unified Asset Discovery helps optimize costs, strengthen security, streamline operations, and ensure compliance.

The Modern Reality: Fragmented Assets, Mounting Challenges

In today’s hybrid, multi-cloud world, enterprise networks are sprawling faster than most IT teams can track. Applications and workloads now run everywhere—on-premise, in virtualized environments, and across multiple cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

While this flexibility drives agility and scalability, it also introduces significant challenges. The more distributed assets become, the harder it is to know exactly what you have, where it resides, and how it’s configured. A 2025 Flexera State of IT Asset Management (ITAM) report reveals that only 43% of organizations fully understand their IT assets and their impact on business outcomes—down from 47% the previous year. That decline underscores the growing complexity of IT environments and the inadequacy of traditional tracking tools.

The Configuration Management Database (CMDB), once considered the cornerstone of IT asset management, often fails to keep pace. As Gartner points out, CMDBs are frequently “poorly maintained” and rely on static, outdated data. Without accurate, real-time information, organizations can’t make informed decisions or effectively control their infrastructure.

This lack of visibility creates cascading problems. Costs spiral out of control as teams unknowingly overprovision or leave assets idle. Compliance becomes a constant struggle when no one can say for sure which systems are in use or how they’re configured. Security risks multiply as ungoverned or “shadow IT” devices proliferate, while operational inefficiencies grow as teams spend valuable time reconciling mismatched data across disconnected systems. In short, the network is evolving faster than traditional management tools can handle.

The Foundation of Control: Comprehensive Asset Discovery

To regain visibility and control, organizations need to discover, track, and consolidate their assets everywhere—across all environments, devices, and clouds. The first step in that journey is Asset Discovery.

An effective discovery solution identifies every device, object, and application connected to the network, no matter where it lives. This process not only reveals the full extent of your network infrastructure but also exposes the hidden issues undermining performance and efficiency. For instance, it can uncover “zombie assets”—idle or forgotten resources that consume power, storage, or licensing costs without delivering business value. Repurposing or decommissioning these assets leads to better capacity planning, improved cost control, and smarter investment decisions.

Asset discovery also brings to light hidden or ungoverned applications that increase the attack surface and pose security threats. By bringing these assets into the fold, organizations reduce risk and reinforce network assurance.

Equally important, continuous discovery helps prevent configuration drift—the gradual divergence between the network’s intended and actual state. Left unchecked, configuration drift caused by human errors or shadow IT can cause degraded performance, outages, security vulnerabilities, and compliance violations. Regularly detecting and reconciling these differences ensures consistent, reliable configurations across the enterprise.

Ultimately, comprehensive discovery delivers what every IT team needs most: visibility and control across all environments.

EfficientIP’s Unified Asset Discovery: Visibility Without Borders

EfficientIP Unified Asset Discovery automates the identification of assets across hybrid multicloud ecosystems, delivering complete, real-time visibility from a single pane of glass. It operates seamlessly across on-premise environments through NetChange IPLocator and across major cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure, and private clouds, via the Cloud Observer product. 

Every network object discovered (switch, router, VM…) is enriched with valuable metadata such as location, owner, or cost center. This data is harmonized and consolidated into a unified dataset, giving IT teams a clear, accurate picture of what’s connected across their entire infrastructure. The result is a real-time view of the network’s true state—allowing organizations to identify anomalies, uncover vulnerabilities, and reconcile discrepancies between the intended and actual configurations.

Continuous Asset Discovery and Data Reconciliation

Unlike one-off scans, Unified Asset Discovery is a continuous process. It constantly compares live network data with existing inventory records in IPAM to expose inconsistencies, configuration drifts, or unauthorized changes. This continuous validation ensures that your asset database reflects the network’s true condition at all times.

The SOLIDserver^TM platform’s IPAM Data Reconciliation feature automatically aligns discovered assets with the intended network state. This dynamic synchronization maintains an accurate inventory and ensures that all network objects are properly accounted for. Over time, this process establishes a Trusted Network Source of Truth (NSoT)—a living, reliable foundation of structured data that drives operational efficiency.

A trusted, accurate dataset is not just a convenience; it’s the cornerstone of effective integration and network automation. Once network data is consistent, complete, and validated, organizations can use it to drive more advanced initiatives across their IT ecosystem.

From Trusted Data to Smarter Network Automation

Accurate, real-time network data is what enables true automation. Unified Asset Discovery feeds this trusted data into a DDI-enabled Network Source of Truth, empowering IT teams to automate critical processes. For example, organizations can automatically update firewall policies based on actual device inventories, such as with the Fortinet and EfficientIP integration, streamline SD-WAN orchestration, or deploy new devices through Zero Touch Provisioning with confidence that configurations are correct from day one.

Traditional CMDB and IT Asset Management (ITAM) systems often depend on incomplete or outdated data, limiting their value. By contrast, thanks to its rich APIs, EfficientIP’s DDI-enabled NSoT provides these systems with the accurate, timely information they need to operate effectively. Through integration with CMDB, ITSM, SIEM, SOAR, or Technology Asset Intelligence (TAI) platforms, organizations can extend the reach and reliability of their existing network and security ecosystem.

In short,  the most valuable and actionable data for effective network automation resides in the DDI-enabled NSoT enhanced by Unified Asset Discovery, providing the real-time ground truth that CMDB and ITAM rely on to remain accurate.

The Benefits: From Cost Optimization to Compliance Confidence

By implementing Unified Asset Discovery, organizations gain a powerful combination of cost savings, efficiency, and risk reduction. Time previously spent on manual tracking and reconciliation is reclaimed, allowing teams to focus on innovation and strategic priorities. Continuous drift detection simplifies risk management and compliance, ensuring that the network remains aligned with policies and standards.

Financially, the ability to identify redundant or underused assets translates directly into savings, both in capital expenditures and ongoing operational costs. From a security perspective, gaining visibility into every connected asset reduces the likelihood of unmonitored or rogue devices introducing vulnerabilities. And because discovery data is harmonized and normalized, reports and audits are more accurate and credible.

In essence, Unified Asset Discovery doesn’t just make IT management easier—it makes it smarter, safer, and more cost-effective.

Real-World Impact: From Discovery to Efficiency

Unified Asset Discovery isn’t just a back-end improvement—it drives tangible results across multiple operational and strategic areas including optimizing resources, strengthening network security, and enhancing operations. Valuable use cases include the following:

1. Repurpose Zombie Assets:

Identify idle servers or unused IPs consuming resources, and redeploy or retire them to optimize costs.

2. Uncover Unknown Devices:

Detect unauthorized or rogue devices connected to the network to strengthen your security posture and prevent data leaks.

3. Enhance Reporting Accuracy:

Ensure that reports and audits reflect real-world conditions by normalizing and unifying asset data.

4. Track Changes Over Time:

Monitor historical asset changes for better troubleshooting, compliance audits, and capacity planning.

Each of these use cases demonstrates how accurate asset visibility translates directly into creation of a more agile, transparent, and secure IT environment—one where decision-making is based on facts, not guesswork.

Conclusion: Taking Back Control of Your Network

As IT environments grow increasingly distributed, visibility is no longer optional—it’s fundamental to success. Without an accurate, real-time understanding of your assets, you risk wasting resources, falling out of compliance, and leaving your network exposed to threats.

By adopting Unified Asset Discovery, IT teams can once again see their entire environment clearly. They can ensure every asset is visible, accountable, and aligned with business objectives. Backed by a Trusted Network Source of Truth, organizations can improve network assurance, streamline compliance, accelerate automation, and optimize resource costs.

EfficientIP’s Unified Asset Discovery turns network complexity into clarity—helping you take back control of your hybrid multicloud environment and build a foundation for smarter, safer, and more efficient network management.