For years, CIOs and infrastructure leaders have invested heavily in configuration management database (CMDB) initiatives with a clear goal: creating a trusted foundation for IT operations, security and business decision-making. Yet, despite those investments, most CMDB programs struggle to deliver lasting value. According to Gartner, 75 percent of CMDB initiatives fail to meet expectations due to poor data quality and completeness.
I spend a lot of time talking with customers, and this topic comes up in almost every conversation. At a recent customer event, I asked the room to raise their hand if they had a CMDB. Nearly every hand went up. Then I asked them to keep their hand raised if they were happy with the accuracy and quality of their CMDB data. Not a single hand stayed up.
The problem is rarely a lack of effort or a limitation of the CMDB platform itself. Instead, it comes down to a more fundamental problem: CMDB data often cannot keep pace with the reality of modern infrastructure.
The Hidden Cost of Inaccurate CMDB Data
Modern IT environments are dynamic by nature. Assets are created, moved and retired constantly across data centers, campuses, clouds and remote locations. Yet many CMDBs still rely on fragmented discovery sources and periodic scans that capture only snapshots in time.
When CMDB data drifts from reality, the impact shows up quickly. Infrastructure teams may spend 16 or more hours per month manually reconciling discrepancies between CMDB records, discovery tools and spreadsheets. Dependency data becomes less reliable for change and release decisions. Security teams contend with blind spots caused by unknown or unmanaged assets, an especially serious concern given that the vast majority of security incidents involve assets that were never properly tracked.
At a recent CIO dinner I attended, this topic came up during the discussion and generated strong interest. Several CIOs described CMDB accuracy as a top organizational priority and shared that they were allocating significant budget this year to CMDB cleanup initiatives. The encouraging part was that there was broad agreement on the problem and a willingness to invest in fixing it. What was less clear to these CIOs was how to address it in a durable way. Manual cleanup projects and periodic remediation efforts can improve data in the short term, but they do not change the underlying issue: CMDB data still struggles to stay aligned with the pace of modern infrastructure.
When accuracy is treated as a one-time project rather than something that is continuously measured, the same gaps inevitably return.
Why the Network Is the Missing Foundation
What many organizations overlook is that they already have one of the most reliable sources of asset visibility available. Anything that is operational eventually connects to the network. Through critical network services such as DNS and DHCP, the Infoblox DDI platform provides continuous, authoritative visibility into IP-connected assets across environments and locations.
The challenge is not collecting more data. It is using the intelligence that already exists. When CMDB data is continuously compared against live network activity, accuracy becomes observable instead of assumed. Rather than relying on periodic discovery cycles or manual audits, teams gain an objective view of what is actually present and active in their environment.
This is the visibility advantage of authoritative DDI data, and it is the foundation many CMDB initiatives have been missing.
Expanding Infoblox Universal Asset Insights™ to Address CMDB Accuracy
Today, we are launching new capabilities in Infoblox Universal Asset Insights™ to help customers directly address long-standing CMDB accuracy challenges by grounding asset data in authoritative network visibility.
With this release, Universal Asset Insights automatically correlates ServiceNow CMDB data with network-observed asset inventory to continuously measure alignment between what is documented and what is actually seen. Assets naturally fall into clear categories:
- Assets present in both systems
- Assets listed in the ServiceNow CMDB but no longer observed
- Assets active on the network but missing from the ServiceNow CMDB
This shifts CMDB accuracy from a periodic cleanup exercise to an ongoing, measurable process. By making gaps visible, teams gain the clarity needed to take informed, data-driven action without adding operational complexity.
How Trusted CMDB Data Improves Every Team
When CMDB data is accurate, the benefits extend well beyond asset management. IT operations teams resolve incidents faster when assets and services are accurately represented. Change and release teams reduce risk by understanding real dependencies and potential blast radius. Security teams gain earlier visibility into unmanaged assets that introduce exposure. Cloud, DevOps and infrastructure teams plan more effectively with confidence in what actually exists. Executives receive reporting they can trust when assessing risk, resilience and investment priorities. An authoritative network source does not just improve CMDB data quality. It restores confidence in the foundation teams rely on every day.
This foundation is becoming even more important as organizations adopt AIOps and agentic workflows. These systems increasingly rely on CMDB data to drive automation, root-cause analysis and decision-making. When asset and dependency data is incomplete or out of date, automation amplifies the problem rather than solving it.
Customers exploring AI-driven operations are realizing that the effectiveness of these initiatives depends directly on the quality of the data they are built on. A CMDB that reflects what is actually present and active is no longer just an operational nice-to-have. It becomes a prerequisite for safely scaling automation.
Start Turning DDI-Powered Visibility into CMDB Confidence
A trusted CMDB is built over time. It depends on continuously measuring accuracy, maintaining confidence in the data and ensuring teams can rely on it as environments evolve. Universal Asset Insights helps organizations close the CMDB trust gap by grounding accuracy in the one place that already sees everything: the network.
If CMDB accuracy is something you are actively working through, the best way to evaluate this approach is to see it against your own environment. You can start with a free trial of Universal Asset Insights and directly measure how your CMDB aligns with what is actually present and active on the network.
Asset Insights and directly measure how your CMDB aligns with what is actually present and active on the network.
Read the blog post, Leveraging Infoblox Universal Asset Insights™ to Visualize ServiceNow CMDB Accuracy to learn more about the new enhancement in detail.
