A considerable number of businesses see having knowledge of their physical assets as a vital step in preventing theft, and external auditors are required to confirm that the items listed in a company's books are in fact real, albeit perhaps a sample check.
IT asset configuration management is different. The Infrastructure Manager is responsible for ensuring that the servers, their firewalls, and their load balancers all have the identical configurations, with the exception of their identities (names). If a new server system is built, it should match the configuration of the existing servers, unless there is a specific reason to make it different.
One of the most significant dangers to IT operations is the presence of an unchecked "Keys of the Kingdom" technical specialist who disregards the fundamentals of configuration management. This is especially true in situations when the individual is skilled at covering up their errors. Auto-QA and auto-documentation are the friends of a deployment manager.
