ChangeGear Asset Discovery Expert (ADE): Total Visibility Without Agents or Guesswork

Knowing what’s on your network shouldn’t be a guessing game. Every endpoint, printer, switch, and service can create risk if it’s untracked—or an opportunity if it’s well-managed. Serviceaide’s ChangeGear Asset Discovery Expert (ADE) delivers instant, agentless visibility into your entire IT environment. It automatically identifies every device, service, and dependency across your networks, then populates this data directly into your CMDB, giving IT teams a single, reliable view of assets to support compliance, security, and service management.

Automated Discovery for Modern, Hybrid Environments

ADE is a lightweight, agentless discovery engine designed to map today’s dynamic enterprise networks. It locates all networked assets—computers, routers, switches, printers, servers, and services—then captures deep metadata including:

• Operating systems, installed software, and versions
• Hardware configurations, BIOS details, MAC and IP addresses
• Disk capacities, memory, and network settings
• Application services such as SQL Server databases, web services, and email servers
• Dependencies between assets and applications

This data is fed directly into ChangeGear’s Configuration Management Database (CMDB), ensuring you always have an up-to-date baseline for every asset—critical for managing incidents, changes, and risks across the organization.

Visibility That Strengthens Security and Compliance

You can’t protect what you can’t see. ADE gives you full visibility into everything connected to your network—inside domain networks or isolated environments. As assets are discovered or changed, ADE automatically flags updates, enabling continuous monitoring and compliance reporting.

The result is a living, accurate inventory that strengthens:

• Security management by detecting unauthorized devices or applications
• Policy enforcement through configuration baselining
• Change management by linking assets to services and users
• Audit readiness with traceable records of asset changes and lifecycles

ADE’s scanning methods are non-intrusive and safe for production environments. It doesn’t use exploits or packet injections and will not trigger intrusion detection systems, ensuring discovery can run continuously without disruption or risk.

Fully Integrated with ITSM and CMDB Workflows

ADE doesn’t operate in isolation—it’s embedded directly into the ChangeGear ITSM suite. This means discovery data flows into every core process:

• Incident and problem management: Analysts see the full context of affected assets.
• Change management: Automatic impact analysis ensures that planned changes account for dependencies.
• Asset lifecycle management: Warranty dates, end-of-life data, and version histories are all tracked.
• Service mapping: Relationships between services, devices, and business applications are always current.

For organizations using other ITSM platforms, ADE also supports REST APIs and Webhooks, making integration fast and flexible.

Agentless by Design, Configurable by Choice

ADE’s agentless architecture simplifies deployment. It can operate from a central hub or be distributed across multiple environments and networks. You control when and where it runs—schedule automated discovery scans, or trigger them manually when needed.

The configuration interface allows you to specify:

• Which types of assets to discover
• What network segments and ports to scan
• Which discovery protocols to use (LDAP, DNS, ARP, NetBIOS, ICMP, TCP, SNMP, SSH, WMI, ADSI, and more)
• Which details to capture per asset type and location

This flexibility means ADE can adapt to any IT landscape—from small, isolated networks to complex hybrid architectures spanning cloud and on-prem environments.

Reduce Risk, Cost, and Complexity

ADE delivers measurable business value in three key areas:

1. Reduced Asset Risk

By automatically identifying new devices and verifying configuration changes, ADE removes blind spots that attackers could exploit. You gain an accurate network map, ensure compliance with security policies, and quickly isolate unauthorized hardware or software.

2. Lower Technology Costs

An accurate CMDB drives smarter budgeting. With ADE, you can right-size hardware and software investments, avoid duplicate purchases, optimize license usage, and reduce maintenance and warranty costs. Real-time data supports financial amortization and capacity planning with confidence.

3. Simpler Audits and Compliance

Keeping a real-time inventory slashes the time and cost of audit preparation. ADE continuously maintains asset records, so compliance teams always have the data they need for frameworks like ISO 27001, SOX, HIPAA, and NERC CIP.

Instant Value, Ongoing Control

ADE can be deployed in minutes and configured to your network topology. Once running, it automatically baselines every discovered asset, tracking any drift from its original configuration. This enables ongoing monitoring, proactive maintenance, and data-driven decisions for patching, upgrades, and capacity.

With automated scheduling, distributed installations, and role-based access, ADE scales with your organization—delivering precise data to the teams that need it most.

The Foundation for Smarter IT Operations

When integrated with ChangeGear’s ITSM platform, ADE becomes the cornerstone of intelligent service management. Accurate asset data empowers AI-driven automation, knowledge recommendations, and change control. The combination of discovery, visibility, and automation ensures that IT and business services remain stable, compliant, and efficient.

See the Complete Picture with ADE

If you’ve ever questioned whether your asset data is complete or current, ADE answers that question decisively. It’s the fastest way to turn fragmented device inventories into a unified, continuously updated system of record—without agents, scripts, or guesswork.

Request a demo today to see how ChangeGear’s Asset Discovery Expert can help your organization gain total visibility, reduce risk, and streamline IT operations.

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