While enterprise architecture and consolidation are important information technology priorities for the government, information technology (IT) managers cannot determine what is needed to support their infrastructure without investing in a system that will provide an accurate inventory of their assets. As IT infrastructure becomes increasingly complex, the effective management of its assets also becomes more complicated. Asset management software generally has the capability to monitor usage and performance, remote configuration, software license management, and patch management. The software has expanded into what BMC Software Incorporated refers to as business service management. This involves automatically determining which servers, applications, storage, and network connections are utilized to provide a particular service. Segmented management responsibilities have presented challenges to the development of IT asset management. The use of tools from different vendors to store and analyze assets has further complicated the management problem, since these tools often conflict. By adopting the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices and shifting the focus to service asset management, organizations can make progress in bringing all their assets into a common management structure. The ITIL has asked organizations to create a Configuration Management Database to offer a common data source for all groups implementing IT tools and functions. No specific architecture has been suggested for the database, so vendors and organizations may follow their own design preferences.