Configuration Management: Are there any Auto discovery tool companies left?

Eighteen months ago, the market counted something like a dozen of companies which were selling interesting products named “Auto discovery or mapping tools” (refer to my other post: Configuration Management: How to really build a CMDB with an auto discovery tool). Among them, there were, Appilog, Collation, Relicore, n-layers, Tideway Systems, Cendura.

Since that time, important software companies have considered these tools as probably being highly strategic because they would help to materialize Configuration Management , one of the most complex ITIL process.

IBM, Symantec, Mercury among others have acquired some of these companies, and the remaining ones would soon be considered for acquisition. That was my impression… end of last year.

Today Computer Associates has acquired Cendura, a small company (50 people) located in the Silicon Valley which also provide a nice Auto Discovery funtion with lots of granularity (the level of drilldown is quite impressive). This demonstrates clearly that without such functionality, Configuration Management was an unreachable ITIL process and irrealistic to be correctly implemented.