Google Cloud and ITAM: Advanced Asset Management and CMDB

What is Google Cloud's Cloud Asset Inventory?

O Cloud Asset Inventory is a service that allows you to view, search, export, monitor, and analyze metadata for Google Cloud resources, maintaining up to 35 days of creation, modification, and deletion history.. It collects resources such as VMs, buckets, IAM policies, and their relationships, serving as the basis for insights and compliance actions.

How Google Cloud Complements ITAM

In the context of ITAM (IT asset management), Google's solution provides a wealth of information and automation:

1. Automatic discovery: instances, policies, and metadata are automatically inventoried without external scripts

2. Continuous monitoring: changes are detected in real time, making it possible to identify idle resources and maintain compliance

3. Integration with ITAM tools: data can be sent to systems like InvGate, simplifying automatic synchronization

This means asset management is based on a reliable and constantly updated source, improving purchasing cycles, traceability, and compliance.

CMDB Integration in ServiceNnow

For organizations that use CMDB, Google Cloud Asset Inventory is the primary data source when integrating with ServiceNow:

1. O ServiceNow Discovery, via MID Servers, accesses Google Cloud inventory to capture resources, tags, and relationships.

2. There are three integration patterns (basic discovery, IP-agentless, and with Agent Client Collector), varying the depth of data (from metadata to information such as patches, installed software, and processes).

3. Metadata such as labels are automatically mapped to CIs, creating rich and up-to-date representations in the CMDB.

This makes the CMDB a reliable and dynamic repository, facilitating impact analysis, compliance and governance processes.

Difference between CMDB and ITAM

It is important to distinguish the roles of CMDB and ITAM:

1. CMDB is a relational item configuration base, focused on technical aspects, dependencies and ITSM/ITIL support.

2. ITAM is an asset lifecycle management process — licensing, financial value, warranties, security — and requires greater depth than a traditional CMDB.

Google Cloud powers both, but ITAM requires additional enrichment such as cost classification and compliance.

Integration best practices

1. Using Cloud Asset Inventory as a primary source for population and updating.

2. Definition of discovery levels: Start with basic patterns and evolve to richer data with Agents and Collector.

3. Automation and conscious labeling: well-defined labels allow efficient mapping of CIs.

4. CMDB + ITAM Combination: extract technical data with CMDB and enrich it with financial information, contracts and life cycle with ITAM tools.

5. Governance and continuous monitoring, ensuring always up-to-date visibility of assets and compliance.

Real use cases

1. Cloud Asset Mapping: CI in seconds, with validated data, feeding CMDB and ITAM.

2. Cost optimization: identification of idle resources via historical data and automation.

3. Audit and security: Real-time tracking of IAM and policy changes.

4. Scalable governance: multicloud operations with centralized visibility.

Conclusion

O Google Cloud Asset Inventory provides the backbone for effective asset and configuration management by feeding modern CMDBs with reliable, up-to-date data. When complemented with ITAM practices and dedicated tools, the result is robust governance, cost control, compliance, and IT maturity. This combination strengthens the foundation for confident decision-making, proactive automation, and visibility across the entire infrastructure.

To increase efficiency, security, and governance in the cloud, integration between Google Cloud, CMDB, and ITAM is essential—and 4MATT is your partner to turn this potential into reality. Talk to our experts and find out how we can help your company!