Configuration management has been a necessary but time-consuming function that's become increasingly important as IT has embraced better processes. Unfortunately, the tools used to track configuration items have taken a brute-force approach that required a lot of administrator expertise, and now these techniques are starting to show their age. With the advent of highly virtualized IT infrastructure and cloud-type services, IT has the ability to use much more scalable methods that take advantage of virtualization to greatly reduce management cost and complexity.