IT asset management (ITAM) refers to a systematic approach to tracking and managing your organisation’s IT assets to obtain maximum value from them, minimal risk (especially when it comes to security), and at the lowest possible cost.
From initial deployment right through to decommissioning, comprehensive and end-to-end ITAM gives you a better understanding of how your assets are being utilised. In turn, these insights can significantly increase the quality of your decision-making; particularly in areas such as procurement, budgeting, and resource allocation.
Read on for an essential overview of the key elements of ITAM, the benefits it can bring to your business, and the type of capabilities required to achieve asset management success in today’s increasingly complex IT environments.
What is an IT Asset?
In IT, an asset is any hardware, software, or information resource that a business owns or manages. It includes:
- Hardware devices, such as computers, servers, and peripherals.
- Software applications, such as cloud services and licenses.
- Databases, virtual machines, and cloud storage.
- Networking assets, such as firewalls, routers, switches, and security appliances.
How IT management has changed
A couple of decades ago, it was relatively easy to identify which assets were under your control, and to maintain visibility over them. More recently, a couple of trends have made this more of a challenge.
First, there’s the rise of remote and hybrid working, along with the bring your own device (BYOD) phenomenon. Employees increasingly use personal devices for work-related tasks. Since these are not company-owned assets, they are often left out of legacy IT asset inventories. However, you still have to ensure that your ITAM procedures focusing on managing access, compliance, and security cover these devices.
The second trend is the matter of software. These days, very rarely does technology enterprise software come in a box. The subscription-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is now the default, with the typical enterprise having more than 200 subscriptions in play, on average.
Especially if they are spread across multiple teams and billing accounts, SaaS subscriptions can be much harder to track and audit centrally, leading to overlapping subscriptions, unused licenses, and cost inefficiencies.
All of this has direct consequences for ITAM practices, and the type of tools you need to manage it successfully.
What is an IT Asset Management Policy?
Your asset management policy is a strategic document that sets out the principles and procedures you are going to follow to ensure that all IT assets under your control are acquired, used, maintained, and disposed of in line with organisational needs and regulatory requirements.
Typical areas covered in an IT asset management policy include the following:
- Scope and objectives: You need to be clear on what constitutes an IT asset, an inventory audit of all software and hardware to determine what assets are under your control, and a full needs-based analysis to determine the IT assets your organization actually requires to fulfill its goals.
- Roles and responsibilities: This involves assigning duties to individuals or teams for specific IT asset management activities. In particular, you need to establish who is responsible for inventory tracking, lifecycle oversight, compliance assurance, license management, maintenance scheduling, security, budgeting and procurement.
- Compliance and governance: Ensuring that procedures are in place for the organization’s IT assets. This includes making sure they are managed responsibly and securely, to meet the needs of both regulators and customers. For example, this can entail reporting structures to communicate compliance status and governance issues to stakeholders and regulatory bodies as required (e.g. are the assets used for storing personal data still compliant with data privacy and protection best practice).
- Lifecycle management: Setting up processes for tracking, managing, and maintaining IT assets throughout their entire lifespan, from procurement to disposal.
- Security and risk management: Ensuring assets are protected against the specific security risks faced by your organization.
Benefits of ITAM
Mitigate risks
You cannot protect and maintain what you cannot see. Likewise, it’s hard to establish if your technical assets are actually working in the best way possible for your business without a clear picture of the assets you hold.
A centralised asset database is at the core of any modern, focused ITAM strategy. This lets you see in one place precisely what you hold, what it’s used for, and whether it needs to be optimised for maximum efficiency — allowing you to reduce any risks in your asset inventory.
Greater business agility
Let’s say your business has the opportunity to take on a major new contract. However, the viability of this opportunity depends on whether you have the IT infrastructure in place to handle it, or whether you need to upgrade your existing assets.
A robust approach to ITAM ensures you always have an up-to-date picture not just of your assets, but also the capabilities those assets are providing. It means that you can quickly identify available resources and, where necessary, reallocate them efficiently to meet new business requirements.
Reduce costs
Estimates suggest that nearly half of installed software and licensed SaaS applications go unused. There is an estimated $18 million wasted on unused applications every year, as of 2024. Having clear inventory management, you’re able to better understand what assets are used for, how much it’s costing, and whether or not you really need it.
From apps that are hardly ever opened, through to peripheral equipment gathering dust, the asset visibility that ITAM delivers gives you much greater scope to identify and eliminate waste, and to make better use of the resources you have already; for example by relocating equipment from one site to another, rather than buying new.
Essential Capabilities of Asset Management Systems
What capabilities do you need to execute ITAM successfully in today’s IT environment? Here are some key areas to focus on:
- Automated asset discovery. This comprises the ability to scan your environment to detect all hardware and software elements present. It ensures there are no gaps in your visibility.
- Inventory and lifecycle management. A centralised ITAM tool keeps a record of all assets throughout their lifecycle, as well as key information relating to them (name, type of license agreement, OS update status). It automatically tracks assets from purchasing, through to deployment, maintenance, and eventual end-of-life management.
- License management. This allows you to monitor SaaS subscriptions and other licenses to ensure compliance with vendor agreements, reduce waste, and minimise costs.
- Financial management. Helps you track and report on all financial ITAM aspects, such as budgeting, depreciation, cost tracking, and replacement cadences.
Ensuring ITAM is Fit-for-Purpose
Armed with an effective ITAM system, you’ll be in a much better position to evaluate past purchases and deployments, and make data-driven predictions on things like future maintenance costs and replacement cycles.
What’s clear, however, is that ad-hoc spreadsheet-based tracking of IT assets is a major challenge in today’s scattered environment. To futureproof your capabilities - and lower your management burden - centralised, automated ITAM deserves serious consideration.
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