What is ITAM?
What is ITAM?
In most large organizations, IT Assets represent one of the largest capital investments. Managing those IT Assets is consequently a business critical task. The discipline of IT Asset Management, sometimes shortened to ITAM, has emerged to provide executives with a window onto how IT Assets are deployed and used. Unlike most other capital investments, IT is characterized by numerous lower cost assets ranging from $100 software licenses to $1,000,000 mainframe computers; with the majority of items being below $10,000. Consequently IT Asset Management disciplines must be heavily automated in order to avoid the cost of ITAM outstripping the benefits. A class of ITAM tools has emerged to enable this automation. IT Asset Management software is fairly mature in terms of features, but is undergoing something of a rebirth in the wake of a shift to Software as a Service (SaaS). Central to any ITAM initiative is the ability to automatically and systematically discover all IT assets that should be managed. Technology exists today to do this is an accurate and reliable way, and breakthroughs in discovery methods regularly extend the reach of inventory and discovery. In addition, to manage those IT assets that do not often appear on a network ITAM tools must be able to provide an easy, manual import. Once a baseline of the IT estate is established, good IT Asset Management disciplines overlay the technical data with financial and utilization information.
Integrating Information with ITAM
Asset utilization information is another technical datapoint, which can be obtained using advanced ITAM technology such as Survey. However, integration with financial data always presents the biggest challenge to ITAM projects. While electronically discovered information can be neatly categorized, and always follows a well know normalization pattern, financial data is rarely so well-ordered. Humans have a habit of taking shortcuts when transcribing data from one system to another, and staff changes exacerbate the problem by reducing any consistency of format. The best ITAM tools are those which recoginise this problem and force a normalization step during the import of information from the financial systems.
Getting ROI with ITAM
With utilization and financial information as the second and third legs of the IT Asset Management stool, it becomes possible to ensure that the capital expenditure on IT assets is optimally deployed; there is no point leaving a $20,000 computer spinning idly in a rack when other parts of the organization are desperate for computing resource. Good quality IT Asset Management tooling highlights such imbalances very early and, with the correct organizational processes, ensures this information is inserted into subsequent purchase processes to prevent unnecessary expenditure.
What is ITAM?
In most large organizations, IT Assets represent one of the largest capital investments. Managing those IT Assets is consequently a business critical task. The discipline of IT Asset Management, sometimes shortened to ITAM, has emerged to provide executives with a window onto how IT Assets are deployed and used. Unlike most other capital investments, IT is characterized by numerous lower cost assets ranging from $100 software licenses to $1,000,000 mainframe computers; with the majority of items being below $10,000. Consequently IT Asset Management disciplines must be heavily automated in order to avoid the cost of ITAM outstripping the benefits. A class of ITAM tools has emerged to enable this automation. IT Asset Management software is fairly mature in terms of features, but is undergoing something of a rebirth in the wake of a shift to Software as a Service (SaaS). Central to any ITAM initiative is the ability to automatically and systematically discover all IT assets that should be managed. Technology exists today to do this is an accurate and reliable way, and breakthroughs in discovery methods regularly extend the reach of inventory and discovery. In addition, to manage those IT assets that do not often appear on a network ITAM tools must be able to provide an easy, manual import. Once a baseline of the IT estate is established, good IT Asset Management disciplines overlay the technical data with financial and utilization information.
Integrating Information with ITAM
Asset utilization information is another technical datapoint, which can be obtained using advanced ITAM technology such as Survey. However, integration with financial data always presents the biggest challenge to ITAM projects. While electronically discovered information can be neatly categorized, and always follows a well know normalization pattern, financial data is rarely so well-ordered. Humans have a habit of taking shortcuts when transcribing data from one system to another, and staff changes exacerbate the problem by reducing any consistency of format. The best ITAM tools are those which recoginise this problem and force a normalization step during the import of information from the financial systems.
Getting ROI with ITAM
With utilization and financial information as the second and third legs of the IT Asset Management stool, it becomes possible to ensure that the capital expenditure on IT assets is optimally deployed; there is no point leaving a $20,000 computer spinning idly in a rack when other parts of the organization are desperate for computing resource. Good quality IT Asset Management tooling highlights such imbalances very early and, with the correct organizational processes, ensures this information is inserted into subsequent purchase processes to prevent unnecessary expenditure.
