What ITAM is
For me, ITAM is the transformational program that cuts across organizations, lines of business and external sources. ITAM bridges the gap between operational and financial systems and processes, and provides critical information and knowledge required for your enterprise to make the best business and investment decisions possible, to ensure better contract negotiations, asset optimization, compliance, and accurate financial reporting. It can cover computer hardware and software, mobile devices, telecommunications systems, data, networks, and third-party contracts with consultants or hosted solution providers.
I believe and have seen with mid to large companies that I have worked with that fully supported and integrated IT and software asset management will:
- Reduce loss of software asset data and licenses
- Reduce risk of financial penalties due to non-compliance with licenses
- Reduce asset record gaps and duplications through a comprehensive central repository
- Reduce, eliminate and/or reallocate underutilized licenses
- Reduce, eliminate decentralize license compliance processes
- Improve productivity, efficiency, and quality through process automation
- Improve accuracy of software asset and license data and budget forecasting
- Improve understanding Total Cost of Ownership
- Improve accuracy of management reporting on software license positions
- Improve planning and execution with accurate hardware and software asset and license locations
- Improve staff understanding of policies and processes through compliance training
What objectives could ITAM cover or should cover for your organization? Think of pain points, areas of concern. Below are some examples of objectives for your ITAM/SAM program:
- Optimize utilization of IT assets over their entire lifecycle
- Provide accurate and consistent enterprise-wide asset information for planning and procurement, financial, accounting, consumption based pricing, application, and infrastructure operations, risk mitigation and reporting purposes
- Provide timely and accurate assessments of future asset needs to meet business and technology initiatives
- Increase visibility into the costs of procuring, installing, utilizing, and transferring IT assets
- Accurately assess and rapidly fulfill end-user software asset needs and requests
- Provide a foundation for a comprehensive IT Service Management strategy
Another tool I like to use and create is a responsibility matrix (RACI/RACSI). It helps everyone to understand who is accountable for specific areas and processes for ITAM and SAM. The RACI/RACSI describes the level of responsibility of various roles in completing tasks or deliverables that are needed for a project, process, or effort. No one team can do it alone. ITAM requires collaboration of various teams: software asset management, application owners, vendor management, procurement, hardware asset management (Infrastructure team), network, finance, human resources, and legal for success.
RACI/RACSI stands for:
- R (Responsible): This is the person who does the work to complete the task.
- A (Accountable): This is the person responsible for overseeing that the task is complete and completed correctly.
- C (Consulted): This person may be used to weigh in on the task but is not necessarily responsible for doing the work on it.
- S (Support): This person is assigned to help the Responsible person. Like Consulted, but provides additional work.
- I (Informed): Persons who are neither responsible for doing the work, nor responsible for overseeing its completion, but who should be kept up-to-date on its progress.
One critical fact I want to point out is that both hardware asset management (HAM) and software asset management (SAM) are components of ITAM. You cannot do one without the other. So often, companies will want to implement a SAM program, but have no true hardware asset management. You can't do software asset management if you don't know where your assets are. Hardware asset management covers the management of the tangible aspect of hardware assets (for example: servers, laptops, desktops, mobile devices) and networks. HAM allows a company to:
- Track hardware and unused assets
- Identify theft or loss
- Manage inventory
- Reduce maintenance contract costs
- Carry out repairs under warranty
In order for IT asset management to be effective, the identification and tracking of key components must be performed frequently and regularly.
Working definitions for ITAM might look like this:
IT Asset management is the integration of the physical, financial, and contractual attributes of software and hardware used to provide cost-efficient, timely business services. As a holistic approach, it includes the management of the asset's identifiers, components, support and warranty details, costs, contract associations, and all events associated with the asset and its use within the organization. As a discipline, asset management enables the financial management of all IT assets, providing cost-effective stewardship of these assets as resources used in delivering IT services.
IT Asset Management means, a system of integrated management, processes, strategies and technologies that enables an enterprise to manage its assets throughout their lifecycle.
- Asset tracking deals with the physical characteristics of software in support of planning, deployment, operation, support, and service; installation/use data.
- Asset management deals with the fiscal (financial and/or contract) details of software as required for financial management, risk management, contract management, and vendor management; ownership data. Asset tracking is a prerequisite.
Implementing an effective ITAM strategy requires tools aligned to processes that are event-oriented and traceable. As with any vital process, intra-enterprise cultural and political shifts must occur at all levels. Simply put, accuracy in asset management, as well as the ability to develop a configuration management database, cannot exist without enterprise-wide and top-down support for the asset management discipline. Remember, the key question you are seeking to answer is this: Can we justify our IT spend without knowing the assets we have at our disposal? Without an effective asset management strategy, as well as the support this discipline requires, the answer is a resounding No!
ITAM is about more than simply storing asset-related information. Your strategy should extend to ensure the following capabilities:
- Deploying asset-related data
- Automating processes and procedures
- Understanding asset ownership and assignment
- Enabling efficient operations
- Reducing the risk of human error
This is distinctly different from ownership (financial burden) or accountability (who answers for asset integrity). Assignment tracks the actual possession and presumable use of the asset.
As obvious as this seems, many companies can't physically verify either the presence or use of many key assets. In conjunction with lifecycle status, assignment data gives the organization the information needed to physically account for critical assets and ensure effective use.
For active commodity assets, accountability and assignment may be assigned to the same person. For active service or network infrastructure assets, they will tend to be different. For inactive assets, accountability may be the asset team and assignment may be a store room. Having the data to physically locate an asset closes the loop on accountability and many regulatory requirements.
The goal to aim for is ensuring that all users requiring this information receive accurate data in a timely manner, and in a meaningful, standardized format. Once captured, asset-related information is useful for management reporting, financial reporting, audit preparation, and planning purposes. Information can then be linked between systems, using a single source of data, rather than duplicating the same information through multiple processes and storing it in multiple places.