Nowadays, with the growth of Information Technology (IT) in the business world, it has become indispensable for every commercial organization to invest a lot of money into acquiring advanced technology solutions and services. Without them, an enterprise will be unable to survive in the current competitive market.
IT is the brain of organizations. If an enterprise's IT structure is problematic or inefficient, a wide variety of problems are likely to arise there. Here we understand why IT asset management is so important for businesses.
Today's enterprises, organizations, and businesses all need to have a good grasp on their IT departments. After all, many of them spend nearly 50% of their total budget on IT services alone. But this number is only expected to rise as the need for IT expands in other angles as well. IT Asset Management is one of the methodologies that plays a vital role in ensuring the functioning efficiency of an enterprise's IT infrastructure.
IT asset management (ITAM) is the set of business practices that join financial, contractual and inventory functions to support life cycle management and strategic decision making for the IT environment. The goal of ITAM is to optimize spending and support business objectives, enabling organizations to be more agile, plan technology changes more effectively and reduces operating costs.
In addition to the obvious benefits of having a comprehensive view of an organization's hardware and software assets in terms of cost savings, efficiency and transparency, IT asset managers can also play a vital role in helping businesses stay compliant with regulatory standards like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
The scope of IT asset management involves:
According to Gartner, "IT asset management software tools are designed to automate the tracking of hardware, software assets throughout their lifecycle within a company." IT asset management spans both an organization's physical assets, such as desktops, laptops, monitors, printers and mobile devices, as well as its virtual assets such as software licenses.
An effective IT asset management solution can save businesses time and money. By tracking assets and ensuring they are used to their full potential, asset management can help organizations optimize their costs, increase productivity and streamline the buying process. Although many organizations are aware of the benefits of IT asset management, it is surprising how few actually implement an asset management strategy.
Many organizations still rely on manual processes to track and manage IT assets. This typically involves using spreadsheets or other ad-hoc methods to track information about each asset’s configuration, location, warranty status, contracts and maintenance agreements.
The problem with this approach is that it creates a “silo” of information that isn’t always reliable or easily accessible by those who need it. For example, if multiple people are entering data into a spreadsheet there is no guarantee that all of the information will be accurate or up-to-date. There is also no easy way for other employees to access the information if they need it for reference or documentation purposes.
These problems can lead to inefficient asset utilization, compliance issues and poor decision making based on incomplete or inaccurate data.
Application Portfolio Management software, known as APM software for short, enables businesses to manage and inventory their application assets from the purchasing process to the disposal process. This helps organizations create a portfolio of applications that is optimized for their business needs, while reducing costs related to unused applications.
APM software allows users to manage an inventory of applications, including web services and virtual applications. The software can be used to track details about each application, such as licensing information and service contracts.
The solution can also help users find duplicate applications within the portfolio, enabling organizations to dispose of redundant or unused software while reallocating cost savings toward new software licenses.
APM software can help you evaluate when it's necessary to upgrade an application or replace it with another one altogether based on usage data, user feedback, performance metrics, etc., so that you're not paying for something that isn't being used or is underperforming relative to other options.
APM solutions typically offer one of two different deployment options: cloud-based or on-premise. In most cases, pricing for the software is based on the number of licenses required for implementation.
Software Asset Management (SAM) software is a centralized solution that provides effective management, control and protection of the lifecycle of software inventories in an organization. Software asset management solutions also support the effective management of license and supplier processes.
An organization's software asset management program provides the framework, process and tools to improve operational and financial performance through effective management of all software assets.
A SAM software can be utilized as a standalone application or integrated into broader IT asset management and IT service management (ITSM) platforms. SAM software can also handle hardware assets in addition to software. The main reason for having SAM software is to manage the cost of hardware and software purchases by reducing excessive spending on licenses and replacement hardware.
SAM can help you minimize wasted spending on software licenses by ensuring you only buy licenses for the number of users who will be using the software. With SAM, you can track how many users are actually using each application, then purchase licenses based on this information.
Hardware Asset Management software provides monitoring and management of all hardware in an organization through a single platform. It is designed to provide visibility and control over all hardware assets in an environment, such as laptops and desktops, servers, network devices, and mobile devices. Hardware Asset Management software helps organizations stay up-to-date with the latest software and hardware upgrades. It ensures that the organization gets maximum return on investment from its hardware assets while ensuring they are used safely and securely.
Hardware Asset Management software addresses all aspects of managing hardware assets, including:
Integration is critical to the operational processes of the business. If there is a problem in an integration, it can, directly and indirectly, cause many business processes to be disrupted.
Integration Inventory Management Software is the solution where businesses can keep an inventory of all their active and passive integrations and view their working status. Loggle's Integration Inventory Management software maps your integration inventory. Thus, you can measure the interconnectedness and importance of your integrations. In addition, Logle SAP offers PI/PO monitoring functionality.
Cost management and optimization are the primary objectives of an IT asset management strategy. For this reason, when talking about hardware, software and integration management solutions, it is impossible not to mention IT cost management.
IT Cost Management software is a solution where businesses can manage and track software, hardware, integration, outsource service, license, maintenance and all other IT costs. Compared to excel, businesses can easily access IT cost reports based on assets, teams, functions and years through the platform.
Loggle is a startup that offers innovative and end-to-end IT asset management solutions. Loggle enables businesses to manage all their application, hardware, and integration inventories through a central platform and enables them to perform end-to-end IT cost management.
You can contact us to learn how you can manage your ITAM processes with Loggle.
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