Even though IT budgets are on the rebound, most organizations are still under pressure to further reduce operational costs. You may have already taken steps to consolidate and rationalize your IT assets, but chances are there are still savings to be found by improving the way you manage those assets. According to Forrester Research, an enterprise’s IT estate can often account for 50 percent of the total enterprise asset base and sometimes as much as 80 percent of capital expenditure [The Forrester Wave: IT Asset Life-Cycle Management, Q2 2009].
Despite that big chunk of change spent on IT assets, most organizations are not doing all they can to streamline those costs. In fact, Gartner estimates that as much as 20 percent of software licensing and hardware maintenance charges are incurred for assets that are no longer in use [Gartner, “Don’t Overlook Opportunities to Save Costs on ITAM,” March 2008]. While most organizations have some IT asset management (ITAM) procedures and tools in place, there is typically more that can be done to improve asset management and lower costs. IT departments need to adopt integrated automation solutions that not only give them a total picture of their asset and service lifecycles, but also reduce the cost and complexity of managing those lifecycles.
With the right tools, IT can easily take control of resource-intensive ITAM challenges — such as discovering, tracking, auditing and managing — to turn a situation of chaos into one of true value for the company. However, not all ITAM tools are created equal. For organizations to cut costs and improve asset management practices, IT organizations should keep these 10 things in mind.
