6 reasons to get started with ITAM now

[Bryan Blackburn]

Your IT department can’t do its job right unless it knows everything that exists in the environment. Those assets include hardware, software, clouds, licenses, contracts, subscriptions, and so on. ITAM, more fully expressed as IT Asset Management, represents what the International Association of IT Asset Managers (IAITAM) calls “a set of business practices that incorporates IT assets across the business units within the organization. It joins the financial, inventory, contractual, and risk management responsibilities to manage the overall lifecycle of these assets, including tactical and strategic decision making.”

The keywords in this definition focus on finance, inventories, contracts, and risks—all intertwined in ways that can expose organizations to financial losses and penalties, damaged reputations, and reduced productivity and capability. ITAM is now essential to proper IT operations, and here are six of the top reasons why.

Reason 1: Uncontrolled Assets Post Definite Risks

Inventory and risk are two key aspects of the ITAM definition. If you don’t know what assets are in your inventory, trouble lies ahead. You don’t want to be subject to unexpected charges and possible penalties for using unlicensed (or improperly licensed or contracted) software. ITAM will help you get your assets under control, and make sure you’re paying for what you need, and no more (or less). ITAM can also help establish and enforce acceptable use of assets, and reduce support complexity and associated costs (by standardizing on fewer versions of widely used programs).

Reason 2: What Do You Do When the Audit Notice Appears?

Your first instinct may be to panic—but if you have an ITAM solution at your disposal, an audit should involve only license reallocations or perhaps some minor true-up costs. The real benefit of ITAM comes from knowing what you’ve got (inventory) and making sure everything is properly documented and paid for (finances and contracts). Deploying an ITAM program is a sure-fire way to avoid the “all hands on deck” fire drills that software audits can otherwise cause.

Reason 3: Pay for Only Licenses You Need (and Use)

While the prospect of discovering unpaid licenses in use is scary and poses financial risks, it’s also costly to pay for more licenses than you need (and actually use). ITAM enables organizations to track actual usage in real-time and offers immediate alerts if more copies are in use than licenses to cover them. But it also tells you when you have more licenses than you need, so you can reduce costs by reducing license counts (or re-allocate unused licenses from one location to another location where they’re needed). When it comes to ITAM, knowledge is power.

Reason 4: Bringing IT Out of the Shadows

“Shadow IT” refers to the practice whereby departments or organizational units bypass IT and go out on their own to acquire and run software and services—often cloud-based—independently. Shadow IT occurs because certain parties become convinced IT can’t (or won’t) meet their needs, or act quickly enough to help them maximize returns. Market indicators suggest 40% or more of IT spend is happening by business units, outside of IT.  But business unit IT assets must still be managed, and pose the same risks that any unmanaged IT assets do. The best way to avoid Shadow IT is to implement ITAM and give users (especially stakeholders) the opportunity to access a managed software and services catalog to show them what’s available, and to request new or missing items when what they want or need isn’t currently a managed asset.

Reason 5: Keeping Up with (and Driving) Change

Software changes all the time, with new products arriving and old ones exiting. ITAM can monitor what’s in use on a daily basis, and keep up with what’s out there in real-time. This lets organizations create and manage an effective and accurate software portfolio (with accompanying inventory) and manage licenses, subscriptions, and so on with ease. By providing users with the means to request new items (described above), and providing ongoing information about necessary updates, patches, and impending end-of-life status, this allows the organization to plan for and manage change proactively and intelligently.

Reason 6: Take Full Advantage of Automation

ITAM also provides a ready means to tie into an underlying IT Service Management (ITSM) model, and to work with developers, operations, and support to plan for, pilot test, and deploy software and services into production. This creates terrific opportunities to put automation to work, to speed up, simplify, and make both repeated and complex tasks reliable and error-free. ITAM can help organizations begin to exploit the benefits of automation and can work with other ITSM platform elements to help IT be more proactive and productive.

When you’re ready to take a look at what ITAM can do for your organization, be sure to download this ebook: The Gorilla Guide to Getting Started with ITAM. Also, please check out ServiceNow’s ITAM homepage or view the ITAM animated demo.

Author: Ed Tittel