IT Asset Management – or ITAM for short – is the process of discovering, accounting for and managing all of the technology assets that comprise your entire IT estate, including assets that are on and off premises, and in the cloud. This includes a wide range of software, hardware and virtual assets such as servers, routers, gateways, desktop and laptop computers, printers, operational technology (OT), internet-connected devices (IoT), and software running on those devices. Today, in the hybrid workplace, IT asset inventory management may also include personal devices such as smartphones and tablets that employees use to connect to the corporate network and access company resources.
In addition to the process of creating a complete and accurate inventory of all your technology assets, ITAM provides processes for deploying, maintaining, upgrading and disposing of IT assets, as well as tracking and monitoring assets usage throughout their lifecycle.
The purpose of ITAM is to plan and manage the full lifecycle of all IT assets. Done well, ITAM helps you to ensure that all of your technology assets are supported, up to date and managed properly. This helps an organization maximize value, optimize costs, reduce risk and accelerate and improve decision making.
With proper ITAM processes and IT management software in place, you can detect and address potential hardware and software vulnerabilities and ensure the right upgrades are deployed. You can identify shadow IT and retire idle devices, and stop wasting money on devices you don’t use. You can also bolster cybersecurity with the ability to detect and isolate rogue devices that may contain malware or are attempting to infiltrate the corporate network for malicious purposes. IT asset management simplifies compliance, streamlines audits, and accelerates incident investigations, because you always have a complete and accurate IT asset inventory at your fingertips.
Gartner reported that 70% of organizations don’t have a complete picture of what assets their organization owns. Adding to the problem, a number of trends are resulting in the proliferation of assets across the enterprise, including digital transformation, the hybrid workplace and an increased need for mobility. As employees continue to access corporate resources remotely and bring their own devices to work, the pressure is on IT departments to manage IT sprawl and ensure cybersecurity across an increasingly distributed infrastructure. ITAM is essential for reducing risk, managing costs and optimizing spend in the hybrid workplace.
Without proper ITAM processes asset management software in place, IT teams are saddled with time-consuming manual processes. IT asset inventory management on Excel spreadsheets is ineffective and error-prone – spreadsheets are obsolete almost as soon as they’re complete. Plus there’s no easy way to share IT asset data with other teams, resulting in wasteful, duplicate work.
If a performance or security issue arises, IT teams who lack sufficient ITAM processes and technology must manually investigate the issue. Without computer inventory management across the technology estate, it’s much more difficult to determine the root cause of an issue or isolate the problem. In case of such an event, time is of the essence, and not having IT asset data at the ready can drastically slow down response times. This can lead to an interruption of business operations and lost productivity, or, worse yet, devastating damage and costs at the hands of cybercriminals. What’s more, without a comprehensive view of all the software and hardware assets across the organization, holistic analysis is impossible, which means actionable insights will be lacking.
In addition to what can go wrong without ITAM, organizations who don’t implement effective ITAM processes and technology miss out on what can go right – namely, improved ROI. ITAM helps organizations capture asset data and determine how to drive business value. They can leverage the data to make smart purchasing decisions and optimize software licensing and support costs, eliminating waste and improving efficiencies. Plus, as new policies and regulatory requirements arise, ITAM can make compliance much easier and achievable.
There are three different types of ITAM. Each type covers different types of assets:
A trusted ITAM program runs all three from one shared, continuously validated inventory rather than three disconnected tools.
There are numerous benefits to ITAM:
“Gartner reports that knowing the status of your technology assets at all times enables proactive management that reduces risk, lowering IT spend by up to 30%. Perhaps more importantly, it ensures employees have secure access to the updated, operational technology assets they need to be productive and effective.”
According to numerous IT governance frameworks, the first step to ITAM is creating a complete and accurate IT asset inventory. This must consist of granular data about every technology asset across your organization. Unfortunately, many asset management software tools that provide this functionality are particular to a specific use case, for example cybersecurity or helpdesk, and the information they collect can be incomplete. Worse yet, the data may overlap, resulting in duplication and inconsistencies. Since the breadth, depth and means of discovery may differ between solutions, it can be difficult to reconcile and normalize the data.
Implementing a dedicated IT asset management platform that discovers, recognizes and creates an inventory of your technology assets is the best way to approach ITAM. Why? Because with technology assets proliferating rapidly across the enterprise, attempting to manage IT assets manually is expensive, tedious and, in most cases, futile.
And IT asset management platform automates and accelerates IT asset management, and today’s advanced ITAM systems offer additional features such as IT asset management reporting and visualization tools that help organizations extract even more value from their IT asset data. With asset inventory software automating and optimizing ITAM, organizations can allocate more time and energy to revenue-generating tasks and innovation, and spend less time on manual tasks.
While there are numerous ITAM systems available on the market, it’s important to choose wisely. Below are some essential features to look for in an IT and network management software solution:
If you’re just getting started with an ITAM program in your organization – or if you’re revising your ITAM strategy – here are some important best practices:
Lansweeper’s industry-leading IT asset management platform helps thousands of businesses understand, manage and protect their IT infrastructure. Learn how Lansweeper can simplify ITAM in your organization and provide actionable insights to help you minimize risk, improve productivity, and optimize spend across the IT estate. Try Lansweeper for free today.
IT Asset Management (ITAM) is the practice of discovering, inventorying, and managing every hardware and software asset across an organization’s environment, from procurement through retirement. Effective ITAM gives IT and Security teams the accurate, continuously validated data they need to control costs, reduce risk, stay audit-ready, and make confident decisions about the technology estate. Most ITAM programs fail because their data isn’t continuously maintained. Lansweeper fixes that at the foundation.
There are three main types of ITAM, each managing a different class of asset. Hardware Asset Management covers on-premises and off-premises devices, including servers, routers, and end-user devices. Software Asset Management tracks licensing, usage, and security policy across every software title in use. AI Asset Management discovers every AI tool, service connection, and AI-capable device across the estate, so IT and Security know what’s running and where the risk lives.
ITAM matters because most organizations don’t have a complete picture of what they own. Gartner has reported that 70% of organizations lack full visibility into their assets, and trends like hybrid work and AI adoption keep expanding the estate faster than manual tracking can keep up.
Without accurate, current asset data, IT teams investigate incidents blind, security teams miss unmanaged devices, and both end up reconciling conflicting spreadsheets instead of acting. A continuously validated inventory closes that gap and gives both teams the same trusted foundation to work from.
Effective ITAM gives an organization one trusted source of technology asset data, which eliminates silos and lets every team work from the same accurate dataset. It also reduces software licensing and support costs, speeds up security and performance investigations, and makes compliance audits faster and less disruptive.
The common thread across every benefit is the same: decisions, patching, and incident response are only as fast and accurate as the inventory behind them.
Look for a solution that discovers every asset automatically, including on-premises, remote, and cloud, without relying on credentials or manual scans. It should provide granular data beyond just an IP or MAC address, integrate easily with your existing ITSM and CMDB tools, and support automated workflows rather than one-off reports.
See how Lansweeper approaches IT asset management to compare against your current shortlist.
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