Hardware Asset Management or Hardware Inventory Management refers to the tracking and management of all physical components of your IT estate. This includes computers, laptops, servers, and other endpoint devices as well as peripherals like printers, routers, or switches. Specialized hardware inventory software allows you to automatically gather hardware data and provide your IT team with a clear overview of your hardware infrastructure. It helps you stay on top of the condition and lifespan of your hardware and who has access to it.
Hardware Asset Management Tools
In the past, IT hardware asset management often meant building extensive spreadsheets. However, this is incredibly labor-intensive, time-consuming, prone to human error, and often results in obsolete information. Networks continue to grow in size and complexity, making manual inventory nearly impossible. Hardware inventory management software spares the IT team a lot of time and effort by automating the inventory and control of hardware assets. You have more control over the process, and the results are more reliable and easier to keep up-to-date.
Hardware Inventory Tools automatically build a comprehensive computer hardware inventory. It scans your network to collect all data regarding your endpoint devices and their components, using either agentless and agent-based scanning methods. Once the right scanning targets and credentials are in place, the entire process can be left completely automated by scheduling your scans.
A reliable Hardware Inventory tool also makes it easier to keep track of your full IT equipment if it is spread across multiple physical locations. Providing detailed information about your IT equipment, its components, status, lifecycle, OS, and installed software. Most equipment inventory software will also provide analytics tools such as reports and dashboards, to give you a more user-friendly dive into your data.
Once you have all your asset information inventoried, you can get to work filtering out the data that is most relevant to you. All discovered assets are automatically sorted into asset types, giving you an easy way to sort your assets. You can also create your own static and dynamic asset groups, sort your assets by IP, or find specific assets using a filtered search. If you are looking for more detailed information, reports and dashboards will gather relevant data into a quick snapshot, turning your treasure trove of data into actionable insights.
Why Do You Need IT Hardware Inventory Software?
Hardware inventory solutions allow IT teams to better manage their IT infrastructure from a single tool, saving your organization time, money, and resources. It allows administrators to report on the status of hardware in their network and its installed software. Keeping a full inventory of all IT hardware prevents rogue devices from popping up undetected as well as company assets from disappearing. Keeping track of removable devices protects corporate data from being copied and carried off unnoticed.
The information collected can then be used to manage the lifecycle of your computer hardware by planning updates and replacements. Outdated hardware devices consume more power and resources than their modern counterparts, so regularly updating your computers and parts can yield a net positive outcome in your IT spending. IT hardware inventory software not only provides you with a list of all hardware but also shows you detailed information about its components that you can drill down into.
Most hardware asset management software will also scan any installed software on your devices. This helps you stay on top of what software is and isn’t authorized and whether you are properly licensed for everything. This prevents overspending on licensing, or unlicensed software from popping up during audits.
It also provides your IT support team with the information they need to respond to issues and incidents quickly and confidently, minimizing downtime and providing an overall better experience for your users in all business departments.
Lansweeper for Hardware Asset Management
Lansweeper is an IT asset management software that creates a comprehensive and detailed inventory of all hardware, software, and users from your physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. Lansweeper’s unrivaled discovery capabilities provide you with a complete overview of all computers, servers, and network devices in your entire IT estate. IT not only shows you device information like manufacturer, model name, and serial number, but also additional hardware specs such as processor, motherboard, graphic card, hard drive, and much more
Lansweeper lets you choose from a wide range of different agentless and agent-based scanning methods. Having more control over how you scan your assets guarantees that you always have a full overview of your entire IT estate, regardless of how those are or aren’t connected to your network. This keeps your IT inventory complete, even in the face of increased network mobility and complexity.
- AD scanning, IP range scanning, and a wide range of other network scanning options discover every device connected to your network, either directly or via a VPN or WAN connection.
- Android, iOS, and Windows Phone devices can be scanned through Microsoft Intune or VMWare Airwatch to add any mobile devices to your network inventory.
- Asset Radar picks up any asset that so much as touches your network using credential-free device recognition.
- LsAgent collects data from your Windows, Linux, and Mac devices that are not connected to your network or hidden behind strict firewalls. It collects the data locally and sends it back to your Lansweeper installation via a cloud-hosted relay server.
- Manually add any assets that have not yet been deployed yet or that have been disconnected from your network to keep track of your IT stock. Once the devices are (re)connected to your network, any newly scanned information will automatically be added to the record.
The Hardware data collected by Lansweeper can be further organized by a variety of pre-made hardware reports. Should it be necessary you can also change these reports or create your own in the report builder to better suit your needs. You can also set up automatic email alerts to inform you whenever your reports find a result. Visualizing your data in your dashboards means that you always have the data that is most relevant to you at your fingertips.
