The evolving role of IT Asset Management

Jon Hall

(content from BMC Software/Forrester Webinar, March 2013)

ITAM often evolved separately from ITSM...

Within IT Service Management

Other

Within Finance

Directly reporting to CIO/CXO

Source: The ITAM Review survey: “Where Does ITAM Sit In The Business?, Nov 2011 http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2011/11/25/itam-integrated-itsm/

Earlier ITIL versions did not really “get” ITAM

“Literally a valuable person or thing that is ‘owned’.

Assets will often appear on a balance sheet as items to be set against an

organization’s liabilities.

ITIL v2: “ASSET”

As IT evolves, so does the role of the Asset Manager

1980s to mid 2000s...• Physical devices• Install-based licensing

Photos used under creative commons license: Sources, Joel Franusic (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpf/230507381/); NeoSpire (http://www.flickr.com/photos/neospire/3594831893/) ; Mendhak (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mendhak/5033806952/)

Mid 2000s to present...• Virtualization• Capacity-based licensing

Today’s megatrends...• Internal and external cloud• Consumption-based licensing

• Asset Management is not just being custodian of spreadsheets!

As IT evolves, so does the role of the Asset Manager

What is owned? Where is it?Who is it assigned to?How much did we spend on it?

Photos used under creative commons license: Sources, Joel Franusic (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpf/230507381/); NeoSpire (http://www.flickr.com/photos/neospire/3594831893/) ; Mendhak (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mendhak/5033806952/)

ITFocused

Business Focused

Equipment Focused

ITAM Maturity

What does it support?How can we control changes?How can we discover more?

What is its role in our key services?How can we optimize its use?

IT is shifting right – and so is IT Asset Management.

ITIL v3 brings Service Asset Management into the picture...

“Literally a valuable person or thing that is ‘owned’.

Assets will often appear on a balance sheet as items to be set against an

organization’s liabilities.

ITIL v2: “ASSET”

ITIL v3: “SERVICE ASSET”

Any Capability or Resource of a Service Provider.

“A generic term that includes IT Infrastructure, people, money or anything else that might help to deliver an IT Service. Resources are considered to be Assets of an Organization”

The ability of an Organization, person, Process, Application, Configuration Item or IT Service to carry out an Activity. Capabilities are intangible Assets of an Organization.”

Case Study: Big Data in Medical Research

Big data requires specialist equipment. Cloud is not an option in this case:“The problem we’d have for active data is the access speed – a single genome is 100Gb – imagine downloading that from Google:

We buy kit that’ll fit our needs, front-loaded with three years support costs. Three years on, you’re invariably needing bigger, better, faster“

The constant growth of data and processing limits the lifespan of this equipment:

The organization is a leading, high-profile charity based in Europe. They are a primary research organization, directly employing doctors, scientists and nurses for frontline anti-disease research.

Case Study: Big Data in Medical Research

Effective, cross-functional Service Asset Management enabled them to find an significant opportunity that otherwise would have been missed:“We used the old system for second tier data: desktop backups, old data, etc. We were able to source third-party hardware-only support for our old equipment”.

The Asset Manager is ideally placed…

• …to understand how the infrastructure supports the business of IT.

• …to liaise and coordinate between different IT functions, to find opportunities that will otherwise be missed.

• …to learn about the core technologies in use in the organization, and way they are evolving.

• …to help the organization understand its licensing obligations, and how major decisions will affect them.

• …to be the trusted source of information to the CIO