As assets become ever more dispersed, you’ll have to find a way to keep track of them on an ongoing basis. But that’s not your only concern. You need to know what’s being done with them, what they are accessing, how secure they are, and how many more you are supporting. Whether that’s business-owned or employee-owned devices, or the increasing number of connected devices at the network edge – can you be sure that you know what assets you are responsible for, what is running on them, how up to date they are, or if you need to replace them?
If you don’t you could be opening yourself up to risks, data leaks, and financial penalties, even when assets are technically out of your hands.
A robust ITALM program requires:
- Tracking where all IT assets are, how they are being used, and what they are accessing.
- Efficiently and securely managing assets from acquisition through disposal.
- Supporting business needs so you can incorporate new corporate mergers and acquisitions into your ITALM plan and enhance services in line with operational goals.
The pitfalls and risks of using manual processes for ITALM
You’ve no doubt invested in many IT tools, repository platforms, systems and access management tools, provisioning, security capabilities, and more. But by doing that you’ve created siloes of information and capabilities. Your systems won’t talk to each other so how can your teams pull together the big picture view of your environment quickly to identify areas of risk? If you can’t see how changes affect your environment, how can you roll them out without adversely impacting the business?
To gain that view many teams employ manual processes which create their own issues. The time it takes to pull together data from tools into static spreadsheets means that it’s out of date before your teams begin any ITALM activity – and it likely contains errors. All the issues in your project data are amplified as you move through the program, creating more possibilities for systems to be left vulnerable and business and users to be impacted.
How to Control Costs and Reduce Risk for ITALM
Having access to the right program data at the right time will help you to streamline every stage of the ITALM process while reducing costs and risks. You’ll be able to:
- Avoid procurement errors by having the right information about users and their unique requirements.
- Ensure software updates are current to maintain security compliance.
- Better manage your IT asset disposition (ITAD) process: including grouping and working out which assets need to be scrubbed of data before working with e-waste vendors to dispose of or recycle assets and ensuring you maintain certification records for audit trails.
- Track and tie asset usage and costs more easily back to departments and optimize asset costs - including software licenses – across their lifecycle.
The Role of a Digital Platform Conductor Tool in ITALM
Gartner says that a digital platform conductor (DPC) allows IT leaders to strategically manage across their infrastructure. It does this by connecting to and orchestrating all your tools and systems. It leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve ITALM by:
- Slashing data discovery time by aggregating and normalizing data from all your IT systems in a single pane of glass.
- Analyzing risk and automating planning based on data and migration readiness.
- Orchestrating and automating workflows to improve operational efficiency.
- Providing real-time insights into program status.
