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Cover Story
Process Improvement - C&E and C&L Quick Success Projects to Improve Your ITAM Program
By: Barbara Rembiesa, President of IAITAM
This month’s QSP (Quick Success Project) will be a little different. I am addressing 2 Key Process Areas from the IAITAM Best Practice Library that greatly affect the success of an ITAM Program:
- Communication & Education
- Compliance & Legislation
The first I wish to address is Communication & Education. As stated in the IBPL, Communication & Education is one of the core processes that build the foundation for all other process areas. Without effective communication and education within the environment and throughout the external relationships an organization’s ITAM policies and enforcement of those policies are doomed to fail. Read More...
Feature Article
Working Together - What Service Management Should Mean to IT Asset Managers
By: Jenny Schuchert, Independent Consultant
At the Beginning
When IT asset management started in the early 1990’s, IT service management (ITSM) had not yet penetrated the US. IT departments were organized around functions and platforms such as the network group, the server team and the security section. This structure made it easier for like-trained employees to work together, using the shared experiences to tackle installations, maintenance and upgrades efficiently. However, processes and the end user perspective were difficult to track with this style of organization. IT asset management and the asset repository often filled in, taking in additional data so that processes and customer ownership were tracked. It was easy to make a case for tracking configurations, custom code or patches. ITAM vendors quickly added flexibility and extensibility to their IT asset management repositories to meet the demand. Read More...
Feature Article
PPM & ITAM Hand in Hand - An ITAMer's Intro to Project and Portfolio Management
By: Paul Wheaton, SVP/Chief Strategy Officer for Five9 Technologies
Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) provides a disciplined approach for managing an organization’s IT investments. Its primary goal is to align an organization’s corporate strategic goals with its IT goals in order to:
- Optimize investment benefits
- Increase efficiency through proper management of its personnel
- Minimize operational cost and risk
- Provide a pre-defined process and standard criteria for investment selection
Read More...
Column
Insights into Oracle & Microsoft Licensing & Procurement Practices
By: Scott Rosenberg, CEO and Founder of Miro Consulting, Inc.
We’ve enjoyed Hyperion’s pricing for a long time, but now I understand that Oracle is hiking up the price on June 1. We are in the midst of procuring additional Oracle licenses, but we don’t need to re-up our Hyperion yet. What do you suggest we do?
-- Signed a lonely ITAM director who is juggling too much and just had his budget cut by 10% Read More...
As Easy as Pi - Printer Reduction Across the Enterprise
By: Ilan Justh, IT Asset Manager and Software Licensing Expert
“…it’s as easy as Pi …” Well I thought so too when I began this project at least. As I eventually learned, every project has so many unexpected factors coming into play my Pi became a stew.
Set The Stage
Let me clear up your confusion and describe my situation. A few years ago I was working at a world renowned museum looking to reduce costs in the hardware sector. After looking over things I realized that we needed to get better control of our printer deployment. The simple math of how many employees we had versus the TOTAL number of printers showed that we were looking at a ratio of 4 to1. This math included everything that could print other then blueprint class professional plotters (and we even had plenty of those I must add). My count included local printers, networked printers, lasers, inkjets, dye sublimation units, and even dot matrix devices (because we still had people printing multipart carbon as well as units attached to lab equipment, and facilities stuff such as HVAC devices). The majority of our printers, as you can expect, were HP products but we had IBM, Epson, Okidata, Xerox, and everything in-between. Read More...
Location Location Location - IT Asset Tracking: Not Just For Corporate Environments
By: Joan Osleeb, VP of Marketing for RF Code
A National Trend
Corporations are not the only organizations who need to track and manage their critical IT assets.
“The average school system loses nearly $250,000 every year in assets such as laptops, sports equipment, and even software licenses,” according to a recent study by Quality Education Data as reported in Tech and Learning.
A Ponemon Institute study further emphasizes the point. According to the Institute, “From 2005 to 2006, there was an 81% increase in the number of companies reporting stolen laptops containing sensitive information (2006 Annual Study: The Cost of Data Breach. Ponemon Institute, LLC, 2007).”
One solution advocated byTech and Learning? Implement asset tracking. Read More...
ITAM + Change = Savings - ITAM Is Indispensible for Successful Change Management
By: Phara McLachlan, President and CEO of Animus Solutions, Inc.
Most IT professionals agree: IT Asset Management (ITAM) is critical to businesses and organizations seeking to grow while reducing costs, mitigating risks, and optimizing the performance of all assets. Many C-suite executives are ITAM believers too – elated by first-year software cost savings of up to 45 percent, and ongoing savings of 15 to 30 percent per year. Read More...
ITAM & ITSM Synergies - Collaborating with IT Service Management
By: Scott Fuzer, Vice President/ITAM Practice Lead for Five9 Technologies and Jenny Schuchert, Independent Consultant
IT Service Management (ITSM) is revolutionizing the approach to IT operations in medium to large organizations. Although ITSM has been around for some time, the influence is fairly recent, with most organizations developing IT asset management (ITAM) practices first. While most ITSM and ITAM teams cooperate, it is quite common for the disciplines to integrate only through shared data. In order to expand and improve the value of both ITAM and ITSM, improved understanding and communication between the two teams is essential. Read More...
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