ITAK Volume 2 Issue 4

Official publication of the
International Association of IT Asset Managers, Inc. 

Download the complete magazine Volume 2 Issue 4  (5MB file)

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1. President's Letter - Barbara Rembiesa, IAITAM President  
     Welcome to wonderful Palm Springs, California - My home state and chosen gathering point for the 5th Annual IAITAM Conference and Exhibit, and the highly anticipated IAITAM Classic Golf Event. This year’s 2007 conference offers an amazing array of educational enhancement opportunities with CSAM, CHAMP, CITAM courses and certification, Policy Development and IAITAM Best Practice Library workshops, sponsors and exhibitors that constitute a majority of ITAM’s most knowledgeable professionals, and the endless networking possibilities all around you.  IAITAM remains dedicated to knowledge transfer, so  during your time here, feel free to contact IAITAM staff or our speakers to answer all of your questions with real world practical knowledge and experience.
   
   
2. Counting The Cost - Reducing Insurance Premiums Through ITAM
      Accurate asset management can reduce insurance premiums states Marcus Scholes, Vice President of US Operations, Real Asset Management International.
    
     US companies may be continually complaining about escalating insurance premiums, but in reality, the majority are actually over insured. Failure to maintain accurate asset registers results in the majority of companies insuring assets they no longer own.
   
   
3. How Much Does It Cost - How to Estimate the Time and Cost of Implementing IT Asset Management
     In 2006, I conducted structured interviews with over sixty ITAM and ITSM Program Managers of large IT Organizations (ITOs). The compiled results showed that a significant percentage of ITOs that invested in IT Asset and Service Management were not fully satisfied with the outcomes of their investment.  In the case of ITAM, perhaps this was because only some 35% of companies have progressed to a basic proactive level of ITAM ⁱ where value really starts to show to management. The most common complaints these companies reported were that they were unable to achieve the results they expected or the time and cost of achieving the expected results were much higher than they anticipated.  A significant percentage of organizations deploying ITAM found the actual time and money spent on the implementations they called successful exceeded the original estimate by more than 50%.  
   
   
4. Cash Back in Recovery - IT Assets - A Value or a Liability?
     When an organization’s IT assets Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is calculated, it is hard to believe organizations allow IT infrastructure assets to become financial liabilities when the opposite can be true!

   Too often organizations develop and implement plans and processes to purchase, acquire, deploy, and maintain IT assets with little to no planning on how to offset the associated asset disposition expenses of regulatory, environmental, data security compliance and reporting. It is not uncommon for multi-generations of useful assets to be stored on-site or off-site until these assets truly do not have any financial or useful value.

5. ITAM Assessment - Jumpstarting Your ITAM Initiative
       Maybe you’re new to the ITAM (Information Technology Asset Management) discipline, or have had a few false starts getting a robust, global solution off the ground.  You already know that a successful ITAM program requires the following: 
   
   
   • Senior management support
   • Dedicated financial and people resources
   • Thorough examination of the current technology environment
     
     

6.  What Would Wally Do - Waiting on the World to Change
       As we discuss in IAITAM certification classes, Asset Managers are being given increased responsibilities throughout the organization.  Sometimes this responsibility is not accompanied by the authority to affect the level of change required to implement an effective ITAM program.  In today’s organizations, the IT Asset Manager should have responsibility for the following items: 

   • Development and implementation of strategy
   • Development and maintenance of policies
   • Establishing and reviewing standards
   • Developing and monitoring processes
   • Creating and reporting on critical metrics
   • Help keep the organization compliant
     
     
7. IT Accountability - Simple IT Blind Spots Can Derail Even the Most Strategic IT Department
      As IT departments evolve into larger, more     sophisticated and more strategically relevant divisions within organizations, expectations of business alignment and accountability for every IT dollar and decision swell within management ranks.  However, this breakneck pace of change can cause even the most savvy IT professional to lose sight of the very fundamentals of accountability that enable strategic-level success in the first place.
   
   
8.  The Project That Never Ends - Applying IT Asset Managment Solutions to the Project Management Process
        Project management focuses on the steps necessary to implement a change in an organization.  The traditional approach to project management includes:
   
   
   • Development of a work-breakdown structure
   • Analysis of dependencies among activities and events
   • Development of a project schedule
   • Identification and allocation of resources
   • Post-project review
     
     
9. Blind Leading the Blind - Why Software License Managment is So Hard
      When businesses and governments direct their IT organizations to establish and practice Software License Management in order to maintain compliance and minimize the risk from external audit, IT leaders seek out solutions in the form of software technology; products designed by commercial vendors.  The expectations are seemingly straightforward - deliver Software License Management functionality that supports: 
   
   
   • Software License Management functionality that suppors identification of installed software products
   • matching of installed software products to software licenses
   • reporting on the status of compliance
     
     

10. Manage Your Inventory - IT Asset Management Requires Measurement
      Effective measurement is essential to optimizing IT asset management. But all too often, professionals with asset management responsibilities are challenged with what to measure and how to measure it.

11. Hardware Loss Epidemic - New RFID Technology Provides Proven Solution and Even Automates the Inventory 
      Daily we watch with great interest the steady drum of news reports on intellectual property and personal privacy loss related to missing IT hardware, particularly laptops.  The numbers are epidemic. Ninety three million personal confidential records were compromised last year.  In a recently published study, eighty-one percent of respondents report that their organizations have experienced one or more lost or missing laptop computer containing sensitive or confidential business information in the past twelve month period.  Laptop thefts in particular are cited in more than 90% of data breaches now reported. Asset mismanagement has far reaching implications these days.  Conversely, asset control has become that much more paramount.  But since portable assets such as laptops are supposed to leave the facility, how can you protect them?