To better appreciate the value of asset management is to understand how managing IT assets allows an organization to get maximum value from the use of the assets, right-size IT inventory, and optimize inventory purchase decisions and strategies. IT asset management provides the means to achieve complete visibility into the IT infrastructure inventory, helping you gain an in-depth understanding of:

Regardless if hardware or software, there’s bound to be a disposal or replacement date. Asset management allows an organization to keep track of when hardware is purchased, how long has it been used, whether there’s a lease expiring on the component, etc. For system administrators, it’s important to know what version of software and how long the end-users have been running this software on their system, and whether their OS is current. This is actionable data IT teams utilize to decide if they should replace an old or faulty hardware, uninstall or patch a vulnerable application, or update the firmware on the system. Vendor contract management personnel should familiarize themselves with asset information. In turn, they will know when to extend or renew a contract with a

vendor or hardware/software provider based on contract, purchase order, and expiry information fed into the asset management system. Among the many components of hardware or software life cycle management issues to be determined are as follows: