Next Generation Asset Management

Next-Generation Asset Management
Evolution To Becoming All-Inclusive
by Joe Rudich
PROCESSOR: February 29, 2008 • Vol.30 Issue 9
http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2Fp3009%2F33p09%2F33p09.asp

According to Wikipedia IT asset management (ITAM) is a way of combining business practices that join financial, contractual and inventory functions to support life cycle management and strategic decision making for the IT environment. Meaning, what would be cost effective and important when creating/ retireing IT. This definition is important to better understand what changes the article is calling for.

IT services have become a corner stone in today’s business environment. The article states that usual idea of IT is that it is the “cost center of a company.” but according to Dennis Drogseth, vice president of EMA (Enterprise Management Associates), managers need to change their minds and see that IT is a necessary internal provider of the critical services a business needs to exist.

One key element is to turn IT asset management into a way to measure the true value of what services are provided, and not just the cost of the components that are used to create the IT. Showing this value requires accounting for cost and performance and will require, what EMA calls “next-generation asset management”. NGAM is to offer a way to move away from current “cost center” ideal and include quality, cost and demand of IT in the business.

NGAM is a way to create a foundation for IT planning, choosing the best way to invest based on complete knowledge of assets, not just the tangible aspects normally affiliated with IT, but on true current needs of the business. NGAM allows a way to monitor the actual cost for running and creating IT. This combines with management disciplines, service accounting, telecommunications and resource management. This change will require new organizational, process, and political models for NGAM to be viable. The old IT asset management models will have to be removed and new ones will have to take their place.

In essence, this article is a new generation of IT asset management, ITAM, which takes into account the physical costs of IT but intangible areas which are not measured by the current finical ideals. In a way, it’s about putting the cost of creating, using and retiring IT into the total costs of creating IT. This is a service asset management companies are working toward for companies to take into account the full costs to a company to create a greater measurable cost analysis to help companies and their bottom lines.

This will allow companies to create new programs and services the most cost effective way. By expanding the variables of cost, a better model of cost attribution is created. This utilization of cost could allow for the company to realize the correct price to charge for a service or if creating and implementing a program would actually be detrimental to the company.

These changes make sense, while they do call for a long and tedious process to occur; in the long run the closer cost is defined and realized the greater the ability to run and manage the company would occur.



cite for wikipedia:
Wikipedia contributors, "IT asset management," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IT_asset_management&oldid=249709786 (accessed November 5, 2008).