It's Marketing, But With The Internet

IT asset management is an essential part of running many types of organizations. Even at a small company, it can be tough to keep tabs on resources like servers, desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, and network appliances. To this end, many companies utilize IT asset management software to track everything. If you're wondering if there are advantages to this setup, consider these five benefits. 

Cost Control

Unsurprisingly, many operations employ IT asset management tools to control their costs. Even within a seemingly small business, lots of devices can run without your knowledge. You might have an old file server eating electricity because no one knows that it's a problem or whose responsibility it even is. Simply knowing what's running on your network goes a long way toward identifying old assets. You can then track them down and implement a proper end-of-life cycle. This should reduce the number of stray systems to zero.

Security

If you don't know which devices are supposed to be operating within your organization, it's hard to tell if there are bad actors present. IT asset management software tracks everything on the network. This allows you to poll all of the devices and see if anything that shouldn't be on the network is hanging around. You can then block the device or user from accessing the system, potentially closing a major security hole.

Compliance

Businesses have to comply with licensing deals, security rules, government regulations, and industry standards. Once more, knowing what assets you have can ensure you're operating in compliance. If a licensing partner says you're running too many instances of their software, for example, you can check the assets to see what's running and remove excess instances.

Time

IT asset management software reduces the burden of tracking down devices, users, and software tools. Rather than doing the whole job manually, you can depend on the management setup to keep tabs on the network. While you should still manually check devices on the network, you'll spend a lot less time physically hunting for things. Using a combination of unique identifiers and GPS or RFID tags, you can even track units down within a few meters of their exact location.

Decision-Making

With a better sense of what your IT assets look like, you can make better decisions. You might find that your company has more software instances than it needs, for example. Stripping the excess will save on licensing and make the overall system more manageable.

Contact a local IT asset management service to learn more.