Why IT asset management is still relevant in the cloud era

THE nature of IT infrastructure is vastly different in the digital era. Businesses are not only migrating their data to the cloud but also deploying mission-critical applications off-premise as well.

While in the past it was important for the IT department to designing systems around failures, limitation, and scaling, which required them to be aware of the business services overall health and decommission broken parts, they may not need to worry about it so much in the cloud era.

But be that as it may, knowing the fundamentals that determine the service levels and business service delivery is still a good practice. And various IT Asset Management (ITAM) tools are available in the market, that allows companies to monitor infrastructure and software performance.

These tools also retrieved real-time feedback and make the vital decision automatically, in a timely fashion to maintain or enhance business services.

Beyond that, modern IT departments may not only need to track their own assets, but also devices and equipment that connects to the enterprise network, which could come from employees, customers, and partners.

This is because the proliferation of endpoint may not only affect the overall network performance by using up additional resources; they could also potentially compromise the organization’s cybersecurity measures.

Complex infrastructures pose bigger challenges

It is also important to remember that Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and other cloud deployed stacks are technically part of the organization’s infrastructure as well.

Obviously, monitoring and managing cloud deployed stacks could get complicated, but any interruption or outage may have a severe impact on the business process, and thus, they should not be overlooked.

The truth is, managing the IT infrastructure is similar to maintaining human health, where without knowing the state of being, it would be challenging to ensure longevity and optimal performance.

But IT leaders run into issues trying to get enhanced visibility into a hybrid infrastructure and often wonder if there are better ways to gauge the service performance health.

In such situations, a proactive approach is needed, whereby potential risk figured out beforehand so that adequate contingency plans or corrective actions could be put in place before a disaster strikes. By doing this, the costs incurred would be considerably lower, and the business impact could also be minimized.

ITAM could help companies optimize resources

Beyond just monitoring, one of the key benefits of ITAM, especially in the modern era, is the ability to manage IT resources more effectively and eliminate unnecessary spending.

As organizations move their data center to the cloud in droves, their OPEX also increase accordingly, and if left unsupervised, it could balloon out of control.

Besides, being aware of the location of company data, specifically, the sensitive and confidential one is never a bad thing. Thus, CIOs should make sure that cloud service providers make crucial information such as location, usage, performance available to clients at any given time.

Further, knowing the entire environment and topology will also come in handy during contract renewal or replacement.

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