What is IT Asset Management?

An IT asset management (ITAM) system is software that helps organizations track, inventory, and optimize their physical and digital assets throughout the entire asset lifecycle from procurement to retirement or disposal. Key responsibilities of an ITAM solution include:

- Hardware and Software Inventory

An ITAM database stores all hardware and software inventory details including make, model, serial numbers, purchase details, licenses, and warranty/contract information. This gives organizations a complete view of their physical and digital asset portfolio.

- License Management and Compliance

Software licenses need to be carefully tracked and monitored to avoid over-deployment and stay compliant with vendor agreements. An ITAM automates software license procurement, allocation, usage monitoring, and retirements.

- Procurement and Deployment

The procurement process for new assets can be streamlined within the IT Asset Management (ITAM) software from purchase requests to receiving, tagging, and deploying the assets. Configurations and settings are automatically captured.

- Tracking Asset Locations and Users

Organizations need to know where their expensive computer equipment and software products are deployed—whether on employee desks or installed on virtual machines. ITAM associates assets to locations, departments and individual users.

- Maintenance, Repairs and Support Renewals

Managing warranty periods, support contracts and service level agreements (SLAs) manually is complex and error-prone. ITAM provides automated alerts for upcoming expirations to reduce compliance risks.

- Hardware Refresh Planning

By analyzing usage metrics and life-cycle information, ITAM supports strategic refreshes or replacements of assets to optimize budgets and product support costs over the long run.

- Reporting and Analytics

Comprehensive reporting features help identify unused assets, over-deployed software licenses, obsolete inventory, and other inefficiencies for cost savings and strategic decisions.

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