Hardware asset management tools

IT asset management can involve managing both hardware and software inventory in your IT infrastructure. Using inventory software, you can automatically keep your inventory up-to-date with information about your assets, including location, client assignment, purchase history, warranty info, vendor details, and configurations.

Without an updated record of your assets, you must manually sort through paper records, purchase orders, and spreadsheets to find the information you need.

These time-consuming activities keep you away from important tasks. Deploying a centralized hardware inventory asset management software can allow you to discover and manage hardware devices in your network without leaving your desk.

It can also help you automate hardware asset management, keep hardware inventory up-to-date, and save valuable time. Hardware inventory software also can help with a variety of managed service functions aside from simple inventory management.

With comprehensive hardware monitoring, admins can conduct tasks like ticket management and SLA compliance with ease and automation. Too often, admins keep manual documentation of hardware inventory. To sustain a healthy customer service model, businesses need a way to keep track of hardware and software automatically to quickly address service issues. This is especially true if there are many devices on the network or if the number of devices changes regularly.

The profitability of automated hardware inventory becomes apparent to anyone making the switch from manual record keeping to automated inventory asset management techniques. Hardware inventory software helps you keep track of desktops, laptops, and virtual machines and can help with SLA compliance management and automating ticket lifecycles. When hardware inventory software is used to automate key areas of the IT management process, the relationship between tracking IT hardware assets and client satisfaction can be improved by minimizing human error.

Every hardware device has a lifecycle, and your hardware inventory management system must account for the changing nature of your technology. The entire lifecycle of hardware must be monitored for a truly effective IT management process.

For the most complete HAM plan, you really should either partner with a managed IT services provider who includes asset management in their offers or invest in asset management tracking software. Everyone likes a bargain, but when shopping for technical equipment for your business, buy with longevity in mind. For example, if a slightly more well-equipped laptop will allow for an extra year of use before replacement, consider how much money that could save you across your whole organization.

You should plan for maintenance—both regularly scheduled maintenance and unexpected maintenance. That could mean having one or two laptops on hand as ready-to-go replacements, or it might be as simple as having a plan for what employees should do if their tech equipment keeps them from routine tasks for a while.

Cybersecurity matters, especially when disposing of old technology. This money can then be spent elsewhere within IT, or another department altogether to help with the overall success of the organisation.

Having an effective HAM program in place, the organisation will save an awful lot of time on managing hardware assets. Effective Hardware Asset Management can save an organisation time and money as a standalone process, but it is far more effective when incorporated into SAM and MAM mobile asset management processes and policies.

Processes need to be updated every six to nine months anyway, so make sure you marry your hardware and software asset management processes together. Image Credit. They are so tightly integrated on the server side that they should really rename them to EAM, Enterprise Asset Management.

Changes at almost any level in the technology stack can dramatically change the software licence costs as most vendors now include a hardware component in the measurement of their license costs CPU, Core, Socket, PVU, etc. Inversely there are huge savings to be made on software licensing by reviewing the hardware design of existing solutions. Creating dedicated clusters to certain vendors or products, reviewing the backup strategy or moving specific applications from virtual to physical servers.

Gone are the days when decision around hardware and software could be made independently of each other. Hi Piaras, Thank you for your feedback! I agree with you regarding hardware and software decisions being made independently of each other. They are both of vital importance to each other, so decisions need to be made with considerations for both. Regards David. David, do you have any recommendations or a list of service providers that will provide external professional services helping an organization to get their hands around HAM and SAM?

HI Ken, There are are many companies who can help you, just look at the event sponsors or Tool Review on this site. I suggest you define your problem first in terms of cost and risk, which vendors are you spending the most money with and what areas are high risk.

In this stage, amendments and updates are performed to bring the asset up-to-date, rendering it to become productive for the overall IT efficiency. An asset must be disposed of at the end of its useful, productive life. Before its disposal, the relationships are reviewed and processed so that it does not affect the organization or the environment.

It is then disassembled part by part, with all pieces that can be reused being retained and those that cannot be reused being scrapped. If the asset contains any components that may pose an environmental threat, they are classified as hazardous and eliminated. Hardware asset management is a great mechanism that will assist you in establishing visibility and control over your IT hardware assets.

With the HAM processes, you can efficiently manage hardware assets from procurement to retirement. It also helps you perform regular checks and routine maintenance with ease.

Hardware asset management also enables you to make smarter and economical purchase decisions by recording financial information of each asset and providing complete transparency about hardware requirements. If you are looking for a way to seamlessly and effectively manage your hardware assets, check Motadata ServiceOps IT Asset Management platform which has integrated hardware as well as software management module along with other features like purchase management, contract management, remote desktop support, etc.

Why is it Important? Published: April 12, Updated: December 02, What is the Hardware Asset Management Lifecycle?