IT Asset Management (ITAM)

IT asset management (ITAM) is the process of tracking IT assets across their entire lifecycle. ITAM ensures all assets are deployed, maintained, upgraded, and disposed of properly. However, the process can look different depending on the asset in question:

• Hardware: In data center management, ITAM helps maintain the physical performance of computers, data servers, modems, routers and other peripherals like printers, copiers, POS systems, and more.
• Software: Maintaining licenses and payments, as well as monitoring signals that could indicate the need to debug, upgrade, or replace a specific platform. Managing software contracts is crucial to ensure compliance and proper planning for renewals. Software systems play a vital role in ITAM by tracking and maintaining IT assets, encompassing various applications and databases utilized by organizations.
• Information: Keeping data accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date

Because IT assets span departments and often involve cross-functional inputs, ITAM practices are growing increasingly complex. In fact, over the next five years, IT infrastructure spend is expected to double. As a result, modern ITAM involves coordinating with business strategists, managing employee expectations, and proactively reducing risks and costs.

Ultimately, IT Asset Management helps organizations extract the maximum value from their IT investments, offering:

• Reduced costs and optimized resource use by preventing unnecessary purchases, identifying underutilized or obsolete assets, and improving alignment with business needs
• Improved visibility and control over all hardware, software, and information assets, enabling more informed decision making around procurement, maintenance, upgrades, and retirement. Inventory data helps organizations optimize resource use and make strategic decisions throughout the asset lifecycle.
• Enhanced security and risk mitigation by identifying vulnerabilities faster and more efficiently
• Improve regulatory compliance and audit readiness, ensuring compliance with licensing agreements and industry regulations. Software license compliance is crucial to avoid financial penalties from audits.
• Boosted operational efficiency and organizational productivity by reducing necessary manual effort and minimizing human error

Ultimately, ITAM, ITSM, and ITOM are all disciplines that are based on the collection and analysis of data. It follows a structured process to ensure comprehensive tracking, optimization, and organization of all assets throughout the entire lifecycle. Using an asset management tool can streamline the IT Asset Management process, making it more efficient and effective.
When it comes to deployment and assignment, updating the software inventory is crucial to ensure accurate tracking of software assets.

1. Planning & asset identification

IT teams assess business priorities and needs to determine which IT assets to acquire. Additionally, teams will classify all assets with unique identities, like barcode or RFID tags. It is crucial to track physical computing equipment such as servers, desktops, and laptops throughout their lifecycle to maximize their value.

2. Procurement & acquisition

Procure assets through approved vendors, careful to align acquisitions with budgets and strategic objectives. IT teams will work to maintain clear installation, deployment, and warranties to avoid incurring unnecessary risk.

3. Deployment & assignment

IT teams configure and install newly acquired assets, update inventories, and assign them to specific users or departments.

4. Utilization & optimization

IT teams will monitor asset usage and performance to maintain compliance with licensing agreements, working to avoid over- or underuse and maximize ROI. They also work to optimize asset use, ensuring that IT resources are managed efficiently to reduce costs and extend the lifespan of assets.

5. Ongoing maintenance & support

IT teams conduct regular maintenance, updates, repairs, and manage service contracts. They’ll also address incidents and regularly audit IT resources to ensure ongoing compliance. Managing software licenses is crucial to ensure compliance and avoid penalties. Additionally, maintaining visibility over service level agreements is essential for proper planning and compliance.

6. Change management

When the need arises for an organization to update its resources, IT teams will track and document changes and relocations to ensure all records remain accurate and up to date.

7. Reporting & auditing

IT teams continually report on asset status, usage, financial impact on the organization, and, in many cases, those assets’ contribution to the organization’s strategic objectives. Preparing for software audits is crucial to avoid financial penalties and ensure compliance. Additionally, tracking software license compliance is essential to adhere to licensing agreements and avoid potential fines.

8. Decommissioning & disposal

As assets reach their end of life, ITAM includes the process of disposing of assets in the most environmentally friendly way, and ensuring data wiping to protect sensitive data. Effective asset disposition is crucial to manage the lifecycle of IT equipment, allowing organizations to refurbish, sell, recycle, or collaborate with specialized IT asset disposition firms to maximize value and ensure compliance with ecological and data security standards.

However, it’s equally important to note that the ITAM isn’t linear, but cyclical and continuous. Every piece of hardware, software, and information is at a different point in its lifecycle, creating a complex web of dependencies and relationships to manage. Accurate data, regular reviews, and proper documentation are key to effectiveness with IT Asset Management.

As IT systems become more complex, cloud computing becomes the norm, and the use of data expands dramatically, traditional ITAM practices present a number of risks:

• Fragmented data sources as hardware CMDBs, SaaS portals, and procurement systems, don’t often speak the same language
• The ease of self-service procurement makes “shadow IT” a growing reality, where users spin up new platforms and seats, bypassing the standard intake process
• Cloud-driven lifecycles mean that resources don’t always move predictably from purchase to retirement
• High levels of complexity managing licenses amid subscription models, multi-cloud deployments, and highly customizable subscriptions

Cataloging cloud resources as part of ITAM is crucial to create a comprehensive inventory of IT assets, improving asset tracking and management efficiency.

Traditional ITAM doesn’t just struggle with visibility into all the organization’s IT systems. Due to high complexity and fluidity, it’s also difficult to make the predictions necessary for strategic IT planning. Configuration management plays a vital role in maintaining accurate data about IT assets, helping to organize and manage their interrelationships effectively.

ITAM is often conflated with IT Service Management (ITSM). So what’s the difference between the two? Although similar, these approaches are different in both focus and scope: ITAM manages the lifecycle of IT assets, while ITSM focuses on the delivery and management of IT services while those assets are in operation. Asset and configuration management play a crucial role in ITSM by overseeing IT assets and their relationships, enhancing service delivery through a Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

Here’s a quick summary of these key differences between ITAM vs ITSM:

With 77% of organizations adopting some form of AI or machine learning in IT Asset Management, it’s worth asking the question: Is AI the next big thing in ITAM and ITSM?

Given the financial commitments, strategic partnerships, and rapid adoption of AI in ITAM and ITSM is a pretty safe bet at this point. AI enables proactive management of IT assets, leading to better data management and cost savings. However, it’s worth pointing out that asking if AI is the “next big thing” is almost asking the wrong question. Rather than chasing trends, it’s better to ask yourself: where can AI add value to ITAM vs ITSM?

The Coming Together of AI with ITAM and ITSM

One of the biggest ways that AI can add value in ITAM and ITSM is to make the job of IT Asset & Service Managers easier. Let’s face it: as enterprises adopt more complex technological infrastructures built on highly specialized tools for specific departments, the job of managing these assets and empowering the people who use them is more complex than ever.

Agentic AI, in particular, can be a game changer here. AI can assist asset managers in integrating procurement systems with IT inventory management, providing a comprehensive view of hardware and software needs. Here are some of the top benefits ITAM and ITSM organizations can realize by adopting these capabilities.

Potential benefits of AI in ITAM

• Enhanced asset discovery & inventory management. AI can scan an entire network and not only identify devices and software, but also fetch granular information about their specifications and configurations. Additionally, AI improves software asset tracking to provide detailed insights into IT capabilities, including both hardware and software assets, which supports better decision-making and transparency.
• Real-time IT infrastructure monitoring. AI can monitor asset performance and usage, taking note of anomalies and issues as they come up. This not only enables IT teams to move to address issues quickly, but also predict future asset needs based on historical data.
• License optimization. AI tracks software usage patterns and can recommend the optimal plan for the organization’s use case, often saving tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• Cost reduction based on underutilized assets. AI also helps organizations identify underutilized assets so they can retire them and devote their time to more strategic investments.
• Security & risk mitigation. AI can quickly and efficiently identify vulnerabilities across your infrastructure so you can proactively address them. Some tools will go so far as to even recommend potential security patches and updates.

Potential benefits of AI in ITSM

• Automation of routine tasks. Ticket creation, categorization, routing, and developing custom solutions for each user can be time-consuming and require significant personnel resources to manage at scale.
• Improved operational efficiency. Using AI to handle tickets and even automate backend IT tasks leads to faster incident resolution and overall ITSM process efficiency.
• More scalability. Because AI tools can handle increasing volumes of requests and conversations without decreasing quality, they’re a key ingredient in any organization looking to scale their infrastructure.
• Cost reduction. By reducing the need for human intervention, ITSM can lead to significant cost savings due to lower labor costs and minimized downtime. Additionally, AI enhances cost efficiency by optimizing resource usage and ensuring compliance, which helps in managing both software and hardware assets effectively.
• Enhanced personalization and user experience. Users get their problems solved faster and, in many cases, more comprehensively than ever.

Agentic AI for ITSM

One specific solution is the use of Agentic AI to solve key ITSM problems. Agentic AI uses machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to automate ticket resolution, which reduces costs and improves the user experience. By leveraging domain-specific LLMs and LAMs, Agentic AI offers significant business value to ITSM organizations:

• Reduced service desk volume and cost while improving employee experiences
• Decreased MTTR and increased scalability
• Proactive detection of issues that lead to reduced downtime
• Fewer recurring incidents and cost savings due to automated problem identification
• Increased agility due to dynamic, on-the-fly resolutions
• Unified endpoint management that improves security and compliance
• Helps organizations comply with licensing agreements from software providers

Short answer: it depends. AI, whether agentic AI or another application of the technology, is neither bad nor good. And it certainly isn’t a silver bullet. It’s a tool. And like any other tool, how you use it, where you apply it, and its integration into your business strategy will determine whether it is a help or a burden. AI can also help organizations ensure compliance with licensing agreements, which is crucial to avoid financial penalties from audits and to mitigate risks associated with software misuse.

The Road Ahead: Opportunities and Challenges

To that end, here are some of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead when it comes to integrating AI into ITAM and ITSM automation.

Opportunities

• Enhanced employee experience as they interface with the IT organization, as AI can reduce MTTR and provide more comprehensive answers to key queries
• Reduced costs as AI enables scalability without the need for additional labor
• Ability to devote resources to other value-added activities vs. spending them on employee support
• Improved security and compliance with faster, more comprehensive monitoring of potential vulnerabilities in the AI infrastructure
• Enhanced business operations by providing better IT support, leading to improved visibility and control over IT assets, which in turn optimizes overall business functions

Challenges

• Choosing the correct model to inform the development of AI solutions (e.g, general vs. domain-specific LLMs)
• Need for rigorous AIOps procedures to maintain data integrity and quality, otherwise, the AI will be misinformed. These procedures also help mitigate risks associated with AI integration.
• Seamlessly integrating ITAM, ITSM, and AI platforms to enable cross-functional orchestration and collaboration
• Skill gaps among existing IT teams when it comes to AIOps platform integration with ITAM and ITSM

If implemented properly, AI can be a significant value-add to ITAM and ITSM. By functioning as an autonomous agent within these processes, AI can significantly reduce costs, improve speed and efficiency, and save teams both time and stress.

There are many core differentiators that determine AI’s success and failure in ITAM and ITSM. The first is the use of agentic AI to make autonomous decisions, which is critical to accelerate insights and decisions and alleviate human burdens. The second is the use of domain-specific LLMs, which improve the accuracy of decision-making and organizational confidence in their AI agents.

To learn more about how Aisera goes beyond assistance and enables autonomous execution of ITAM and ITSM. Book a custom AI demo to experience the power of Aisera’s Agentic AI in IT service management.