What Is Asset Management?

Asset management is the strategic process of tracking, maintaining, and optimizing IT assets throughout their lifecycle to improve performance, control costs, and reduce risk.

Key Takeaways

• From planning and acquisition to maintenance and retirement, IT asset management ensures assets align with business goals and deliver long-term value.
• Asset management extends beyond hardware tracking to include cybersecurity, cloud, network, and data center oversight.
• An IT asset manager provides governance and strategic direction to coordinate inventory, policy development, lifecycle analysis, and risk management.

In the United States, the average user has more than 10 devices and network connections. Global enterprises with 10,000+ employees may need to manage over 50,000 devices and millions of individual components every year. To achieve this objective safely and effectively, organizations need a well-designed asset management program. What does asset management involve?

What Is Asset Management in IT?

Asset management is the process of identifying, tracking, and utilizing IT assets strategically throughout their lifecycle. With IT asset management, organizations can extend the performance of system components, choose the right infrastructure to achieve company objectives, and scale operations cost-effectively. ITAM helps enterprises improve efficiency by analyzing the usage of servers, network hardware, cloud-based applications, virtual resources, and many other assets.

The Stages of Asset Management

Asset management encompasses technology usage from beginning to end. The IT asset lifecycle typically includes seven phases:

1. Tracking: Using organizational data and analytics software to monitor components from beginning to end, including costs and performance
2. Planning: Aligning technology purchases and usage with company goals
3. Acquisition: Purchasing, leasing, licensing, outsourcing, or building technology solutions
4. Deployment: Installing and integrating IT assets with your systems, configuring them, and providing ongoing IT support and troubleshooting services for users
5. Maintenance: Physical and digital maintenance, repairs, patches, updates, and upgrades
6. Offboarding/retirement: Securely winding down, replacing, and disposing of old assets or services
7. Reporting: Analyzing metrics from the current lifecycle and applying the lessons learned to the following cycles

ITAM governs which assets you choose, how you use them, what maintenance tasks you perform, and how much you spend.

Information Technology Assets

IT assets are the software, hardware, resources, and data that your company needs for its operations, such as:

• Laptops, PCs, and mobile devices
• On-prem servers, switches, routers, patch cables, and fiber optic cabling
• Hard drives, CPUs, GPUs, and data chips
• Software-as-a-service platforms and cloud-based applications, including CRM software and financial tools
• Cloud infrastructure, including virtual computers, third-party servers, payment gateways, and analytics platforms
• Power cables, electrical systems, and cooling systems

With strategic management, you can maximize resource utilization and minimize operating costs.

What Does Asset Management Involve?

In addition to ITAM, there are several specialized types of asset management that may apply to your company’s needs. Many of these subcategories overlap.

Cybersecurity Assets

Whereas IT asset management best practices revolve around system performance and costs, cybersecurity asset management focuses on risks and vulnerabilities. The goal of CSAM is to minimize potential attack surfaces and protect company data.

Cloud Assets

Cloud asset management is essential for companies that handle most of their operations through cloud-based solutions like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Exchange Online, and Google Workspace. CAM can help you reduce infrastructure costs, migrate data securely, and improve scalability.

Network Assets

Network asset management focuses on planning and deploying the network infrastructure your company needs for stable operations. NAM balances current network usage with future-facing resources like 400G internet.

Data Center Assets

Data center asset management requires systems engineering expertise. The purpose of DCAM is to ensure that:

• Data centers maintain the necessary processing power
• Reach high data transfer rates
• Use energy and hardware resources efficiently
• Improve airflow and cooling

Given that annual operating costs for data centers alone can range from $10 million to $20 million, smart asset management can have a massive impact on project overhead.

What Is an IT Asset Manager?

An IT asset manager is the individual responsible for coordinating your ITAM program. This role requires:

• Developing your overall asset management strategy
• Providing the board with expert insights for purchasing decisions
• Creating and maintaining a comprehensive inventory of all IT assets
• Developing policies and programs for asset maintenance
• Analyzing asset lifecycle data to identify issues or opportunities for improvement

In other words, an asset manager’s main role involves governance. Other team members perform the tasks necessary to keep systems up and running, but the asset manager is the one who guides the process.

How Does Asset Management Work?

ITAM starts by creating a comprehensive inventory of assets. From there, your organization can look for ways to improve performance and extend equipment life.

Asset management is closely linked to governance, risk, and compliance frameworks. Many organizations also include risk assessments and regulatory standards in ITAM programs.

GRC-based asset management integrates with company policies for compliance, access control, and data loss prevention. For example, GDPR compliance requires strict attention to component cybersecurity and data disposal processes.

Transform Asset Management With AI-Driven Analytics

The definition of asset management varies by industry and company objectives. This is why analytics, data-driven decisions, and workflow automation are so powerful for modern enterprises.

Compyl is an AI-powered asset management solution that delivers real-time insights and centralizes your data for smart improvements to infrastructure costs, cybersecurity, management, and compliance challenges. Request a demo today.