IT Asset Management and IT Asset Disposition Done the Right Way!

Companies that own IT assets must at one point manage these assets, then upgrade them. It doesn’t matter if the assets are as small as a wireless router or as large as a rack server, the assets must be maintained and constantly monitored for the best performance possible. Software license keys must be checked and monitored to ensure that you are meeting compliance regulations. Then at some point they must be replaced with newer, better designed equipment.

World Class ITAM/ITAD

What is world class IT management? It starts with knowing what you have deployed, who has the equipment, where its deployed and what configurations you have. Is all of the equipment compliant with the hardware warranties and the software license deployment? Next is monitoring your applications and your hardware performance. Performance is key to meeting the productivity challenges that face every company. You need to make sure all of your hardware and software licensees are being fully utilized. Then comes the technology refresh to ensure that you are staying ahead of productivity and power improvements, saving your company money down the line and ultimately reducing operating costs.

Moore’s Law and how it effects competitive cost

There is a technology law that drives technology refresh, innovation cost reduction, and gives us higher capacity, faster processing, and lower power consumption. It’s called Moore’s Law, and it says that technology will double in capacity or speed and/or reduce in cost by half every 18 months or sooner. “Moore’s original statement that transistor counts had doubled every year can be found in his publication “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits”,Electronics Magazine 19 April 1965. For 40 years this law has stayed true, driving the technology innovation boom that we all have witnessed in our lifetime. It affects processor speed, power consumption and cost; it affects hard drive and memory cost and capacity curves; it affects television and image processing.

Every day you are touched by this law: telecommunication, medical, automobile, entertainment, food and beverage production, banking, the stock market, communications, retail, the internet, and the world economy have been driven from this innovation law. Little did Gordon know or maybe he did, that this law shows no slow down for the next decade or two. This means that any business that relies on technology will need to keep up or get out.

About every 2 years the technology deployed can be replaced by technology that is faster (productivity), more capacity ( less expensive storage and speed), lower power consumption (less expensive to run), and cheaper (less investment for the same tech, or more tech for the money). One thing is for sure, any corporation that is looking to stay ahead of the cost curve needs to update the technology as often as it can to remain competitive.

This often means shrinking life-cycles of technology. Do you really want your field sales people sitting on an internet connection waiting for the contract to upload, or do you want them interacting with the customer? Do you want that prospective customer clicking away from your website because they had to wait too long for the page to change? This means that you must stay ahead of the curve and upgrade faster to compete, it you don’t your competitor will.

Technology refresh done well!

How is technology refresh done well? One word – planning. When you wish to have something done well, planning is the key. In today’s technology refresh environment most of the emphasis is placed on the new technology replacing the old. In the best case scenarios the planning starts and ends with the sourcing and procurement of the new equipment. In most if not all cases, the current equipment that you own is more of an afterthought, ” oh yeah, what do we do with the old equipment?”
Believe it or not there are markets for this older technology. Lower technology companies or school systems, up and coming economies are all good candidates for this retired tech. But how do you connect with these buyers of equipment? Today there is a whole market built around servicing these customers who purchase used equipment. Much like a used automobile, some just choose to buy used and use it until it dies.

If you plan, then execute, you can manage this for a higher return on your original investment, however; if you simply react to the resale event you might not fare out so well. Good planning is the key to success in most any activity, this is no exception. How do you plan for the technology refresh with your used assets in mind? First you need to know what you have,  using a robust ITAM solution helps. Having a robust ITAD solution is key to understanding not only what you have an how much it’s currently worth on the open market; but a great solution would connect you directly to the buyers of these used assets.

Planning will help you offset the procurement cost of the new equipment giving you a net budget. All too often this aspect is overlooked as a value today, and the budget is drawn up for the gross cost of the new equipment. The resale of the used equipment is treated as a windfall profit without focus or merit. Planning the purchase and the resale event at once gives a controlled and focused approach to the event, ultimately saving more money on the purchase of the new equipment and ensuring that the used equipment gains the highest value and doesn’t end up in a land fill.

Managing and planning your IT equipment can be easily managed with the right tools and applications. Check out http://www.servoterra.com they can help you with planning & ITAM and ITAD management.