Cover Your Assets: Use IT Asset Life-Cycle Management To Control IT Costs

The current economic situation has been very discouraging — to say the least. As the economy continues to show signs of downsizing, it's reasonable to say that the cost of conducting business is a very important category that businesses need to look at. In particular, IT's nearly flat line of spending (predicted to grow at 6.1% going into 2009) is driving interest in the whereabouts of IT assets. Why? It's important for planning, utilization, cost details, and risk and compliance purposes. So it's no surprise that client interest in this topic has nearly doubled during the past six months. If you aren't already treating IT asset life-cycle management (ITALM) as a core discipline inside your infrastructure and operations (I&O) organization, then now is the time to justify it and get started. The economic benefit of managing IT assets efficiently allows I&O to shift spending to other important areas, such as IT service automation and IT service portfolio management.