IT Asset Management

ITAM Service

Empowering modern businesses with agile IT Asset Management Solutions

Getting a true picture of your IT estate is vital. The manual collation of data can often be lengthy and resource consuming.

A clearer, co-ordinated view of your software estate can help your business to optimise its costs and improve processes to ensure compliance. With the help of an expert partner and an all-encompassing managed service, SCC can add clarity and simplicity to your processes.

Watch our latest ITAM videos:

Blind Digital Transformation

Software compliance

Streamlining IT resources

ITAM – The Hidden Costs of Poor Visibility: Uncovered

Controlling Cloud Assets

How SCC can help to support your organisation’s challenges

Our software IT Asset Management service provides detailed insights into software estates and highlights opportunities to highlight efficiencies where possible and address key IT management challenges such as:

Lack of visibility.

Increasing software costs.

Software overlap.

Time consuming management.

Unnecessary software licensing.

Our approach

Alongside our all-encompassing Software Asset Management tooling platform we provide expert advice on maximising software use to cut costs and improve internal processes.

Implementation

We provide you with our industry leading Technology Intelligence platform to enable visibility across your entire IT landscape. With powerful reporting functionality it then helps users easily manage and control their assets themselves.

Expert advice and guidance

Our experienced team can help you use the tooling to best effect and align your operation of the platform with your intended objectives. Whether you want to optimise costs, rationalise application portfolios or avoid licensing risks our report-based insights can inform both your short and long term goals for SAM/ITAM.

Full service management

We can ensure your processes and policies are aligned with ITIL best practices to help drive continuous improvement. We’re also able to assess unsupported applications on your estate from a security risk perspective to keep your data and systems safe.

ITAM services we deliver:

Software Asset Management (SAM)

Hardware Asset Management (HAM)

Software Lifecycle Management

GreenOps

Cloud FinOps

SaaS Management

ITAM Maturity and Governance

Audit Defence

ITAM services we deliver:

Software Asset Management (SAM)

Hardware Asset Management (HAM)

Software Lifecycle Management

GreenOps

Cloud FinOps

SaaS Management

ITAM Maturity and Governance

Audit Defence

IT Asset Management Brochure

Our customers

Organisations who trust SCC

“SCC has been instrumental in helping us right-size our Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions. They’ve helped us monitor actual usage, apply the right licences to the right users, and trim out cases where we were provisioning users with Office 365 components they didn’t need. Through removing licences that are either unused or underused, we’ve been able to save more than £80,000 a year, and identified training opportunities for users to maximise their use of the applications.”

“Due to the complex nature of software management and frequency of vendor audits, it was imperative for us to establish robust software compliance and governance measures, in order to minimise potential financial and reputational risks. The assistance provided by SCC was invaluable, not only facilitating the successful implementation of a Software Asset Management solution, but also assisting with ongoing support.”

“The nature of our business demands a close attention to detail and achievement of deadlines plus a need for flexibility in the light of changing demands. SCC currently meet our expectations as a partner and provision the necessary assistance on a day to day basis. They also work with us on planning future operations and responses to the IT demands of the MBDA business.”

ALAN WOOD
Information Management C S & I IT Operations Manager
MBDA

“From assisting us with hosting our major ERP investment, through the rollout of Microsoft Office to our 9,000 users. SCC have taken a professional and detailed orientated approach to each and every challenge we have set them. We trust their advice, their judgement and their processes.”

Nathan Bishop,
Group IT Services Director, Grafton Group

View all testimonials

FAQs

What is Shadow IT?

Shadow IT is the use of software, hardware, or cloud services within an organisation without the IT department’s knowledge or approval.

What is SaaS Sprawl?

SaaS sprawl (Software-as-a-Service sprawl) is the proliferation of SaaS applications across an organisation. Often occurring when various departments within an organisation purchase software independently, it is the result of adopting an increasing number of applications to get work done.

What is the difference between SAM and ITAM?

Both Hardware and Software are disciplines or subsets within IT Asset Management. SAM encompasses activities such as identifying, tracking, and managing software licenses throughout their lifecycle, whereas Hardware Asset Management (HAM) is concerned with the physical aspect of technology, monitoring the entire lifecycle of hardware assets, from procurement to disposal, maximising their value and minimising risk.

How can an ITAM program help my organisation?

Align goals across the organisation. A good ITAM strategy provides IT teams with greater insight into the organisation’s IT assets and the related ROI, which can be shared with key stakeholders. As a result, technology and business goals remain aligned across the organisation.

Increase operational efficiency. Reduce the amount of time and money spent on managing IT assets while also freeing up valuable resources that can be used for other tasks.

Improve security. ITAM can help identify which assets are most at risk and take steps to mitigate those risks.

Reduce costs. Reduce costs by optimising the use of existing assets and identifying opportunities for cost savings. For example, ITAM can help identify when an asset needs to be upgraded or replaced and determine whether there are cheaper alternatives available.

Improve decision-making. With a clear understanding of all IT assets, companies can make informed decisions about which assets need to be upgraded or replaced. This way, companies can avoid making costly mistakes when it comes to their IT infrastructure.

Improve compliance. In many industries, there are strict regulations about how data must be managed and stored. IT asset management can help companies ensure they are compliant with these regulations.

ITAM. Can help to provide the necessary up-to-date information that will enable teams to adapt quickly and even predict the effects of any changes to be implemented. This streamlines operations across the organisation, providing a vital competitive edge through faster value delivery.

What should be included in IT asset management?

Your environment may already have the tools in place to leverage some or all of theses properties. But all environments are different, so you should assess the need for each function.

Asset discovery. Use tools to scan your environment for new, modified or removed assets on a regular or continuous basis. This helps to maintain an accurate inventory of your assets and could be used to detect unauthorised changes to your environment.

Authoritative source of information. Maintain a record of assets that everyone agrees reflects the environment. Consider normalising and consolidating asset information to avoid duplication and make it more accessible. This ensures that collected information can be used effectively by all stakeholders, and does not require additional effort to validate.

Accurate source of information. Asset information should be collected regularly to ensure it is kept up to date and a ‘confidence’ score or ‘last seen’ timestamp recorded.

Availability of asset information. Ensure asset information is made accessible to support the relevant use cases in your organisation. A Configuration Management Database (CMDB) could be a significant component in your asset management solution, however this may need to be supported by a range of tools to facilitate the collection, processing, storage and use of asset data across your organisation.

Human factors. The asset management process should accommodate the needs of users across your organisation and account for human factors such as usability and accessibility.

Automation. Automated mechanisms should be used to update asset records wherever practical. Ideally, tools should record asset information in response to changes in the environment, instead of detecting changes after they’ve happened.

Completeness. Ensure all assets are accounted for by the asset management process. This should include physical, virtual and cloud resources etc.

Comprehensive visibility. Identify how your organisation will use asset information and ensure sufficient details about your assets are collected to support these use cases.

Change detection. Ensure changes in asset information are recorded and use multiple data sources to identify inconsistencies. For example, a new spotted device on the network with no corresponding device management enrolment. This helps to identify unauthorised changes to your environment and helps in the investigation of security incidents.

Confidentiality. Consider the sensitivity of asset data collected. Apply appropriate protections and access restrictions, while ensuring relevant use cases are supported. For example, all users should be able to look up the assets they are responsible for, but arbitrary bulk queries should be prevented. Consider monitoring access to asset data for possible signs of reconnaissance. This ensures that asset data can be used effectively for a range of use cases while making it hard for potential attackers to find useful information.

Registration before use. Asset information should be collected before, or at the time of, first use. This may be enforced through process and detection capabilities. For example, certificate identities should only be issued for registered assets, preventing unregistered devices from authenticating to other systems. This reduces the risk of shadow IT being created by making it hard for unregistered assets to enter and persist in your environment.

Asset classification. Consider defining and using categories to classify assets. This should be aligned with your risk management approach.

What are the different types of IT asset management?

Software Asset Management
As the name suggests, software asset management involves managing and optimising processes such as the purchase, installation, utilisation, monitoring, maintenance and disposal of software applications in an organisation.

Hardware Asset Management
Hardware asset management entails the strategies, processes and tools used to manage the physical components of an organisation’s IT infrastructure. These physical components include desktops, laptops, servers and other devices.

Cloud Asset Management
The process of controlling and managing the cloud infrastructure of an organisation, including the application data stored within the cloud, is known as cloud asset management. In other words, cloud asset management helps with the tracking, maintenance and compliance of an organisation’s cloud inventory.

Mobile Asset Management
Mobile asset management involves managing the serviceability and availability of mobile devices that are used to control, manage, protect, move, secure and store inventory within an organisation.

What are the components of IT asset management

People, Process & Technology. An ITAM program is only as effective as the people, processes and technology behind it. In our experience, we have found that dedicated people and processes are as integral to the success of your ITAM practice as your tooling. Likewise, you can have excellent people and processes, but without tools that provide visibility over your entire program, you might only see a fraction of the details needed to have a positive impact on your organisation

What are the 3 main deliverables of ITAM?

Visibility & Control, Cost Optimisation, Operational Efficiency

How can I manage IT assets with SCC?

SCC Managed Service Levels

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