The Perfect IT Couple: Service Management Meets Asset Management

The PerfectIT Couple: Service Management Meets Asset Management

KEY STEPS FOR INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY AND MEETING CORE BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

Asset management is coming into its own.

There was a time when asset management was not seen as a high priority. Although ITAM has always been multi-dimensional, the truth is, managing assets was often put on the backburner with little thought placed on strategic planning.

Well, that’s the past.

The Perfect IT Couple: Service Management meets Asset Management


A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL CORE IT CAPABILITYNow, strategic asset management is coming into its own, offering many benefits, ranging from improved service to greater efficiency, superior compliance, and increased innovation capacity. Strategic asset management provides the following:

Complements IT service

management capabilities

Increases efficiency and

decreases costs

Reduces compliance

risks

Accelerates innovation

efforts


SIMPLE HARDWARE & SOFTWARE DAYS ARE GONEIT service managers have enjoyed a ringside seat at the rapid technology evolution bringing us the digital workplace. They’ve seen the number and complexity of hardware and software assets grow exponentially.

The simplicity of relatively homogenous environments with a limited palate of servers, desktops, laptops and applications is behind us. That black and white world has been replaced by a rainbow of options, which has steadily amplified the importance of asset management. Those options provide the potential for more integrated partnership with IT service management, a new opportunity that has been developing in stages.

New technologies are driving innovation right across business lines. IT isn’t just a backroom function. This creates both challenges and opportunities for ITSM, which needs to adapt fresh support methods and tooling, but can also bring their expertise to better enable more innovative products and services.

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MANAGING CLOUD SMARTLY We’ve already seen a fundamental shift toward SaaS and cloud-based digital services. Companies are less dependent on hardware and view software as a strategic service. Flexibility and vendor independence are key. Treating employees more like consumers and business partners is essential. IT service managers have become proactive, and more responsive to legitimate employee needs for mobility, bringing to the workplace a wide variety of laptops, smartphones, tablets, and business-targeted applications. Using ITSM tools such as BMC’s MyIT Service Broker, managers can aggregate, manage, deliver and track assets from cloud-based sources.

These days, there are many more assets to manage. IT departments are losing control over their line-of-business Cloud spending, leading to a lack of visibility and sprawl. This explosion in volume requires skilled staff and robust tools. And the challenge is about to get far tougher.


MANAGING THE INTERNET OF THINGS The IoT will quickly challenge IT departments to keep track of an expanding range of devices and applications, even more complex than today’s SaaS and Cloud-based digital services. Statistics and surveys show that IoT growth is exploding:

The global market for wearables grew 223% in 2015: Fitbit shipped 4.4 million devices and Apple 3.6 million Apple Watches1

1.4 billion smart phones shipped in 20152 ; by 2020 the world will boast 6.1 billion smartphone users3

50 billion IoT devices will be connected by 20204

IoT hardware and services spending will hit $1.7 trillion by 20205

Source: 1 IDC, Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker, August (2015) 2 Statista, Global Smartphone Shipments Forecast from 2010 to 2019 (2015)3 Ericsson, Ericsson Mobility Report: 70 percent of World’s Population Using Smart Phones by 2020, (2015)4 Cisco, The Internet of Things, “How the Next Evolution of the Internet is Changing Everything,” Dave Evans (2011)5 IDC, IDC's Worldwide Internet of Things Taxonomy, 2015, Worldwide Internet of Things Forecast, 2015–2020, and the Worldwide IoT Spending Guide by Vertical (2015)

The global market for wearables grew 223% in 2015: Fitbit shipped 4.4 million devices and Apple 3.6 million Apple Watches

MANAGING THE INTERNET


Starwood guests can unlock their hotel doors with their smartphones and receive personalized customer content.

Whirlpool has linked its appliances to create data sets in the cloud to better gauge product use, anticipate problems, and target new opportunities.

Kone, the elevator and escalator firm, has adopted IoT to redefine itself as a service company.

SEIZING THE FIRST-TO-MARKET ADVANTAGE Corporations and government agencies aiming to quickly develop product offerings and target new markets will be the top IoT solution adopters. Enhanced customer experience, insights and loyalty, are the core incentives, according to a recent study by Adobe and eConsultancy. Early IoT solutions will expand the reach and complexity of IT Services and Asset Management. They may also give your company a leg up on the competition. Here’s a quick taste of what’s already happening:


TACKLE THE INVENTORY CONTROL CHALLENGEIoT’s growth means that your IT department will soon be multiplying the number of physical devices, apps, and services that it needs to manage, requiring that IT managers:

Deploy analytics to analyze and take advantage of the accumulated data.

Provide Asset Management and IT Service for a scale unimaginable a few years ago, potentially hundreds of discrete device types and thousands of apps and services.

Rapidly evolve from a model designed for managing a limited number of machines to servicing hundreds of device types (smart meters, standalone sensors, RFID equipment, smart vehicle components, wearables and smartphones, etc).

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OPTIMIZE THE ITSM- ITAM SYNERGYIT asset management can't optimize usage, support and expenditures without understanding what services the assets underpin. Asset management faces a challenge of more shared infrastructure, an explosion of new devices and components, brand new stakeholders, and more direct focus on the financial benefits or cost of systems. The flipside is equally important. You can’t fully understand digital business services without understanding what underpins them. Getting a handle on these new issues and capabilities are critical to building out an environment where ITSM and ITAM complement one another, and where there is a direct and transparent understanding of the value of assets and the quality and nature of service.

This translates into value for the wider business. Let’s say you’ve just bought new forklifts outfitted with clever sensors that give you great visibility into your logistical efficiency. With the help of integrated ITSM/ITAM, we could find new opportunities to further innovation in your department, and maybe also provide automated support. When a forklift breaks, IT knows about it before your warehouse manager has to call.


WHAT, WHERE, WHO: PRO-ACTIVE COMPLIANCE AND COST OPTIMIZATIONCompanies need to know what they have, where they have it and who can legally use it.

Compliance, audit protection, and cost savings are essential benefits of asset management. Licensing issues will become even trickier with the exponential growth of devices and apps. Avoiding painful audits, legal challenges and settlements from vendors will be key. But there’s also an upside to a more strategic approach. IT can provide more real-time budgeting and forecasting, not only for the corporation, but also for the individual business units. Digital services are core to the business, and hence people care about the P&L of those services, including the cost of the digital assets. There’s a visibility benefit from good ITSM/ITAM, and the opportunity to improve margins by optimizing the underlying Asset cost.


KNOWING YOUR ASSETS MITIGATES SECURITY RISKSMultiplying the number and diversity of devices and applications connected to the Internet brings tangible risks. Just as widespread Internet adoption has introduced fresh security challenges, IoT’s further broadening of access and the reality of more “entry points” promises to bedevil IT managers who don’t have a full grasp of their assets.

Experts will be identifying these risks, and the security profiles of these emerging devices and apps will vary greatly. Step one in mitigating new corporate security holes will be locating and monitoring your assets. To protect, you must first know what and where your assets are.

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Teams to work collaboratively to easily access the same visual data across multiple platforms, in order to make intelligent, data-informed decisions and boost productivity.

SaaS applications to be customized by business units across the Cloud.

SEAMLESS INTEGRATION & DASHBOARDS IT departments are developing dashboards and aiming toward more seamless integration. New ITSM tools and services enable employees to access powerful analytics through drag-and-drop, self-service report creation. This has the potential of delivering improved service, productivity and collaboration. Tools and services like BMC’s Remedy and Cloud Lifecycle Management enable:


AGILITY IN DELIVERING INNOVATIONS Today, IT leaders have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to assume a more active role over business functions and metrics. The meteoric spread of technology into new business realms dramatically increases IT’s core value to the company. Service managers with a handle on asset management will be more agile. They’ll be better positioned to proactively partner and support business units in pursuing time-sensitive business opportunities and customized digital experiences. Managers will more readily spot where to cut costs and streamline. More importantly, they’ll be able to interface with the business units and collaboratively strategize where to invest in development for innovation and efficiencies.


STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP: MANAGING YOUR ASSETS AND SERVICE IT has evolved rapidly. Advances in technology, consumerization and the rise of mobile computing, Through gaining real-time knowledge of the costs and technical specifications of assets, IT leaders will become more strategic. There’s more at play here than the expanding quantity of digital work to be done. Managing a multi-device, mega-app world demands an innovative outlook: from how you build out your service desk, to how you can best support the business units to optimize their products and services. Service management will demand creating user experiences that smoothly span multiple devices. Introducing standards and platforms for these digital environments will be essential.

Developing a robust system to manage your underlying assets will provide a solid foundation for IT Service Management.

products and services. Service management will demand creating user experiences that smoothly span multiple devices. Introducing standards

Developing a robust system to manage your underlying assets will

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The Perfect IT Couple: Service Management Meets Asset Management