The Essence of TAM (Technology Asset Management) Part 3

#3 in the TAM basics series - The enhanced value of The Baseline

You have agentless-ly scanned your environment and created the Baseline of you technology assets, their configuration and all the software contained. You know who owns the individual device and where it is located in your environment. You are set up to scan your environment periodically and create the deltas that have occurred – change. The corporate technology baseline is in place and accurate to the day. In itself, this is a significant, you know yourself from the technology at work perspective.  By achieving this state, you are capable of driving operations day to day and importantly, any projects that require and accurate technology baseline to be relied upon. Projects like upgrading to Windows 10 from 7 or producing your Oracle status for the LMS team are not only deliverable in record time but are reliable, accurate, confirmable. You can effectively segment your information where security is tantamount.

You also can now breakdown your technology by corporate ownership and are able to provide you finance team the information they need to budget and capitalize the technology in use in every area of your infrastructure. Whew!

What is next, connectivity and sharing information across the infrastructure is the enhanced value of all you have accomplished in creating and maintaining the Baseline. Use cases within your organization for combining the data in the infrastructure are many and deliver the ability to be proactive in decisions across divisions and operating areas. We are speaking of here is the ability to connect and share information between operating systems like ERP, ITSM, CMDB and many others. By moving to accomplish this the value of your now up to date baseline extendable. The data in the Baseline provides the ability to spot potential security weakness, reconcile with the fixed asset system to create the delta between what was purchased to what is in use, reconcile maintenance in your Cisco implementation’s, plan DR responses in the event of a catastrophe, handle a software audit, update service management and more.  These mentioned are only a few areas that are directly affected by highly accurate and timely information in the Technology Baseline.

By establishing and maintaining the Baseline, you build your foundation. By exchanging accurate, granular and specific data flow between other Infrastructure solutions the value of having the Baseline in place the organization helps eliminate much of the mystery of cost, value and risk associated with the technology in use.