Businesses need a ‘real-time’ view of their technology assets, but a lack of skills and budget available is holding them back

37 percent of asset decision makers believe they could recover 20 percent of their software budget by injecting new resources into more strategic areas

London, UK, & San Diego, USA, May 10, 2019 - Over 80 percent of technology asset decision-makers reveal that a lack of technology asset management is a key business issue for the C-suite, according to new research from Nlyte Software, the leading software provider for managing computing infrastructure. And with almost a third (31%) of organizations still tracking this manually, this comes as no surprise.

The study, commissioned by Nlyte and delivered by Sapio Research found that almost two thirds (61%) of business leaders see a need for a real-time view of their technology and software assets. With over a third (37%) of respondents believing they could save 20 percent of their budget by remediating underutilized software, and 39 percent stating they could save their IT delivery teams six to ten percent time in daily business operations – but only if they had a real-time view of the situation.

It’s all about the risk

Despite the apparent priority, the motivating factor behind the decision to implement asset control across the entire technology stack is most likely to come from a cybersecurity breach, according to 29 percent of respondents. And there are stark differences between how managers and senior teams see this as a priority, with C-suite respondents believing that assets are being scanned hourly (27%) or daily (35%): yet those at manager level are less confident (8% and 28% respectively).

It also seems that the majority (84%) of asset decision makers are still concerned about the prospect of a vendor software audit, and as nearly a quarter (21%) of respondents face fines - a worrying amount that perhaps comes from an inability to manage processes well, rather than any deliberate misdemeanor.

“Organizations seeking to regain control of the disorderly technology assets proliferating throughout their organization would be advised to consider TAM,” said Robert Neave, cofounder, Chief Technology Officer, and Vice President of Product Management, Nlyte Software. “Across our transnational sample (USA, UK, and France) 96 percent say that hardware and software technology asset control is a top 5 priority for the business, yet this still isn’t being implemented across the board.”

“After years of delivering complete asset lifecycle management to the data center, we also extend that deep understanding and discovery ability to the Technology Asset Management (TAM) landscape. TAM serves the enterprise by bringing order to the chaotically grown compute infrastructure, functioning as a single source of truth for the business to manage the cost, security, compliance, and the operations of its technology,” added Neave.

Further findings from Nlyte’s research:

• 61 percent told us that a real-time view of technology and software assets would enhance their IT innovation to support their business goals.
  • Yet, only 45 percent said that their assets are validated daily (30% do this weekly)
  • 50 percent are tracking assets in their data center - at least a majority (62%) are doing so for desktop and laptops
• 78 percent of the global respondents claimed that up to 20 percent of their assets remain undetected from network scans
  • On average 67 percent of devices have the latest security software and firmware patches, less than half (49%) have a solution that scans and validates all devices; 48 percent of devices are not proactively managed at all
  • 36 percent of C-suite aren’t tracking their edge assets - where the risk of intrusion is highest

Technology Asset Management

Several of the learnings from this research showed that large organizations as a whole have no agreement on a clear vision of what their asset management strategy is for. A lightweight, agentless technology based solution, like TAM, that isn’t limited to certain vendor platforms or industry protocols removes these headaches. Such a solution allows for the discovery of any and all types of technology assets, compute, storage, network, software, firmware, IoT and more.

Nlyte’s TAM solution delivers a self-aware IT infrastructure by updating CMDB, DCIM, and BMS systems with current assets configuration and location improving efficiency and SLA on change management workflows and to helpdesk tickets. It identifies all things attached to the organization’s network, providing detailed information about location, configuration, and accessibility monitoring for unplanned changes, unauthorized access, vulnerable software, lost and unresponsive assets.