IT Asset Management

IT Asset Management (ITAM) is the process of managing the lifecycle of IT assets within an organization. IT assets include hardware, software, and other technology-related resources (configurations, roles, licenses, …). ITAM provides a comprehensive view of an organization’s IT assets and helps to optimize the use of these assets.

Discovery

The first step in ITAM is to discover all IT assets within the organization. Most commercial tools can automatically discover IT assets on the network and provide detailed information about each asset. After the discovery, the assets are completed with additional information (e.g. location, owner, cost, services, dependecies, …).

Configuration Management Database

The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is a database that contains all relevant information about an organization’s IT assets. The CMDB is used to track the relationships between IT assets and to provide a single source of truth for IT asset information. The CMDB is an essential component of ITAM and is used to support other IT processes (e.g. Incident Management, Change Management, …).

Today, CMDBs are often split into multiple parts. All network devices, servers, clients, … are stored in separate databases and combined when necessary by queries.

The CMDB is the basis for all ITIL processes.

Configuration Item

A Configuration Item (CI) is a component of an IT asset that is managed in the CMDB. All assets are represented as CIs in the CMDB and are linked to other CIs to show the relationships between assets.

Configuration items have the following attributes:

  • Unique Identifier: a unique identifier for the CI
  • Description: a (short) description of the CI
  • Owner: the owner of the CI, a person or a department
  • Classification: class and type, e.g. server, client, network device, …
  • Manufacturer: information about the manufacturer, like name, serial number, license number, supplier, …
  • Location: physical and logical location
  • Status: current and past status (incl. history)
  • Change History: all changes made (incl. date, time, user, …)
  • Dependencies: dependencies to and on other CIs (incidents, problems, changes, services, hierarchy, documents, knowledge, …)