The Real Cost
of the
Technology Asset
Solution You’re Ignoring

by Mark Gaydos

Imagine being in charge of an enormous auto dealership’s inventory with vehicles spanning large and small lots over several states. It’s your job to know where the midsize cars, SUVs, and trucks are all located as well as keep them secure. The dealership’s owner asks for an inventory status, vehicle locations, keys, condition, mileage, etc. You reply, “I have no idea where they are, who has access to them or what type of condition they are in.” How long do you anticipate holding onto your job?

As absurd as the auto dealership scenario sounds, it’s actually a very similar analogy to how many organizations are tracking all of their IT assets—a recent global survey on technology asset management adoption and use, from Nlyte Software, confirms it.

Out of 1,500 technology asset decision makers in organizations employing over 1,000 people across the U.S., UK, and France, almost all of them (96%) view hardware and software asset control as a top-five priority for their business — not a big surprise. However, what is surprising is that almost one third (31%) of those enterprise companies responding are still attempting to track their assets manually. This is where the “absurd” statement becomes a justified analogy. It would be unthinkable to keep track of thousands of autos, geographically distributed, via a spreadsheet, but this is exactly the means by which large companies are attempting to track IT asset locations and status…