IT Asset Management

Siwel Consulting Inc., a leading IT Consulting, IT Asset Management and Data Management company in NYC, helps maximize the efficiency and reduce costs of data centers with custom infrastructure solutions.

To create these custom, modular infrastructure solutions, the NYC data management company targets five key components they say are essential to building a Next Generation data center for their clients. Together with their industry partners like IBM, NetApp, VMware and others, Siwel Consulting creates “best-of-breed” data centers for business of all sizes. The cornerstone of Siwel’s data centers is that they can be deployed simply, with minimal risk and predictable, positive results.

The five key components of Siwel Consulting’s Next Generation data infrastructure include storage and data management, server infrastructure, virtualization, IT asset management, and professional staffing.

NYC Data Management Company Offers Next Generation Storage Solutions

The NYC data management company offers Next Generation storage solutions that are easy to implement and accessible to all users. Server infrastructures are reliable and flexible and all Next Generation data centers created by Siwel include a comprehensive IT Asset Management program that combines timely, accurate business intelligence with excellent business analytics, to support better business decisions.

Siwel Consulting offers more information about their Next Generation data centers online at http://www.siwel.com/our-vision/data-center-infrastructure/.  More information can also be obtained by calling the NYC data management company directly at 212.691.9326.

Siwel Consulting, a leading IT Consulting and IT Asset Management company headquartered in NYC, attended the first major IT Asset Management conference of 2013, the IAITAM Spring ACE which took place in Houston, Texas at the Royal Sonesta Hotel.  Over the past 10 years, IAITAM (International Association of IT Asset Managers) has hosted only one conference per year; however attendance was increasing so much that the organization decided to offer two conferences this year in different geographies – one in Houston and the second in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The event drew 420 registered attendees representing companies from across the country.  Due to the convenient location in Houston, many oil and energy companies from this region participated.  There were 30 vendors that exhibited, promoting their IT Asset Management (ITAM) solutions and services.

The conference began each day with breakfast and a keynote speaker presentation.  The keynotes were not very compelling.  They were followed by four session tracks offering a variety of important themes in IT Asset Management.  Both vendors promoting their products and services, and end-user organizations sharing case studies delivered the sessions.  Here is a sample of some of the session topics:

·      ITAM Best Practices

·      Oracle License Management in VMware Virtual Environments

·      Using ITAM to Reduce Costs in the Virtual Data Center

·      Software Audits: Songs of Microsoft & Oracle

·      The ITAM Dream Team: How to Create and Maintain It

·      Mobile Device Management

·      Using RFID to Manage IT Assets

·      A Unified Approach to SAM as a Service

·      The 7 Biggest Mistakes Companies Make When Disposing of their IT Assets

·      Vendor Management Best Practices in Today’s Changing World

IT Asset Management Experts Host Open Forums At Conference

One of the session formats that was very popular was “Ask the Fellows.”  IAITAM has a team of nominated Fellows who are experts in ITAM and represent both the end-user and vendor communities.  The Fellows ran a series of sessions with a good variety of topics to choose from.  The session format involved an open forum where the audience asked questions of the experts.  These sessions were very interactive and beneficial to end-users who were interested in bouncing ideas off their peers or had specific ITAM problems they were trying to solve.

The smaller size of this conference lended itself to productive networking.  Often times, a larger conference with numerous participants can be overwhelming, making it much more challenging to build strong business relationships.

In speaking with end-users and vendors, both groups  seemed pleased with the IAITAM conference and found it very productive.  Many folks participated for the first time while others had been attending the conference for years.  The IAITAM conference has become the annual gathering place for ITAM experts to exchange ideas and information, raise the awareness and the level of the profession, and move the industry forward.

The IAITAM Fall ACE Conference will take place on October 15-17, 2013 at the Tradewinds Island Grand in St. Petersburg, Florida and should prove to be of equal benefit and quality.

By Steffani Lomax

In my last post, we continued the dialogue about the basic steps necessary to recover from a devastating event like Superstorm Sandy, from an IT asset management perspective. We compared and contrasted two companies – one with a mature IT asset management (ITAM) program (Company A) and the other with an incomplete or poorly implemented process (Company B).

In the final post on this topic, we will review the cost to recover and redeploy IT assets and how a natural disaster can impact future audits.

1. What is the cost to recover and re-deploy IT assets?

The cost to replace IT assets and re-establish the affected environments will vary significantly depending on the reliability of the ITAM processes. An unreliable or non-existent ITAM program can often result in an additional significant unbudgeted expense.

Company A replaces hardware assets subject to a proven warranty, with minimal additional expenditure. Accurate deployment records enable harvesting of software licenses, subject to terms and conditions, with minimal additional costs. As described earlier, internal resources are able to verify and process data within a short timeframe.

On the other hand, Company B struggles to verify all warranty information in a reasonable timeframe, which may result in additional expenditures. Due to the inability to verify current license deployments, the firm may be forced to burn down software from the current contracts or issue new purchase orders. The company must dedicate internal resources to this task for weeks, or even months.

It is likely that Company B will overspend due to incomplete or unavailable documentation and data. The inability to locate all software licenses on its own results in a large unbudgeted expense – even before accounting for hardware losses, warranties, the incremental time and effort that must be invested in this task, as well as other expenses. Here’s an example.

Let’s assume that Company A and Company B each have $20 million in software license inventory before the disaster. Company A is able to account for all its pre-disaster licenses by accessing information from its ITAM repository. Conversely, after weeks of digging and piecing together information from disparate sources, Company B is only able to account for 50%, or $10 million in licenses. Company B enlists the assistance of its software vendors, who use their records to identify another $2 million in licenses, and offer another $1 million in discounts. The result is still a $7 million unbudgeted expense compared to Company A, which simply harvested the pre-disaster licenses.

2. How does the disaster impact future supplier audits?

The aftermath of a natural disaster is likely to prompt audits from suppliers who wish to ensure that their end users are in compliance.

Company A is able to readily provide confirmation of compliance to its suppliers because it is able to generate accurate deployment information quickly. The risk of an audit is minimized when the supplier is confident that their customer has solid controls in place for tracking and managing their IT assets.

When Company B produces only partial documentation and IT asset information, this raises a red flag for suppliers and can often trigger an audit.

In reviewing the scenarios of Company A and Company B, which organization most resembles yours? If you are Company B, what can you do to build and improve your ITAM program? Is the effort mostly manual? Do you have a process and tools in place? Is there internal staff available to support the effort? Is there an executive sponsor and funding for the IT asset management program?

In conclusion, if you lack in-house expertise to build your program, seek third-party ITAM experts who can help you with the transformation from Company B to Company A. You can save your organization tens of thousands, or perhaps even millions of dollars in unnecessary costs as well as months of recovery time, and ultimately provide positive financial impact to your firm’s bottom line.