IT resource management (often referred to as ITAM) is the process of accounting for, deploying, maintaining, upgrading, and finally disposing of an organization’s assets. Simply put, this process ensures that valuable things (both tangible and intangible) in an organization are tracked and actually used.
So what is an IT resource? In general, such a resource can be hardware, software, or information of value to an organization.
IT resources have a finite period of use. To get the most out of them, the lifecycle of the resource must be actively managed. Each organization can define its own stages of this lifecycle. These typically include planning, procurement, deployment, maintenance and decommissioning. When managing IT resources, it is important to apply this process to all phases of the lifecycle to know the total cost of ownership and optimize resource utilization.
In the past, IT departments could manage resources in systems under their control. Now, however, an organization’s resource management extends far beyond officially certified-labeled hardware. Subscription-based software and the desire of employees to customize work tools through application stores present new resource management challenges. These days, teams work in ways that require IT employees to be flexible and adapt their resource management process to maximize company efficiency.
Employees from a wide variety of backgrounds are looking to work with the tools best suited to the challenges at hand. But resource management, an even more important component of an organization’s overall strategy to reduce risk and costs, must not be forgotten. With a single, reliable source of information, the resource management process is indispensable in optimizing budgets, supporting lifecycle management and making decisions that affect the organization as a whole.
When employees in other departments began to engage in service management, resource management became important in many departments. We know that the shipping, fisheries, insurance and musical instrument industries are doing it.
Why is resource management in an IT environment such an important process?
Very often resources are tracked in dozens of different places by dozens of different people. However, no one owns them, and no single tool collects and centralizes information. Naturally, this leads to clutter and unreliable data. It’s hard to make informed decisions in such an environment. Some companies have employees dedicated solely to tracking IT resources. This work should be done by the system itself. Then there is no need to burden employees with monotonous tracking of artifacts, workloads and dependencies, and IT can focus on what matters most to the organization. With resource management comes order and a single trusted source of truth that IT teams, managers and ultimately entire organizations can use.
Optimize usage and save money
With resource management, information is always up-to-date, so teams avoid expenses and optimize resource usage. This saves money by preventing unnecessary purchases and reducing licensing and support costs. Strengthened controls also ensure compliance with security and legal policies, and it also reduces risk. In addition, the positive consequences in the form of reduced costs and increased productivity benefit the entire organization.
Increasing efficiency without sacrificing reliability
Digital transformation is changing the way organizations work, and modern resource management goes far beyond tracking laptops and mice. Today’s teams rely on DevOps and SRE principles and need powerful processes and resource management tools to deliver new capabilities and services quickly and efficiently – without compromising reliability. With increased control, transparency and accountability, teams can reduce overuse, including redundant resource allocation and instance downtime, thereby avoiding unnecessary costs.
Supporting ITSM practices and enabling teams across organizations
IT resource management is a critical component that supports ITIL processes, including change, incident and problem management. IT empowers the entire organization to innovate and deliver value faster. With the right data, teams can act quickly and predict the impact of changes before they happen. Democratizing access to internal data gives a company a competitive advantage because it results in the company’s customers getting the value they need faster. In any organization whose management is committed to keeping up with the times, strategic thinking is required in the context of controlling, tracking and using the data accumulated in IT departments.
