GigaOm Radar for IT Asset Management (ITAM)v2.0

1. Executive Summary

Information technology asset management (ITAM) provides insight, compliance, and cost management for all IT assets in every technology domain, from hardware to software to cloud computing. ITAM solutions are designed to track business and technical data related to assets and their enterprise use. Fiscal management of all IT assets is enabled in the areas of process control, compliance, and financial management.

ITAM is a high-growth area that is increasingly important for economic, security, and control reasons. ITAM solutions offer visibility and actionable insight to reduce purchase and maintenance costs of IT assets. Other cost factors involve minimizing the millions of dollars spent on IT assets and the potential fines resulting from non-compliance. ITAM technology applies across all vertical industry segments, and it is crucial to helping IT remain compliant and minimizing asset costs.

ITAM provides inventory and data collection, oversight and compliance, financial management, risk control, and vendor and contract management for all IT assets. Asset domains include: hardware asset management (HAM), software asset management (SAM), network infrastructure devices, and cloud asset modules (CAM). ITAM is closely aligned with FinOps in that it offers finance and risk capabilities while also remaining operational, aligning with information technology service management (ITSM), especially for organizations that have adopted the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) 4 process standards.

Implementing an ITAM practice and toolset is crucial to many audiences both inside and outside of the IT domain. C-suite executives and legal professionals will be the most focused on managing risk and reducing spending. Yet, technologists will also want to implement an ITAM practice to better track, manage, and plan for IT assets and their deployment.

Investment reasons include:

• Avoiding the possibility of compliance breaches, primarily for software assets, which occur when unauthorized or unlicensed software is being used. This typically happens inadvertently in large enterprise environments where operational and system controls are inadequate to ensure that compliance is in alignment with purchase agreements.
• Management and control of IT assets. The rollout of an ITAM program and associated toolset empowers asset managers to track detailed data, plan for purchases, automate lifecycle triggers and policies, and ensure that assets purchased are actively used.
• Serving C-level executives’ interest in the bottom-line and top-line usage of their investments. Understanding the need for IT asset spending and oversight of prudent management of all investments is important to this group.

This is our second year evaluating the ITAM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Radar report examines 20 of the top ITAM solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading ITAM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.