IT Asset Lifecycle Management
Consolidate your assets with a unified IT asset management dashboard
Consolidating assets across your organization can enable you to drive consistent IT asset management. Through a single pane of glass, you can observe your technology assets, their functionality, and their role in your server.
With SolarWinds® Service Desk API technology, you can easily manage your assets, help desk tickets, and software license updates by visualizing the full asset life cycle to identify areas where you can reduce the overall cost of assets—saving time and money.
Automate risk detection by using asset management tools
Ensure your company is (and remains) compliant with software licenses by automating risk detections on your employees’ devices. Service Desk is built to allow you to monitor licenses actively being used and can compare them to the licenses your organization has purchased. You can also proactively manage warranties and asset refresh cycles to ensure your employees can continue using the hardware and software they need to stay productive.
Leverage IT asset management to align assets with incidents
Get the full picture of your asset life cycles by aligning incidents to affected assets through an integrated service desk. Service Desk’s REST API technology is designed to allow you to integrate your ticketing process with your asset inventory, which can automatically suggest connections between user issues and asset items. Ticket resolution using SolarWinds Service Desk can also allow you to more easily evaluate break-fixes and changes by automatically capturing and gathering each asset’s incident history.
Automatically discover current assets for better IT asset management
With SolarWinds Service Desk, there’s no need to create long spreadsheets of asset data that require continual updates that are subject to human error. The Discovery Scanner feature is built to collect data on your IP-connected devices, which can provide a highly scalable asset inventory. For non-IP-connected assets, you can manually modify your inventory database as needed. After setup, Discovery Scanner can continuously monitor your network and make automatic updates to your inventory as it evolves.
Create a centralized overview of asset configurations
Asset discovery is just the first step of asset lifecycle management. For a holistic management process, you should also understand the functional relationship among your assets. Configuration item data from Service Desk’s Discovery Scanner can build the foundation for a Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which can offer a centralized view of your asset configuration to more easily avoid disruptions and understand how the rest of your system is affected when nodes are changed or replaced.
What is asset management?
The idea behind IT asset management is simple: each electronic device operating within your system is discovered, inventoried, and constantly monitored for changes. Additional assets are incorporated as your system expands, and deactivated assets are let go from your inventory.
The term “asset” is a broad descriptor—assets don’t just encompass desktop devices. Your system assets can include desktop computers, laptops, mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, printers, and more. Any electronic nodes within your network can be potentially detected by an asset discovery tool and recorded in your asset inventory. Physical IT devices should also be included by using hardware asset management. Additionally, virtual asset monitoring, which can encompass virtual machines and software downloads, can be crucial to demonstrating compliance.
Comprehensive asset management can help companies keep up with software licensing across physical and virtual assets to ensure each software component is functioning properly and falling within its use contract.
What is an asset management database?
An asset management database is the centralized collection of documented assets within your company’s inventory. Your asset management database contains all the IP-discoverable devices in your asset infrastructure, including both physical and virtual assets. Your database is where assets are monitored, visualized, and updated.
The first step in creating your asset management database is to discover your IP-capable devices. Once all your IT inventory has been discovered, you can manage your asset management database with centralized controls. Your database will need continual updating to ensure all current assets are included.
An asset management database can also display information about your assets, including asset configurations. A Configuration Management Database, or CMDB, can demonstrate how your assets are connected to each other and your servers, and what dependencies might exist.
An asset management database can also help with troubleshooting and provisioning. If an IT asset malfunctions or is removed, you can view the effects this malfunction will have on its dependencies. A database can help you proactively avoid outages and disruptions if you choose to alter your inventory.
What does asset management software do?
Asset management software allows IT managers to automate asset organization and monitoring, both for physical and virtual assets. It can help you inventory your assets and IT agreements, and sort them into an easily searchable, visual interface. In addition, it can automatically monitor and document any further changes or updates made to your asset database.
In addition to automating your asset management database, asset management software gives you the ability to define your system’s software usage policies. For unique cases, you should be able to define your own usage policy within the asset management tool.
An asset management tool can integrate with other software for expanded functionality. Integration with APIs, security software, and web-based applications offer advantages over traditional asset management strategies. You can incorporate practical functions, like connecting ticketing software to your asset management software for easy ticket management.
Why is asset management software important?
The advantages of an automated asset management database can be significant, especially for businesses with large networks.
Manually tracking your IT assets with a spreadsheet can require a great deal of time and effort, especially with a large, geographically disparate network. At the same time, there is a high possibility of human error. An automated tool helps automate and streamline the IT asset management process, while preventing inaccuracies.
IT asset management software provides increased visibility. It can provide automatic discovery and updates for your database and provide crucial alerts on asset changes. In addition, it can provide tools for evaluating your assets’ geographic layout.
Asset management software can reduce costs. Licensing agreements are constantly in flux, and outdated licensing agreements can prove quite costly when left unmanaged. Asset management software allows you to configure automatic licensing compliance checks for all your software, helping ensure full software availability and preventing fines and unnecessary costs.
Cloud-based asset management solutions also offer low overhead and improved scalability compared to more traditional management tools. With a cloud-based approach, you can run a complex management operation with minimal physical requirements.
Any business, big or small, needs to keep a close watch on asset inventory. A thorough and ongoing inventory scan can lead you to discover a missing item, or a malfunctioning one, sooner rather than later. For businesses with a large IT asset inventory, asset management software can be your most important tool in keeping track of your valuable IT investments.
How does asset management software work in Service Desk?
SolarWinds Service Desk comes equipped with a wide array of features and integrations to help support effective asset management, including:
- Discovery Scanner. Service Desk Discovery Scanner can allow you to automatically detect your IP-discoverable assets without requiring an additional IP discovery tool, avoiding the cost and frills of a separate IP scanner. The Discovery Scanner feature doesn’t finish its job once your IT assets have been scanned—it can continuously conduct asset scans to ensure you have the most up-to-date data.
- Configuration Management Database. SolarWinds Configuration Management Database can allow you to visualize the relationships among your IT assets and dependencies. Removing or altering your IT assets can impact dependent assets, so a configuration management system can help ensure your remaining inventory isn’t affected by IT changes.
- Integration. SolarWinds Service Desk is designed to expand its asset management software capabilities with integrations to support even greater functionality. Service Desk can integrate with remote tools like Dameware® Remote Everywhere, GoToAssist, and TeamViewer, and has direct plug-ins for Discovery Agent with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), VMware vCenter, and more.
- What is asset management?
- What is an asset management database?
- What does asset management software do?
- Why is asset management software important?
- How does asset management software work in Service Desk?
What is asset management?
The idea behind IT asset management is simple: each electronic device operating within your system is discovered, inventoried, and constantly monitored for changes. Additional assets are incorporated as your system expands, and deactivated assets are let go from your inventory.
The term “asset” is a broad descriptor—assets don’t just encompass desktop devices. Your system assets can include desktop computers, laptops, mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, printers, and more. Any electronic nodes within your network can be potentially detected by an asset discovery tool and recorded in your asset inventory. Physical IT devices should also be included by using hardware asset management. Additionally, virtual asset monitoring, which can encompass virtual machines and software downloads, can be crucial to demonstrating compliance.
Comprehensive asset management can help companies keep up with software licensing across physical and virtual assets to ensure each software component is functioning properly and falling within its use contract.
Looking for an On-Premises Help Desk option?
Try Web Help Desk. It’s our affordable and safe Help Desk Ticketing and Asset Management Software.
Automate user service request management from ticket creation, assignment, routing, and escalation.
Use built-in reports (or create your own) to track ticket status, technician performance, and customer support needs.
Leverage a built-in help desk knowledge base to create and maintain KB articles and promote end-user self-service for common issues.
