What is an IT Asset Register?

IT asset management (often referred to as ITAM) is the process of registering, deploying, maintaining, modernising, and finally disposing of an organisation’s assets. Simply put, this process verifies that an organisation’s values (both tangible and intangible) are tracked and actually used.

Looking closer at an IT asset, what do we have? In general, such a resource may be equipment, software, or information of value to the organisation. For example, in the Atlassian IT department, one of the most valuable assets is the computers and software licenses that allow us to build, sell, and maintain our own software and the servers on which it is hosted.

IT assets have a finite period of use. To get the most benefit from them, you need to actively manage their life cycle. Each organisation can define its own phases of this life cycle. These typically include planning, procurement, deployment, maintenance, and decommissioning. In IT resource management, it is important to apply this process at all stages of the life cycle to determine the total cost of ownership and optimise resources.

In the past, IT departments could manage resources in their own systems. Now, the management of the organisation’s resources goes far beyond equipment with official certification marks. The subscription-based software and the desire of employees to configure work tools through application stores pose new challenges for resource management. Teams are now working in a way that IT employees have to be flexible and adapt the resource management process to achieve maximum company efficiency.

Employees of various profiles are eager to work with the tools that are most suitable for solving current problems. Resource management is an even more important component of the organisation’s overall strategy to reduce risks and costs. With a single reliable source of information, the process of resource management is indispensable for optimising the budget, supporting life cycle management and making decisions that affect the organisation as a whole.