2014 npma spring seminar value through professional asset management it asset management asset...

2014 NPMA Spring Seminar Value Through Professional Asset Management

IT Asset ManagementAsset Management Strategies

in a Changing World

Norman Pugh-Newby, CPPA


IT Asset Management – Definition & Objectives

IT Asset Management (ITAM)

• The integrated management of an organization’s IT asset inventory, policies, processes, tools, and resources in order to support life cycle management of Information Technology assets

Objectives:

• Establish and maintain physical accountability of IT assets

• Allocate assets as efficiently and productively as possible

• Provide accurate configuration status of assets in accordance with defined standards

• Maintain full compliance with software licensing agreements

• Establish a centralized and complete asset information repository to support day-to-day IT operations and maintenance functions, plus IT asset life cycle management

ITAM provides visibility of IT assets and how they relate to mission needs.


• IT Assets include all elements of hardware and software found in an enterprise environment

• Consist of 6 asset categories with discrete asset contents:

- Facilities Cable Plant

- Facilities LHI

- Network

IT Assets – What are They?

- Server

- Storage

- End User Devices


IT Asset Management – Conceptual Model

• 2 core processes (Accountability Management and Asset Operational Management)

• 4 interfacing processes (Financial Management, Procurement, Configuration Management and Assurance Management)

• The interfacing processes collaborate with each of the core processes

• Each of these core and interfacing processes are supported by a number of sub-processes described in the diagram above


Core Process: IT Accountability Management

Accountability Management

• Discovery• Inventory Operations• Supply Discipline• Asset Database Audit


• IT Asset accountability management is the process of establishing and maintaining accurate accountability records of the IT assets under your control

- Managing IT asset costs requires tracking IT assets across the entire asset lifecycle until they are no longer of capital or regulatory value.

• Effective asset accountability management requires the support of automated tools

- 3 distinct types of automated tools are typically used to support an effective asset accountability program:

1. Auto-discovery

2. Repository

3. Usage

IT Asset Accountability Management


Discovery is the process of identifying all the IT assets that are in the network

• Assets are typically comprised of servers, network equipment, storage devices, computers, printers, monitors, external peripherals, cable, and leasehold improvements

• The discovery of IT assets can be automated via the use of auto discovery tools which generally work in two distinct methods:

- Agentless Tools: Agentless tools discover network devices automatically by scanning an Internet Protocol (IP) address range

- Agent-based Tools: Agent-based tools require the installation of an agent on the networked device

• One pitfall of auto discovery tools is that they are often encumbered by firewalls or governing security policies

IT Asset Discovery


• Inventory is the periodic and systematic counting and verification of the total assets on hand. Some key business management benefits of the inventory function include:

- Maximizing use of existing assets resulting in a lower overall inventory cost

- Minimizing operating support costs

- Maintaining compliancy with regulatory guidance

• The inventory is housed in a repository tool which consolidates the physical IUID, serial number, model number, financial (e.g., purchase price, depreciation and book value) and contract (e.g., terms and conditions, warranties, service levels and entitlements) information associated with enterprise IT assets

• Inventory repositories facilitate a full-service approach to IT asset life cycle planning, including implementation, management processes, retirement, and disposal

• Discovery tools feed information into the repository tool

• Repository tool typically integrated with Software Usage Tool (SUT) which maintains an inventory of software usage

Inventory Operations


Supply Discipline is a process by which IT asset managers hand receipt property down to the lowest level user to establish responsibility and then manually inventory the assets periodically to confirm and sustain accountability. Key roles and responsibilities should include the following:

• Asset Managers

- Asset Managers have responsibility for ensuring that all personal property is properly maintained, safeguarded, accounted for and accurately reported

• Accountable Property Officers

- Individuals who, based on their training, knowledge, and experience in property management, accountability and control procedures, are appointed by proper authority to establish and maintain an organization’s accountable property records, systems, and/or financial records

• Property Custodians

- Individuals who are appointed by the Accountable Property Officer who accepts custodial responsibility for property, typically by signing a hand receipt

• Asset Database Audit Process

- On a regular basis, an audit of the assets in the repository tool data base should be conducted via reconciliation with the Accountable Property Officer records

Supply Discipline / Asset Database Audit


Core Process: IT Operational Management

Operational Management

• IT Operations Management• Service Desk Management• Technical Management • Vendor Management• Software License Management


• The purpose of Asset Operations Management is to coordinate and carry out the day to day activities associated with IT Asset Management

• High level activities include functional management of the following elements involved in making the system in its entirety work together:

- People

- Processes and procedures

- Technology

- Data elements

Asset Operational Management


• IT Operations Management is responsible for the execution of operational processes that are necessary to manage the IT asset lifecycle.

• The processes below are responsible for monitoring business requirements and coordinating the appropriate resources to meet organizational needs:

- Software License Management

- Change Management

- Problem Management

- Capacity Management

- Availability Management

• Service Desk management is the primary point of contact for users when there is a disruption in the operation of an IT asset

• The Service Desk also serves as a point of coordination between different IT groups in an organization when the need arises

IT Operations Management / Service Desk Management


Technical Management

• Responsible for making sure IT assets ate placed into service with the most resilient and cost effective technology available

• Diagnose and resolve complex technical issues beyond the capability of the service desk

• Serve as guardian of technical knowledge for design, testing, operation and optimization of IT assets

Vendor Management

• Responsible for making sure that appropriate access is available to contract support for all IT assets to include replacement equipment for assets reaching end of life

• Responsible for ensuring that contractual performance requirements are met

Technical Management / Vendor Management


Software License Management

• Responsible for monitoring and managing software licenses• Software license management requires an understanding of where licenses are

consumed (Software Usage Tool), identifying potential savings, and aggregating costs• An important goal of Software License Management is to eliminate software overbuying

and illegal use• Failure to harvest licenses for reuse or to ensure license compliancy leads to software

overbuy and/or illegal deployment• Reports available in the IT Asset Management repository tool should include software

compliance


Interfacing Process: IT Financial Management

Financial Management

• Expense Forecasting• Investment Decisions• Charge-back• Policy Compliance

• Cost Allocation/Tracking• Depreciation• Business Case Analysis



• The process used to plan and manage cost allocations across departments for asset procurement, maintenance, and related services

• It enables control and accountability for spending at the organizational and departmental levels, based on actual need

• Aids in reducing waste and increasing efficiencies in spending and usage associated with assets and services

Financial Management includes:

• Expense Forecasting – labor and asset resources needed for baseline plan

• Investment Decisions – based on framework of costs vs. benefits

• Charge-back – charging IT costs back to the using departments

• Policy Compliance – e.g., DoD FMR Vol 4, Ch 6, Accounting for PP&E

• Cost Allocation/Tracking – Supports cost control and governance.

• Depreciation – Allocates cost over useful life of assets

• Business Case Analysis – Foundational analysis for justifying IT investment $$$



Interfacing Process: IT Procurement Management

Procurement Management

• Requirements Determination• Acquisition Process• Ordering

• Contract Management• Strategic Sourcing


Procurement

• The procurement function involves the acquisition of network components and services with the following considerations to benefit the network operators and customers:- Best possible total cost of ownership- Right quantity and quality- Right time- Right place- Right source

• The procurement process typically involves risk in either the cost or benefits and is a good business practice to make use of economic analysis methods such as cost-benefit-analysis or cost-utility analysis

• An Information Services Procurement Library is a best practice library for the management of IT related acquisition processes which enables:- The customer and supplier organization to achieve the desired quality- Constructing the request for proposal- Constructing the contract and delivery plan - Monitoring the delivery phase

Procurement


• Requirements determination is the process of determining the business justification, requirements, specifications and approvals needed to proceed with the procurement process

• Key processes include requirements specification, support team identification, using cost-benefit analysis or other analytic techniques to justify alternatives, assessing relative risk and benefits, and obtaining necessary approvals to proceed with the procurement process

• Key requirements planning issues that need to be addressed include:

- What are the important costs versus budget considerations?

- What will be your process for separating requirements from wants?

- How should support teams be configured and sourced for validated requirements (e.g., internal and external resources)?

- How will you capture performance specifications and other outputs for use in later phases such as quality management?

Requirements Determination


• The acquisition process involves evaluating and selecting appropriate suppliers and completing procurement arrangements for the required products and services

• The acquisition process includes identifying sourcing alternatives, generating communications (such as RFPs and RFQs) to suppliers, evaluating supplier proposals, and negotiating contracts with suppliers

• Key considerations for the IT Asset Manager include:

- Provide input to the contract language to require vendors to provide key information needed to help create complete records for the assets when they arrive, for example: Purchase price; Complete asset description; Manufacturer; Model; Serial number; and Warranty expiration date.

- Use available information from the acquisition documents to prepare skeletal records for the assets to facilitate tracking of the acquisition process and rapid completion of the asset records when the assets arrive.

Acquisition Process


Ordering

• IT Asset managers should understand the ordering process and be able to use the ordering system to validate that the right number and type of components were ordered

• The ordering system should offer certain capabilities:

– Deliver requisition, quotation, vendor, purchase order, and contract information to allow ordering personnel to proactively plan work and systems delivery

– Streamline the ordering, payment, and invoicing process and utilize a common data model so that data can be shared among order and invoice tools and applications

– Provide a process for working and updating Order Modifications


• Contract management can be summarized as the process of systematically and efficiently managing contract creation, execution, and analysis for the purpose of maximizing financial and operational performance and minimizing risk

• Contract management should ensure that products and services covered under the contract are provided in the required quality and quality, and within the prescribed timeframes

• Understanding, predicting and being able to effectively mitigate risk are critical to effective contract management

• Help yourself to mitigate risk by creating a historical database with details of critical issues associated with previous contracts such as:

- Real costs and duration versus budget and planning schedule

- Problems/solutions to include contract decision point challenges

- Effectiveness of suppliers and delivery plans

- Quality of supplies and services

Contract Management


• Strategic sourcing is an objective-driven procurement process that can systematically improve and evaluate purchasing activities

• A strategic sourcing methodology contributes to optimization of the procurement process by taking the following steps:

- Analyzing current spends (what is procured and where)

- Identifying internal requirements (quality requirements, product specifications, service expectations)

- Analyzing the market (market conditions, supply base, emerging products)

- Develop/Implement strategy (best suppliers given supply/demand/risk factors, managed negotiations, contract award, track performance metrics)

• The IT Asset Manager plays a key role in the strategic sourcing methodology by leveraging information used in the ITAM process

Strategic Sourcing


Interfacing Process: IT Configuration Management

Configuration Management

• Software Deployment• Monitoring• Install/Move/Add/Change

• CMDB Maintenance• Support Operations


• Centralized configuration management provides IT system managers with control over the operating system and application settings of each end-point system and is a key element of network security and compliance

Key sub-processes include:

Configuration Management

Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

• Center piece of effective configuration management.

• Provides centralized asset and configuration information to support the configuration management process

Software Deployment Management

• Involves transmitting the right software applications, updates and patches to the right devises

• Application dependencies should be tracked and managed in a CMDB to determine the risk of any software change being proposed

Monitoring

• As IT assets become incorporated into an IT infrastructure, IT operations systems continually monitor the health of these systems, support problem root cause identification, initiate service and support activities as needed, and validate their effective implementation

• Monitoring continues over assets’ lifecycle

Install/Move/Add/Change (IMAC)

• IT assets are sometimes moved, upgraded, changed, and even repurposed over their lifecycle

• These changes have a configuration impact and a cost impact

• Accurate and up-to-date information in the CMDC facilitates financial optimization of IMAC activities


Interfacing Process: IT Assurance Management

Assurance Management

• Security Management• Information Assurance• Compliance


• The purpose of all assurance functions and activities is to instill confidence in the infrastructure that it is securely employed for all computerized transactions and exchanges of data

• Each function within assurance seeks to accomplish this by putting in place a series of checks, audits, process, and procedures in order to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information

IT Assurance Management

Security Management

• Ensure any and all security risks that have been identified are managed effectively, to include resistance and recovery from hacker attacks

• Ensure any and all enterprise information resources are used appropriately.

• Prove strategic direction for all security related activities.

Information Assurance

• Various organizations have their own Information Assurance Certification & Accreditation processes

• Ensure the IT systems meets security requirements necessary to connect to the organizations network

• “Authority to Operate” provided by an “Operational Designated Approval Authority” (ODAA)

Compliance

ITAM systems are required to be compliant with a variety of directives, regulations and orders. Examples of these include:• Federal Information

Processions Standards (FIPS)

• National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)

• Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)


• 2 core processes (Accountability Management and Asset Operational Management)

• 4 interfacing processes (Financial Management, Procurement, Configuration Management and Assurance Management)

• The interfacing processes collaborate with each of the core processes

• Effective IT Asset Management is a multifaceted inter-related process performed by a knowledgeable and integrated ITAM team

IT Asset Management - Review


• ITAM effectiveness normally correlated to ITAM maturity

• ITAM maturity measured using Gartner ITAM Maturity Model

• Maturity model defines five levels of ITAM maturity

- Basic

- Reactive

- Proactive

- Service

- Value Creation

• Gartner facilitate an understanding of each level by defining the characteristics of each level with regard to people, processes, and technology.

• Reaching the Value Creation maturity level requires an iterative approach of continuous improvement over the course of many years

• The proper planning and considerations need to be in place to leverage the requisite ITAM tools and strategies

How Effective is Your ITAM Program?


0: Basic 1: Reactive 2: Proactive 3: Service 4: Value CreationMaturity

Level

People

• Few control mechanisms, significant gaps in responsibility and accountability

• Limited understanding of the scope of ITAM

• ITAM team beginning to form

• Low ITAM team headcount

• Focus on core processes (Accountability and operations)

• ITAM team members gaining understanding of the full scope of ITAM

• ITAM team headcount stable and growing

• Property managers and IT managers beginning to understand the critical interdependencies of their roles on the ITAM team.

• Increased level of cooperation and collaboration among ITAM team members

• ITAM team knowledgeable and integrated.

• Some team members have CITAM certification.

Process

• Little process maturity and no knowledge of what assets are owned or where they are

• No centralized configuration tracking

• ITAM processes maturing with focus on annual physical inventory

• Procurement functions loosely integrated with rest of process

• ITAM lifecycle management processes defined and implemented

• Configuration management stabilized

• Metrics are in place to measure value and service levels have been created to meet business/ IT goals

• Close integration between processes

• Inventory levels are tracked to prevent overbuying

• Audits are conducted to review the efficiency and effectiveness of established ITAM business processes

• Quantifiable monetary value provided to the enterprise

Technology

• Lack of adequate tools to track and manage assets

• Available tools loosely integrated

• Limited reporting capabilities

• Spreadsheets or databases are created to track assets

• Limited use of auto-discovery tool to supplement this data.

• Basic reporting with little detail

• Software usage tool and auto-discovery tools are integrated with the asset repository tool

• CMDB in place

• IT Assurance systems fully operational

• Reports are run frequently, cost savings identified

• All operational and accountability systems in place and appropriately integrated

• Sophisticated monitoring and reporting

Mature ITAMEstimated

Current StateNotional

Starting Position

How Effective is Your ITAM Program?

Modified Gartner ITAM Maturity Model


Questions?

Please Contact:• Marsha Campbell, CPPM, CF, PMP, Specialist Leader, Deloitte (M) 202-494-1668 • Norman Pugh-Newby, CPPA, PMP, Manager, Deloitte (M) 240-460-4499

2014 npma spring seminar value through professional asset management it asset management asset...

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asset management itam

asset operational management

configuration management

asset inventory

integrated management

assurance management

asset categories

asset costs