Firm grip on technical asset management eluding most customers

Security resellers were always told to start with customer audits, software specialists the same and those looking to sell networking equipment had to begin with getting a handle on what was happening across the infrastructure.

Despite that a significant number of those purchasing technology still lack a clear picture of their assets, with a fair number trying to handle the process manually.

Research from Nlyte Software has found that two thirds of business leaders do want to get a real-time view of their tech assets and 80% view a current lack of visibility as a business issue.

There are bound to be savings for those that get on top of their software estates and cut down the number of non utilised licenses but there are also implications for those looking to save their IT department time.The firm's research found that 78% of those that responded globally revealed up to 20% of their assets are not detected by network scans. Users are leaving themselves open to vulnerabilities with some equipment missing out on patches and updates.

As well as viewing greater insights into their business as something that could unlock greater savings and efficiencies there are also concerns that those operating blindly could fall foul of vendor software audits.

Robert Neave, co-founder, CTO and vice president of product management at Nlyte Software, said that there was a gap between the awareness of the need for technology asset tracking and the actual implementation.

"Although understanding of technology asset management is high, adoption and discipline needs to be higher across the spectrum for large organisations who want to regain control of their technology assets," he said.

“Across our transnational sample (USA, UK, and France) 96% say that hardware and software technology asset control is a top 5 priority for the business, yet this still isn’t being implemented across the board," he added.