IT asset management is having a bit of a moment, and quite honestly, why shouldn’t it be? Shadow IT is bigger than ever, IT teams are struggling for visibility, and auditors are making their rounds. You need to know what assets you have to utilize them more efficiently and effectively.

So let’s review an Ivanti podcast with one of our own IT asset management experts, Phil Merson. Learn a bit about Merson, where IT asset management was, is, and will be, how an IT asset management solution can save you some serious cash, and so much more!

Phil Merson Uncovered

Starting his career in IT asset management in the late 1990s with the Federation Against Software Theft in the UK, Merson made sure companies were paying for the licenses they were using—a rudimentary but nonetheless necessary beginning to the asset management market.

But, Merson ultimately believed that customers should become more proactive about managing their own IT assets, or as he puts it: “[I] formed my own business to actually help customers build their own asset management practices, and that’s how it started.”

IT Asset Management: Then to Now

More now about reducing a company’s risk of audit than merely license agreement compliance, the IT asset management field has changed significantly, with more awareness of its necessity than ever. Where is the IT world in relation to effectively tracking their IT assets? Merson says it started in more regulated countries like the Nordics and the UK, trickling back down into lower-mid markets. In the last five to six years, the U.S. has begun to take hold of the trend, with companies deciding that they have to know what assets they own, what software they buy, and what to do in order to optimize.

Merson: “It’s growing across the world. We’re seeing it right the way through into Asia, into Asia PAC, South Africa, [etc.] It is becoming quite a big industry now.”

How did companies track assets pre-networks? Merson chuckles while elaborating that many customers were, and still are, used to updating a spreadsheet manually to track their assets. No longer can organizations use the Donald Rumsfeld phrase, “We don’t know what we don’t know,” for you really can discover everything with proper software asset management tools, saving as much as 30 percent of your software budget along the way.

In fact, the amount of money you can save in one year of using a software asset management solution can pay for three years of those same products and services.

Savings, You Say?

That being said, 75 percent of organizations are over-licensed for fear of audits. I.e., their license position is entirely unknown for fear of under-licensing and being audited. What’s a license position, you ask? Merson explains: “License position is being able to find all the software you have on all of your devices and marrying those discovered software assets with your licenses.”

And funny enough, License Optimizer does that marrying work for you—it’s the officiant of the IT world, bringing together previously undiscovered IT assets with the correct number of licenses.

To find out how License Optimizer can unify your IT assets with the correct number of licenses, track their usage, and identify which can work harder for you, visit ivanti.com or email [email protected].

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