Understanding the types of IT assets that will be part of your inventory is the first step to implementing your IT Asset Management (ITAM) strategy. Each asset type comes with its own set of challenges and requirements, which you need to recognize to develop a tailored plan to optimize their utilization, mitigate risks, and control costs.
Moreover, a common mistake when starting with ITAM practices is trying to incorporate everything at once. So, how do you know where to start? By categorizing information. Once you group the types of assets, you can prioritize and establish a gradual ITAM strategy.
So, in this comprehensive guide, we will explore the baseline. Keep reading to discover the four main types of IT assets that your organization's IT inventory should encompass:
As we go through them, we will also show you how you can easily implement InvGate Asset Management as your ITAM tool to monitor these assets.
So, without further ado, let’s dive in!
What are the assets in the IT industry?
An IT asset is any hardware, software, or technological resource an organization utilizes to manage and deliver its IT services. IT assets are the building blocks that enable companies to achieve their objectives, streamline operations, and stay both competitive and sustainable.
This is why effectively managing them is crucial for optimizing costs and minimizing risks. To accomplish that, you must build a complete IT inventory. But what does that entail? Your asset inventory should be a detailed catalog of all the components that make up your technology estate.
Physical devices are probably the first to come to your mind when thinking about IT assets — laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, storage devices, and other tangible items that we interact with daily.
But beyond hardware, there are many other types of IT assets that are just as important. We can mention cloud services, software licenses, networking equipment, virtual machines, databases, and other crucial elements that we'll explore in depth in the following sections.
4 main types of IT assets in your IT inventory
As we already established, IT assets are all the components that collectively contribute to an organization's technological ecosystem. They can be categorized into different types that serve specific purposes within the IT infrastructure.
You can go one step further and branch them into as many categories as you might need (e.g. device type, usage, vendor, model). But no matter how specific you want to get, these four types will make up the foundations of your inventory.
Hardware assets
Hardware assets are tangible components that form an organization's IT infrastructure. Typical devices included under this category are:
- Computers.
- Mobile devices.
- Peripherals.
- Servers.
- Routers.
- Printers and scanners.
- Security cameras.
There are specific Hardware Asset Management practices, and among the challenges asset managers can face with these types of assets are:
- Effectively monitoring stock, ownership, and location.
- Tracking them throughout their lifecycle.
- Detecting early signs of needed maintenance to expand their useful life.
- Keeping asset information like brand and model, serial number, purchase date, maintenance history, and more.
- Controlling warranties to avoid unnecessary costs.
Of course, the problems grow exponentially if you have your inventory in Excel and rely on manual operations. On the contrary, they decrease significantly with specialized IT Asset Management software.
For example, InvGate Asset Management can help you build an inventory (as we mentioned above) and closely monitor hardware assets. You can add them to our solution by uploading them manually, using the Discovery feature, or uploading an Excel template.
Once the inventory is populated, you can:
- Automate Risk Management to detect issues before they escalate.
- Track associated warranty and maintenance contracts for timely servicing.
- Create relationships with their owners and warranties to manage their lifecycle.
- Automate asset tracking to monitor all changes, device health, and more.
Hardware Tracking: Why it Matters And How to Implement it
Software assets
In contrast to hardware, software assets are intangible and exist only as digital entities. The main types of software assets include:
- Operating systems
- Applications
- Programs
- Licenses (the rights to use specific software products)
To perform proper Software Asset Management (SAM), you need to track every asset installed in your IT environment and register its location, compliance, status, and usage. This practice will help you:
- Efficiently track the usage of assets to allocate resources smartly.
- Minimize the risk of non-compliance or under-licensing.
- Effectively respond to requests from vendors for software audits.
The biggest challenge here relies on simultaneously managing multiple titles, vendors, versions, users, and devices. With this amount of variables, it’s easy to have blind spots — especially if you are doing it manually.
However, if you install the InvGate Asset Management Agent on your devices, it will automatically report and incorporate into your inventory all the titles associated with them. Through this feature, the tool tracks software licenses, version updates, and usage patterns.
By collecting this valuable ITAM data, you can:
- Monitor license compliance, reducing risks and costs.
- Get insights into software usage to optimize license allocation.
- Relate software titles with contracts to optimize costs and check on compliance.
- Add smart tags to automate their classification.
Software Management: Meaning, Challenges, And Getting Started
Cloud assets
Cloud assets are virtual resources hosted on cloud platforms that offer organizations the scalability and flexibility they need to perform their daily operations. Some of the most common types include:
- Virtual machines
- Storage resources
- Networking assets
- Identity and Access Management platforms
- Security services
- Firewalls
They usually fall under the scope of Cloud Infrastructure Management, and as they are the most abstract type of asset, their details can be easy to miss. Nevertheless, it’s important to make sure you incorporate them into your inventory as they often hold data related to your whole infrastructure.
To add your cloud assets to your inventory and monitor them within your IT environment, InvGate Asset Management integrates with Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances, Microsoft Azure virtual machines, and Google Cloud resources.
If you make use of them, you’ll be able to:
- Manage subscriptions with cloud service providers.
- Identify underutilized cloud resources for cost savings.
- Monitor resource consumption and predict future needs.
- Ensure compliance with cloud service agreements and security policies.
Cloud Asset Management: Streamline Your IT Resources
Data Assets
Data assets encompass the information an organization collects, processes, and stores. They are a key asset to ensure compliance and manage costs, as they keep track of all your investments and legal terms. Under this category, we can find:
- Contracts
- Warranties
- Locations
- Users
- Business applications
The challenge here relies on being able to visualize the invisible. To address this, you can include data assets in your InvGate Asset Management IT inventory management by:
- Creating custom assets manually.
- Integrating with your directories.
- Mapping your business applications.
Then, to manage them through their whole lifecycle, you also need to clearly map out the relationships they have with other CIs by adding them to your CMDB, following the key dates, and crossing their data to generate reports.
InvGate Asset Management helps manage data through data classification, access controls, and backup strategies, so you can:
- Create relationships and dependencies, and assign ownership between these and other assets.
- Implement data retention policies to align with legal requirements.
- Enforce access controls to protect sensitive data and meet regulatory requirements.
- Automate notifications when the contract is about to expire.
- Automate notifications to let you know when you have a few licenses left.
IT assets vs Configuration Items (CIs)
Your asset inventory acts as a single source of truth of everything you own so that you can manage assets throughout their lifecycle — from acquisition to retirement. However, within that inventory, some assets play a more critical role in your IT infrastructure. These are known as Configuration Items (CIs).
While all CIs are assets, not all assets are considered CIs. The distinction lies in how these items are used and managed. Assets are simply the things you own: hardware, software, data, cloud resources, and network devices. They have a clear financial value and lifecycle, including purchase, maintenance, and eventual decommissioning.
On the other hand, CIs are the assets that support your IT services. They’re tracked not just for their financial value but for their operational role within your IT environment. CIs can include things like servers, software applications, routers, and even documentation, all of which need to be carefully managed for configuration, dependencies, and relationships.
These relationships help you understand how changes to one CI can impact others, which is vital for Change Management, Incident Management, and maintaining system stability.
The difference also translates into the bigger picture: your IT inventory helps track and manage the ownership and lifecycle of your assets, while your configuration management database (CMDB) goes deeper, documenting how each asset functions within your infrastructure.
So, while the goal of having an asset inventory is to know what you own, you need a CMDB to understand and keep track of how assets work together to support your services.
Asset Management vs. Configuration Management, Simplified
In short
A well-organized IT inventory, bolstered by an Asset Management solution, is not just a matter of convenience but a strategic imperative. It allows you to allocate resources efficiently, minimize risks, comply with regulations, and pave the way for future growth.
By embracing InvGate Asset Management, you will make sure the four types of IT assets are efficiently managed and tracked. With this put in place, every important facet of your IT infrastructure can be brought under control.
To build and manage your IT inventory with InvGate Asset Management, ask for a 30-day free trial!
