2023 brings a whole new batch of challenges for businesses. When talking with our clients and partners, the reoccurring theme we are hearing is Optimization. From our enterprise clients to our SMB clients, optimization is key for 2023.
The thing is as we drill deeper with each of our customers, optimization means something different for each organization. For some optimization is simply cost savings, and for others it is strategically investing in their challenged technology areas.
In this series we will focus on the core areas of optimization that Vsol is actively engaged in with our clients. These posts will focus not only on what optimization opportunities our clients are doing, but also what our clients expect to gain from it.
Who are these clients and what are their areas of optimization?
· Manufacturing – Technology Asset management (TAM)
· Software Development – WAN and Data Center Consolidation
· Manufacturing – Smart Hands Managed services for remote locations
· Retail– Resiliency (BC/DR/Security) optimization
· Software – Cloud U-Turn (repatriation)
Keep in mind, in each of these posts, these are our actual customer projects, and there are some details that will not be published for obvious reasons.
Our first of five posts is about Asset management. I know it is not glamorous, sexy or even fun to talk about asset management, and most organizations will say “We have already have a tool and a CMDB.”
Sadly, most organizations start their asset management initiative with a purchasing a tool (ServiceNow, or other) because it promises automated discovery capabilities that will make life easy. The hard truth organizations learn to late, is that without defining and documenting lifecycle processes from procurement, enterprise architecture, HR and other asset change agents, you end up with a CMDB full of assets and data that means nothing. It is the equivalent of filling a jar with M&Ms and saying they know we have 1000 M&Ms, but we don’t know how many of each color, we don’t know their expiration date, and were not sure if some of them are Skittles.
Vsol’s own data from past asset and security discovery projects shows exactly this point:
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Less than 10% of organizations have greater than 60% accuracy of just their data center assets
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43% of organizations have an average of 33% accuracy of just their data center assets
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An average of 23% of decommissioned assets are still running in data center environments
This data does not include laptops, phones, software, or cloud assets which can be even more difficult to track accurately.
A Global Manufacturing Company – Current Project
Years of business diversification, data center and cloud growth coupled with inevitable staff turnover left them with multiple tools, databases, spreadsheets, and an asset accounting depreciation issue; not to mention a security nightmare. This situation led to their defining a key strategic project to better understand their overall technology management process.
Our client came to Vsol with specific goals to address their Technology Asset management (TAM) needs:
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Establish procurement, on-boarding, and off-boarding processes for remote work force
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Establish Life-cycle baseline processes (governance) for all assets
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Continually monitor for changes (Adds, Moves, Deletes)
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Track and validate crucial updates (firmware, security patches) to network devices and servers
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Automate the discovery and inventorying of all networked technology assets
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Provide an understanding of your capacity and which assets are delivering what service
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Catalog assets for recommissioning and repurposing
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Ensure IT operational security and compliance standards are being met
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Improve cost management – build reporting and alerting so the client can track the cost of their technological assets over time, including the cost of hardware, software licenses, cloud usage, cloud provisioning and maintenance.
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Integration of ERP, TAM, HR systems to automate workflows This ensures on-boarding, off-boarding, purchasing, accounting processes all communicate and share data to increase employee productivity, and simplify compliance, warranty tracking etc.
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Integrate Data center, Cloud, Application and End-user TAM practices and integrate into the ITSM (CMDB) solutions to improve support functions.
”You do not rise to your goals; you fall to your systems.” -James Clear, Atomic Habits
