Raihan Vincent B.

Cardenas Mgt 186 TF (9:00-11:30)

2014-18484
AstraZeneca, UnitedHealth, and Others: IT Asset Management
Do You Know What Youve Got?
A. Perspective

This case is about how businesses must handle their IT assets. Asset is an item that has an
economic value owned by a company. To produce a goods or providing a service, it is
determined by the effectiveness of production process. IT asset management (ITAM) is the set of
business practices that join financial, contractual and inventory functions to support life cycle
management and strategic decision making for the IT environment. Here, we can take the side of
a Chief Information Officer given that a company needs newer technology and strategies to cope
up with their business growth.

B. Case Brief

The case starts off with the global pharmaceutical giant AstraZenecas need to fix its
problem on IT asset management. This problem has been caused by the multiple acquisitions and
the companys nonstandard gear, its high-tech workforce that is spread across 255 facilities
located across 147 countries with a total of more than 67,000 employees using more than 90,000
hardware and software assets from notebooks to SAP and Oracle enterprise application and
databases. What is the problem with this situation? Well a mismatch is evident in the technology
and IT systems, the company saw that the Microsofts Systems Management Server was an
overmatch for the job of managing the global enterprises complex base of IT assets. As a
recommendation from Microsoft, they were offered the products of a French company called
PSSoft which is a subsidiary of DNA Corp. a top provider of IT infrastructure inventory and
analysis solutions. Like few IT vendors, PSSoft has distinguished itself from the rest of the pack
according to AstraZeneca Global IT Asset Lead Bernard Warrington. A willingness to work as
a true partner was shown by PSSoft and really tried to solve the organizations problems, there
was an open collaboration between the two organizations which allowed the understanding of the
problem, the design of a solution, and the execution of a plan. However, in the beginning, the
knowledge and expertise were with PSSoft and AstraZeneca has been learning from them.
IT asset management has been the main concern, as evidenced by the previous paragraph, as said
by a representative from AstraZeneca that in the increasing strategic world of IT asset
management, the toolset itself meets only 30% of the overall need: on top of that, you need to
build the process, understand the costs, come up with standards, develop interfaces with other
major vendors, and much more we simply didnt have all the skills necessary to cover that total
lifecycle. However, PSSoft did have those skills, both inhouse and through their contacts.
Also PSSoft and BDNA had the global experiences necessary to help AstraZeneca get its arms
around its global sprawl of IT gear, which was essential so the company could, begin to gain
greater leverage in purchasing negotiations, and be able to fairly, but aggressively, hold its own
during audits by software vendors.
Before these developments happened, budgets had been managed locally in countries where
the organization operated making it impossible to see the global aggregate in detail. No matter
how AstraZeneca tried with the old toolset, they were not able to achieve the potential cost
savings from vendors. Now, AstraZeneca has gained the necessary level of control and
knowledge to enable them to enter negotiations from a position of strength, confidence and
knowledge. A new perspective has risen from this achievement on the subject of asset
management, that too many companies just look at IT asset management as nothing more than
bean counting, versus looking deeper and understanding the ROI and ROA that can be achieved.
Lesson learned: there is a huge opportunity to get control over what you have, to satisfy even the
most rigorous audit, and to negotiate better contracts.
The case study has also tackled about other companys battle against unnecessary IT diversity
and related cost. UnitedHealth Group was an example. The organizations Hercules program
released on 2004 focused on standardizing and streamlining the process behind desktop
management: procurement, configuration, installation, life cycle, and asset management. The
program proved that complexity could be conquered, while protecting or improving ITs service
levels through the creation of standard desktop configuration and consistent management
processes. There were two techniques that served as keys to the programs success working
with finance which led to the development of a chargeback model that imposes a premium on
non-standardized desktop configurations and the treatment of desktop management as a
business process challenge rather than a technology issue. Now, UHG can manage nearly four
times the number of end users with the same number of IT personnel as inn 2004, all the while
improving not diminishing service levels. Its IT department now deploys 99.4% of releases,
updates, and patches in tree hours, instead of 65% in three weeks a vastly great improvement for
the organization.
As stated by Montreal-based IT service and consulting firm Conamex International
Software Corp., companies that blow off asset management do so at their own peril. The ideal
time for a company to start considering an asset management program is before the business and
its IT infrastructure is even up and running, however what commonly happens with corporations
is that they look at asset management after theyve encountered a problem running the
infrastructure. This kind of mindset however, is changing over time it is evolving, before,
companies used to consider only the reliability, availability, and overall equipment effectiveness
in the equation, now, there is an evident recognition on the part of the factors like continuing
pressures on cost and green technology. What is the importance of life-cycle management
programs? It puts IT in a better control of its own assets which provides a number of benefits. It
also has value as a risk management tool and aids in the disaster recovery process as well.

C. Statement of the Problem

The case is about the use of information technology. Specifically, the use information
technology to strengthen the business capabilities, the use information technology in
standardizing and streamlining the business process, and the use of information technology as a
strategic tool in asset management.

D. Analysis & Evaluation

The fact that our IT infrastructure is growing is undisputed. Each passing day new users are
being added and so are IT assets hardware and software. Its the responsibility of system
admins to track and manage these assets. Potential IT issues could be resolved quickly,
efficiently, and with better IT administration support, if you have the visibility into all the IT
assets that exist in the organizational IT landscape network, data center, remote sites, user
workstations, etc.
IT asset management provides the means to achieve complete visibility into the IT
infrastructure inventory and helps us gain an in-depth understanding of; what systems and
equipment exist, where components reside, how they are used, what they cost, when were they
added to the inventory, whether they have an expiry date, and how they impact IT and business
services.
The major goal of ITAM is to establish a centralized asset repository that accounts for the
presence and purchase of your entire hardware and software inventory. To achieve this, ITAM
methodology comprises the following steps: Asset discovery, data capture and storage
Discovering all hardware and software components of IT inventory on the IT infrastructure and
capturing their details, such as the type of asset, make, specification, etc., and storing it in an
asset repository, Asset tracking Being able to identify and track change in the location of assets,
increase or decrease the number of assets, track assignment status and user information, Asset
lifecycle management Being able to capture the asset lifecycle data right from requisitioning,
purchase and assignment, to expiry and decommissioning , and Asset reporting and alerting
Being able to generate asset inventory reporting, and receive alerts on asset warranty and lease
expiration.
If you are carrying out an effective asset management practice for your
organization, youd benefit from deeper visibility into your hardware and software
assets. Asset management gives you the ability to easily view the hardware and
software components of a computer, server, or any other network infrastructure.
Traceability of assets across your IT landscape gives you better IT administration
control and accountability. Keeping track of your IT inventory and automatically
updating it using asset management systems will help you monitor hardware and
software components of your network computers, and identify whether unapproved
or harmful software or hardware is installed. Ensuring compliance with corporate
security policies and desktop standards is a must for organizations, and efficient
asset management of IT inventory will help you accomplish that. By allowing system
administrators to quickly isolate vulnerabilities, such as illegal/unauthorized
software, outdated software, games and unauthorized/malicious downloads, ITAM
system makes it easier to see where potential risks may exist, so they can be
prevented before major problems arise. Not just helping you to keep systems and
assets compliant, but a good ITAM solution will also provide IT inventory reports for
compliance auditing. When you keep track of what inventory you have in your IT
infrastructure, it becomes easier to plan for future spending on assets. Without
knowing what currently exists in your end-user systems both hardware and
software it is very difficult to plan on procurement budget. You may actually end
up procuring more assets, and those of which that are not required. Centralized and
streamlined asset management lets you scan your entire network and list which
hardware and software your system is using. Being able to collectively view
inventory data with storage capacity of end-user systems is useful for storage
utilization analysis and budget planning. This information becomes critical as you
start charting out your financial planning, allowing you to plan well in advance for
future asset needs, and maximizing existing asset utilization and eliminate
unnecessary expenditure.
Using an automated asset discovery and management functionality, along with
your server and application monitoring tool will allow you to see the computer
inventory details, all while you are actually troubleshooting a server crash or
application performance issue. You can also find out if an employee has any
unauthorized and non-compliant hardware or software on their enterprise
workstation. Many companies manage their IT asset inventory using manual, paper-
intensive processes, which drain resources and are highly prone to inaccuracies and
inconsistencies. Spreadsheets are used by many IT teams to manually enter details
of the assets and then they constantly have to modify assets as they update. With
the introduction of IT asset management solutions and asset management
integrations with systems and network monitoring tools, this process has been
made amazingly simpler and quicker. ITAM systems perform automated device
discovery on your enterprise LAN. For example, if there are Windows servers and
operating systems on your network, then using WMI, the ITAM tool can discover the
Windows nodes and fetch all hardware and software asset information from them.
With the pace that enterprise networks are growing and IT systems are getting
updated, an automated asset management method is a must to constantly keep
abreast of asset updates and changes. Automated ITAM considerably saves manual
effort and time, and results in lesser errors and personnel overheads.

E. Recommendation