Hardware Asset Management

Hardware Asset Management: is the process by which assets are recorded and tracked in a centralized database to
ensure accurate organization of an Hardware asset inventory. To better mangeall the IT Assets within the
Organization there are various tools deployed which gives the instant IT visibility.Thesetools help to easily view the
updated configuration and physical location of each computer , Server , Laptops on the network. Hardware Asset
Management deploy these tools that helps to extract the hardware across the network.

Hardware Asset Management is the overall process by which IT assets are recorded and tracked in
a centralized repository to provide an accurate view of all the IT assets in the organization's estate.
In order to achieve this we look at the activities that can cause the information with the asset
repository to become incorrect and seek to ensure that when such activities are carried out,
updates are made to the asset repository to keep it evergreen. Increasingly, we are seeking to
make use of vast amount of data available from the many different tools that are deployed
throughout an organization to provide the necessary business functions. The use of such data
helps reduce the manual effort involved in maintaining the asset repository thus enabling a more
accurate repository with less cost.

Key Performance Measures:

Maintaining accuracy of the asset data.
Improved timeliness of asset data updates and reports (including Billingdata).
Reduced number of disputes over asset data accuracy Improved performance against Service Level
agreements and other formal benchmarks.
Reduced effort in verifying asset data.

AMI isthe widely recognized name for the asset management system we use. However, this
actually stands for A sset M anagement I nitiativewhich was the project name used when CSC
implemented its global standard asset management solution. The products used are called
ValueWise and ValueWeb. These were originally developed by a company called Main Control.
This company was taken over by MRO Software who werein turn taken over by IBM. IBM have
continued development of the original products and now market them a IBM Maximo. There are
various processes that are followed to keep the asset repository accurate all the times. The key
processes are:

1 Asset Evergreen:
The Asset Evergreen system identifies tickets that have been closed but where no
corresponding update has been made to the asset repository(ies) or where
anomalies exist with the update that has been made. For example, a ticket to install
a device but the asset is disposed in the repository. It provides information such as
the employee responsible to enable follow up.
GAMO produce the report each day. The employees identified on the report are
responsible for updating and/or correcting the asset repository.
All errors that are not corrected within 3 business days are considered non-compliant
and more be subject to higher management escalation for resolution
2 Server Evergreen:
To ensure the asset repository is properly updated when asset changes are made to
servers, midrange and network devices.
A GCARS record must be opened prior to making a change to all server, midrange
and network equipment.
The following are the type of activity selections that will require asset information
when the GCARS AM workflow is activated.
 Type of Activity Mainframe Hardware
Midrange Hardware
Network hardware

Similar to evergreen above, once the GCARS record is closed, any changes required
to the asset repository should be made.
GAMO produce a weekly report. Random records are selected and checked within
the repository to ensure updates have been made in relation to the change. Where
this is not the case, follow up action is carried out.
3 Random/Cyclic Audits:
To hopefully confirm or if necessary improve both the billing and data the accuracy
of the data with the asset repository
A number of records will be selected from each asset repository each month for each
account. This is known as "record to floor" checking. For each of these, a number of
devices close by will be checked. This is known as "floor to record" checking.
As a minimum and where appropriate, 1/24th of the total number of assets should
be cycle counted to ensure all assets are verified within a 24 month period.
CSC devices, Non Billable customer assets and storage devices must be included
within the audits.

4 E-inventory:
E-inventory otherwise known as Electronic Inventory is the means of keeping the
inventory accurate by an electronic method.
Some of the main tools, commonly referred to as auto discovery tools include LISA,
bPower (formerly Marimba) and UAM.
Data is taken from the tools and feed into programs and scripts that have been
bolted on to AMI to compare and update information as well as producing exception
reports between the asset repository data and electronic information.
Different auto discovery tools have different scanning frequencies which govern the
age of the data and therefore how reliable it is. Some tools are specific OS based
scripts.