A recent study found nearly 40 percent of large enterprises in North America do not have automated asset discovery and inventory management in place today. When you consider the impact of IT assets as a percentage of an organization's capital expense, it begs the question: Just Who Is Minding The Farm?
IT wants to be viewed as an equal partner to the Business it supports, yet the mere notion that the IT estate is left to manual data entry or spreadsheets on its most critical, tangible and costly investments seems absurd.
Is it possible that such a basic housekeeping function of IT can be so absent in today's modern world? If I'm in any other business, managing my inventory is so critical to the health and well-being of my bottom line, that leaving it to chance, or spreadsheets would seem otherworldly....or at least third-worldly.
With the emergence of smart phones, netbooks and the proliferation of laptops, Blackberries, iPhones and other access devices - each carrying unique software licenses, configurations and inherent data security risks --- how could this be possible?
If the old adage "you can't manage what you don't know" still holds - how can anyone in IT talk about managing IT services when many of them - almost a majority of them - don't even know where the "sticks and bricks" are?
Anyone fitting this profile and even broaching the four letter acronym CMDB must mean: "Chickens Missing Dear Brother."