{"id":4473,"date":"2014-10-21T19:28:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T19:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multiacademstg.wpengine.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2014\/10\/21\/itil-service-asset-management-part-growing-importance\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T13:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T13:56:09","slug":"itil-service-asset-management-part-growing-importance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2014\/10\/21\/itil-service-asset-management-part-growing-importance\/","title":{"rendered":"ITIL and Service Asset Management Part I \u2013 Growing Importance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When we speak about <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/what-is-itil\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ITIL<\/a> topics, we often mention configuration, Configuration Item (CI), <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=service-portfolio-processes&amp;doc=configuration-management-database\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Configuration Management Database (CMDB)<\/a>, or the <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2013\/06\/04\/knowing-herd-service-asset-configuration-management-sacm\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Service Asset and Configuration Management (SACM) process<\/a>. This is because we are talking about services and service assets, and each of those topics helps us to manage the services we provide. Let\u2019s make this topic (i.e., service assets) a bit broader.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Service Asset demystified<\/h2>\n<p>ITIL defines a <em>service<\/em> as: \u201cAny resource or capability used by a service provider to deliver services to a customer.\u201d So, it\u2019s about capabilities and resources. To clarify what they are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Capabilities<\/strong> \u2013 this is what we are capable of doing \u2013 our knowledge, our management capabilities, processes, etc. We use capabilities to control, coordinate, and deploy resources in order to create value for customers. Capabilities are intangible and not easy to create.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Resources<\/strong> \u2013 these are our assets \u2013 what we use while creating services, e.g., hardware, applications, infrastructure, etc. They are tangible and \u201crelatively\u201d easy to acquire.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><div id=\"middle-banner\" class=\"banner-shortcode\"><\/div><script>loadMiddleBanner();<\/script><br \/>\n<div id=\"side-banner-trigger\" class=\"banner-shortcode\"><\/div><br \/>\nThe figure below explains the concept of service assets. You\u2019ll notice that people are both capability and resource. That\u2019s because they possess experience or wisdom (which would be capabilities), and they are physical resources as well.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4475\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Capabilities_resources.png\" alt=\"Capabilities_resources.png\" width=\"410\" height=\"366\" srcset=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Capabilities_resources.png 410w, \/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Capabilities_resources-300x268.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 410px) 100vw, 410px\" \/><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><em>Figure 1: Resources and capabilities \u2013 Service assets<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Service Asset \u2013 How do we use them?<\/h2>\n<p>When a customer uses our service, there is an interaction between our assets and the customer\u2019s assets. For example, one customer of my company uses a hosted e-mail service that we provide. \u201cTranslated\u201d to the topic \u2013 their assets (e-mail client, hardware\/laptop used, employees) interact with our assets (server, storage, e-mail server application). As long as this interaction (i.e., demand) exists there will be funding for my company and I can recover the costs of service delivery.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4474\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Customer_services.png\" alt=\"Customer_services.png\" width=\"587\" height=\"248\" srcset=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Customer_services.png 587w, \/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Customer_services-300x127.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 587px) 100vw, 587px\" \/><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><em>Figure 2: Delivery of services, interaction of assets and creation of demand for services<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It is obvious that managing assets is extremely important. That\u2019s why ITIL has the SACM process. But, there is also one more fact \u2013 we live in an \u201capplication age,\u201d meaning that we consider infrastructure to be a utility (An analogy from the real world would be electricity \u2013 very few people think about the technology behind the power plug. We just plug in our devices and then do something with them.) which we use to run various application on it. (Think about your PC \u2013 you often consider various applications to complete your tasks and don\u2019t bother about the hardware behind them.) So, it\u2019s reasonable that managing applications is gaining in importance.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Three reasons for Software Asset Management<\/h2>\n<p>Applications are assets and Software Asset Management (SAM) is used to manage them. ITIL defines <em>Software Asset Management<\/em> (SAM) as \u201call of the infrastructure and processes necessary for the effective management, control and protection of the software assets within an organization, throughout all stages of their lifecycle.\u201d This definition is broad and considers everything relevant to managing applications. SAM is deeply integrated in ITIL, meaning that almost every process in ITIL considers applications. In my next blog post I will consider some of the processes and their relation to SAM. Before that, let me point out some factors that could be motivation for SAM:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Legal aspect \u2013 as an IT responsible person (could be IT head, IT director, CIO, etc.), you should know if applications are used according to the license agreement. For example, if you have a license to use 100 copies of certain software, then it\u2019s important that you don\u2019t use more than that. Using more than the allowed licenses can (and usually will) have legal consequences (e.g., fines).<\/li>\n<li>Utilization \u2013 in addition to the example above, if you are using just a few of your allowed licenses, then you are underutilized, which means a waste of financial resources. This is also something that you\u2019d like to avoid.<\/li>\n<li>Contracts and procurement \u2013 when negotiating financial arrangements with an application supplier you fight to get the best conditions (e.g., discounts) as possible. An overview of your application asset will help you define your negotiation position.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Implementing SAM will help you overcome the above-mentioned concerns. There are many other advantages of SAM but, as I already said, they will be covered in the next blog post \u2013 so stay tuned for Part II.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Practicing Software Asset Management<\/h2>\n<p>SAM is powerful from many points of view. But, why shall we perform SAM, after all? To help you figure it out by yourself, let me ask you a question \u2013 when your boss asks you how many licenses you have available to deploy \u2013 is \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d an acceptable answer? I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n<p><em>To implement ISO 20000 easily and efficiently, use our<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ISO 20000 Documentation Toolkit<\/a> <em>that provides step-by-step guidance for full ISO 20000 compliance.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we speak about ITIL topics, we often mention configuration, Configuration Item (CI), Configuration Management Database (CMDB), or the Service Asset and Configuration Management (SACM) process. This is because we are talking about services and service assets, and each of those topics helps us to manage the services we provide. Let\u2019s make this topic (i.e., &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":4474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[437,404,443,344,204],"class_list":["post-4473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-asset-management","tag-customer","tag-delivery","tag-itil","tag-service"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4473"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18427,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4473\/revisions\/18427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}