AWS Asset Management: Definition and Best Practices

AWS Asset Management: Definition and Best Practices

AWS offers asset management services to “Power and utilities” users, which helps them handle significant amounts of data and scale IoT capabilities.

With AWS Asset Management it is possible to manage and monitor growing assets. It helps improve processes with machine learning, enriche IoT data before it is stored, and boost operational efficiency. But what exactly is asset management?

What is Asset Management?

Asset management is the act of creating, using, maintaining, and selling assets in a way that is both economical and efficient. The phrase is most frequently used in the banking industry to describe people or businesses that manage assets on behalf of other people or businesses.

In IT, asset management (also known as ITAM) calls for the design of business processes that make it possible for a company to identify, track, and manage IT-related assets. Every business should carefully plan how it will use any ITAM tools to maintain the necessary level of control over all assets. These choices are important because regulatory and security requirements differ between industries and enterprises.

Implementing an IT asset management process helps track all hardware, software, and virtual IT assets. It also helps with:

• reducing unnecessary maintenance expenses,
• making the best use of licenses,
• minimizing the amount of unused assets and security problems,
• preparing for audits,
• and more.

Asset Management Best Practices

To begin asset management, you should create an inventory of all your IT assets: first, discover and track the assets inside and outside your home network (for example, mobie assets). For best results, try using both agentless and agent-based discovery techniques. Both have their perks - an agentless technique is non-invasive and there are no extra costs for installation and maintenance; while an agent-based technique offers an in-depth view of the situation, and provides information about assets affected by problems and changes.

When creating your inventory, you should track the following parameters:

1. For hardware: vendor, cost, current status, configuration item type, warranty expiration;
2. For software: manufacturer, software version, number of installations, category

It is then necessary to track each asset’s life cycle, from the request to the usage (or storage/disposal, if no longer in use). And because asset management influences other ITIL processes, it is necessary that users respect certain requisites for a successful integration. For example, asset management provides the information necessary to perform root cause analysis.

After implementing ITAM, you should conduct internal audits regularly. Not only do they prepare you for “real” audits, they help you find and resolve problems in time, thus avoiding fines and costs associated with issues and irregularities. It is also very important to review your ITAM process consistently to see if there is room for improvement.

An AWS example: Industrial Data Analytics

Utility companies have long relied on 3rd party time-series historian database software to connect industrial device data with users and offer operational knowledge about capital assets in real-time. Data islands with unfulfilled potential were created when relational databases' structured data, unstructured data from maintenance reports, and other data were all locked in separate systems. AWS offers a conduit for advanced predictive and historical analysis to be stored and performed. By bringing together previously compartmentalized data, extracting real-time insights, and reducing expenses, the industrial data analytics platform helps firms make better, quicker decisions.

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