Does ITAM Need a Re-brand?

ITAM News & Analysis

Does ITAM Need a Re-brand?

I recently spoke with Fulvio Inserra from The Mastermind Group (TMG) about whether ITAM needs a re-brand.

My former colleague Ryan Stefani recently wrote a great whitepaper about the need for ITAM to evolve and embrace change to prosper. He believes ITAM needs to shift to a more governance role that promotes best practices, information sharing, data sharing, etc. to effectively enable distributed technology management (something that’s here to stay).

I discussed with Fulvio the current perception of ITAM and whether that perception impedes ITAM’s ability to evolve.

What is causing ITAM’s brand problem, and what can we do about it?

Number 1: Value Management

Fulvio believes asset management needs to quickly transition to value management – getting value out of technology investments. This also aligns to Ryan’s thinking.

“ITAM is not an operations function. It’s not about counting physical hardware or non-physical software and raising the alarm when we’re non-compliant,” says Fulvio. 

I do think this view is slowly coming into play. I rarely hear people talking anymore about cost. What I hear is people talking about value, and I think that’s going to stick.

We in ITAM sit on a vast amount of data that should be used to make better commercial decisions and to extract more value from our tech investments. This is how ITAM can own ‘value management’.

Number 2: Is FinOps the Problem?

One thing I find interesting is that ITAM is not considered a “core persona” of the FinOps discipline. I believe you can’t manage an ITAM environment without FinOps, and you can’t manage FinOps without ITAM. They both need each other.

I’m hopeful that if we position and advertise ourselves in the right way, the blurred lines between FinOps and ITAM will naturally converge. I would also like to see more ITAM professionals skill up in FinOps.

“I think ITAM needs to ride the wave of the sexy appeal of FinOps,” said Fulvio. “It’s not a bad thing.”

Number 3: Change the Narrative

Fulvio attended a few conferences last year and found them to be like a “big ITAM counselling session”.

“Everyone was commenting about how frustrating it is being in ITAM, how they’re not getting any support from this or that team. Then, a sponsor came in and talked about how they can save you money. The saving money narrative has to stop. It’s setting an expectation, a view, that ITAM is all about cost saving,” said Fulvio.

To elaborate, this narrative must stop because yes, you might save money in the first three years of a new contract, but then, the business expects the same again. It sets an unrealistic expectation of what can be achieved and what ITAM is all about. This also keeps ITAM within the operations function.

“Really, even if we do save half a million dollars, that should be irrelevant because overall, it’s about the value derived from having that partnership with that software provider,” said Fulvio.

“Imagine being around a table and saying, ‘You’re spending 10 million dollars with Microsoft. But, we encourage you to spend 15 million because we’ve realised the value this technology brings to our business.’”

So, this ties back to the ‘value management’ point above. ITAM should be about helping the business make better decisions about technology investments and realising value.

Number 4: It Starts With You

There are many interesting things happening in the tech world – such as AI and sustainability – and for some reason, people don’t think these are relevant to ITAM…but they are. We need to stop thinking of ITAM as simply computers and servers.

ITAM is embedded and fundamentally part of these things. It’s sat on all of this data that’s needed to help manage Cloud, AI, and cyber security. We’re here, but we’re not getting the limelight.

“We all have a role to play,” says Fulvio. “It’s all of us collectively. We need to be better at putting shining examples into the spotlight to get others to understand the value ITAM delivers.”

Listen to the podcast episode with Kelly and Fulvio – Does ITAM need a rebrand?

Can’t find what you’re looking for?