NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: LINDA LEUNG ON IT EDUCATION AND TRAINING 10/13/04 Today's focus: Getting a good grasp of your IT assets
Dear [EMAIL PROTECTED], In this issue: * Knowing where your IT resources are at the touch of a button * Links related to IT Education and Training * Featured reader resource _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Veritas Meta Group Whitepaper Database Infrastructure Performance Challenges: Approaches to Better Manage Application Database and Storage Subsystem Performance Corporate relational databases now manage the majority of business-critical data within the enterprise. IT organizations face continuing challenges in managing increasingly complex, data-driven application environments. Read this white paper to discover several factors which will converge to challenge the IT organization's ability to manage its database software infrastructure. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84665 _______________________________________________________________ WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE NEW DATA CENTER? Sign up for Network World's Data Center Newsletter in which Johna Till Johnson and the team at Nemertes Research will provide an ongoing assessment of current data center business drivers and future trends; concrete advice and guidance for IT executives seeking to consolidate data centers, improve disaster recovery, and deploy virtualization techniques. Click here to subscribe: http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84781 _______________________________________________________________ Today's focus: Getting a good grasp of your IT assets By Linda Leung Be honest. Do you know where your IT assets are? Do you know who is using them, how much is being used and whether those assets need to be upgraded or recycled? I've been talking to some senior IT executives for an upcoming Network World story about asset management and I am blown away by how inefficient and unorganized some organizations are about keeping track of their IT resources. Some are still using spreadsheets and binders to manage all this information. But once they deploy asset management software, the time and money they save by automating the gathering of all this information is astounding. Take for example one health insurance company, which saved $8 million last year because its asset management software helped it realize that it was being overcharged for some software licenses. Without the asset management system, the company would have just paid the overcharges because there was no way of noticing the difference. The asset management software has also relieved the company of the drudgework involved in chargebacks. Before, the company would manually go through each wireless phone bill and try to figure out which departments the calls should be charged back to. With asset management software, this could all be automated, with clear reports produced showing which department has high call volumes so that the company can forecast whether they need more phones or minutes. Aren't these examples enough to get you calling your nearest asset management software specialist? Getting IT executives excited about asset management isn't difficult when you hear stories like these, but the IT pros I spoke to all said getting buy-in from senior managers was difficult. To them, this software does not help earn revenue, so why should they be interested? Think of an upcoming event in your organization where asset management would shine and use that example to show senior managers how much money and time you would save. Take, for example, a project to evaluate whether or not to upgrade the company's desktop systems. This is particularly useful if you have multiple sites. If like some companies, you'd have to do a site visit of each of the facilities and manually count the desktops in the company, check their configuration, version numbers, and so on. Then you'd be able to manually figure out the financial and technical impact of an upgrade. If you had all this information in an asset management system, this could all be done with a touch of a few buttons. This is time and money well spent. _______________________________________________________________ To contact: Linda Leung Linda Leung is associate online news editor at Network World and is responsible for editing many of Network World's e-mail newsletters and news stories for Network World Fusion. She is a regular contributor to Network World's Management Strategies section, which examines the career and management issues of network executives.She can be reached at <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sign-up to receive our FREE Webcast Newsletter. The weekly Webcast Newsletter brings you information on Webcasts available on Network World Fusion - your 24-7 source for the latest solutions and strategies, complete with links, resources, and the personal answers you need. <http://www.nwfusion.com/nlitedu163> _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Veritas Meta Group Whitepaper Database Infrastructure Performance Challenges: Approaches to Better Manage Application Database and Storage Subsystem Performance Corporate relational databases now manage the majority of business-critical data within the enterprise. IT organizations face continuing challenges in managing increasingly complex, data-driven application environments. Read this white paper to discover several factors which will converge to challenge the IT organization's ability to manage its database software infrastructure. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84664 _______________________________________________________________ ARCHIVE LINKS Newsletter archives http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/ _______________________________________________________________ FEATURED READER RESOURCE THE NEW DATA CENTER Today's top companies are accelerating toward Web-based computing. That means building the new data center -- where grids, virtualization, autonomic computing and other big changes shatter the traditional boundaries on applications and information, and bring the extended enterprise to life. Learn about The New Data Center on NW Fusion's Research Center at: <http://www.nwfusion.com/topics/datacenter.html> _______________________________________________________________ May We Send You a Free Print Subscription? 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