xAssets Blog

xAssets IT Asset Management Software and Fixed Asset Management Solutions are now listed on the UK Government G-Cloud 14 framework. Public sector organisations have similar security requirements to our military customers, where the products and services must be very secure, robust, and scalable.

There are several ways to track Dell Service Tags on your devices. Having this information in an IT Asset Management system or an Excel spreadsheet enables start tracking and management these devices. Knowing each service tag, you can also lookup warranty information using the Dell support website.

xAssets IT Asset Management Software integrates with Cisco Meraki to provide a unified view of all your assets. Then we build out the processes and reporting needed for your day to day IT asset management operations.

JAMF is a great tool for managing Apple devices and other mobile equipment. You can get a unified view of these assets and all other assets by integration of JAMF with an IT asset management toolset like xAssets ITAM . This provides a "single pane of glass" view of all your assets, including customizable data fields, and deep insights for improved compliance and security.

xAssets free IT Asset Management Software serves as a powerful entry point for businesses looking to implement ITAM. This solution is beneficial for small to medium-sized organizations or for individual teams and departments in larger organizations, who may not have the budget or resources to purchase a solution.

xAssets offers a free Fixed Asset Management Software service. Free instances are cloud based and provide a fixed asset register enabling you to centralize your asset management processes and provide a unified view of your assets without financial commitment.

By correctly disposing of IT assets, organizations can reduce costs, improve productivity, minimize security risks, comply with environmental regulations and maximize their green footprint. This guide outlines key stages and processes in disposal, including compliance, environmental factors, best practices for recycling and reuse, and how to use an IT asset management system to manage the data and associated processes.

Version 7.3.44 provides a new, simplified user interface, and adds key strategic functionality and building blocks related to workflow, endpoint management and AI. We have rewritten the transformation engine and several bulk operations including depreciation calculation, disposal, imports and integrations are now much faster.

Managing IT assets has become more crucial than ever, and the end goal is to maximize efficiency, profitability and compliance, and minimize risk. This article lists some ways to make the most of your IT budget, enhance productivity,and maintain a healthy and efficient IT environment.

Excel spreadsheets have been the go-to tool for tracking budgets, metrics, and assets in organizations for years. However, as powerful as Excel is, it has limitations when it comes to asset tracking. Manual data entry, lack of real-time collaboration, and the risk of input errors can lead to costly mistakes. Studies show that up to 88% of spreadsheets contain errors. When managing your company’s valuable assets, can you afford to rely on a system prone to such risks?

Software may be the most complicated type of asset to manage. It is intangible, expensive, licensed not owned, presents security risks, and must be regularly maintained. It is also often rendered obsolete by the manufacturer. The operation of most production assets, information technology assets and communications assets rely on software, so having a robust software asset management (SAM) program is not a luxury, it is a necessity.

Companies need to maintain accurate records regarding their fixed assets. It is critical not only to maintain those records, but to do it in a way that can be used throughout the organization, is updated in a timely manner and can be customized to meet the specific needs of various departments.

xAssets Network Discovery includes the ability to discover Dell Docking Stations. The Asset Inventory / CMDB loads them as child assets of the associated laptops. Data discovered for these devices includes Make, Model, Serial Number and Service Tag, Installation Date, Motherboard Version, and monitor resolution.

Integrating asset data from Intune into JIRA Service Management can enhance productivity. This integration enables you to configure JIRA to show relevant IT asset data tailored to your organization's needs, providing technicians with essential insights at a glance.

xAssets Network Discovery is able to discover Apple Mac, Linux, Unix, AIX and any other UX flavor computers through the SSH protocol. This is achieved by using SSH to connect to each Apple Mac device and extract asset data. SSH must be enabled on each Apple Mac device to allow the discovery process to work.

We understand the significance of securing your information and ensuring compliance with industry standards. We try to do everything in our power to minimize risk and protect your data, knowing that any security breach, downtime, or data loss could have a significant impact on your business and ours.

Organizations are amassing vast amounts of information, projected to grow from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to a staggering 175 zettabytes by 2025, according to the Internation Data Corporation. This surge is propelled by factors like the Internet of Things, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the widespread adoption of data-driven decision-making.

Proper management of fixed assets is critical to any business that aims to maintain accurate financial records and maximize its profits. Asset accounting involves maintaining a record of fixed assets owned by a company and calculating their depreciation over time. Depreciation is the gradual decrease in the value of an asset over its useful life, and it is essential to account for it properly to ensure accurate financial reporting.

xAssets IT Asset Management Software allows effortless tracking of your warranties in real-time, with built-in warranty tracking integrations enabling key warranty details to be shown on asset records within the CMDB.

Fixed assets are a critical component of any organization, and most businesses would benefit from a comprehensive system for managing their fixed assets. Tracking using the xAssets asset management system allows fixed assets such as equipment and tools to be located in seconds, reducing costs and speeding up maintenance tasks.

The key to successful IT Asset Management is having total visibility of assets, services, contracts, subscriptions, expenditure, processes and people. Once you have this, you can then develop processes that make managing your ITAM much easier.

SCCM and Intune have rich data sets but lack reporting tools needed to report on assets. xAssets IT Asset Management includes SCCM and Intune connectors to provide a full-lifecycle ITAM solution.

On October 2, 2022 The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published Binding Operational Directive 23-01 requiring all federal agencies to take the specific steps to improve their asset visibility and vulnerability detection capabilities. Agencies have six months to comply.

Attaching assets to tickets increases service desk productivity by allowing the most important information needed for ticket resolution to be immediately visible. The xAssets IT asset management solution includes integration to JIRA Service Desk, enabling asset content to be displayed within a JIRA ticket.

Systems management tools play a key role in maintaining the overall IT infrastructure. As part of that function, systems management tools must be able to discover and identify devices on the network and have some “awareness” of the software already installed. Many have reporting capabilities built in, which lead some IT managers to rely on the systems management tool for hardware and software discovery and inventory.

This article describes how to apply best practices to inventory management, asset related expenditure and depreciation. Fixed or capital assets, like anything else owned by the corporation, must be properly managed to derive the maximum financial benefit from those assets. In many cases a corporation’s fixed assets constitute a large part of its balance sheet assets and are major contributing factors to revenue, production, and productivity. It is imperative that management knows the location, value, life cycle status and final disposition of those assets. A robust fixed asset management solution is a key resource in providing this critical information.

Defining fixed asset policies and procedures, and formalizing them in a corporate document, is critical to effective fixed asset management. Those policies and procedures need to be implemented and acted upon in a consistent manner. However, without a consistent method of managing those assets, determining their value, location and lifecycle status, the policy and procedures become less effective.

Every organization has a wide variety of data sources that contribute to its IT asset inventory. These can include: manually prepared spreadsheets, purchasing records, Microsoft System Center, Active Directory, cloud providers such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud and Azure and internal systems and cloud applications. The problem arises when these data sources cannot be consolidated or reconciled. Each source contains some ITAM information, but none provide a complete record for each asset. Many SMBs are faced with this scenario ,where they have ample ITAM data, but no actionable ITAM information.

The economic value of a comprehensive IT asset management (ITAM) solution is well documented. “Comprehensive” means that the solution includes Hardware discovery and inventory capabilities, a software asset management (SAM) component, a configuration management database (CMDB), a disposal and end-of-life component and a robust and configurable reporting system. IT managers have a number of options when choosing an ITAM vendor, and there are several steps IT management can take to arrive at a shortlist and select the right solution for the organization.

High security environments such as Government, Defense and Public Sectors have additional complexity in an increasingly complex and regulated environment. With laws, certifications, compliance, security, encryption, zero downtime and disaster recovery requirements, an ITAM solution needs to be highly configurable to meet strategic requirements.

A lot of companies offer their products in some kind of hosted form these days, some even have a non browser based product which you pay for annually to download, like office. These products are not inherently designed for the cloud and become a management nightmare for system administrators because they have to install those products on every client endpoint and then manage and troubleshoot them. It is much easier to manage products which are browser based and therefore can be used from any client PC or device without being installed on that device.

Managing IT assets, both hardware and software, that are "behind-the-firewall" is a mature business and has been an established practice for over twenty years. There are numerous tool sets available that enable IT managers to discover, inventory, evaluate and reconcile hardware and software assets. But, what about cloud assets? Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) assets need to be counted and reconciled. Server and storage use needs to be managed to match existing needs. As Kim Crawley of AlienVault (now an AT&T company) wrote in an article entitled Reviewing Best Practices for IT Asset Management in the Cloud, "With the implementation of cloud networks, these IT assets become cloud assets too..." But making sure your cloud-hosted assets function well and maintain security is its own area of knowledge: cloud asset management. There are challenges involved in cloud asset management which differ from managing assets on your own infrastructure. For instance, developers and administrators often don’t use the security tools that their cloud providers offer them. Also, visibility into your assets can be more difficult in the cloud."

System Center represents a great strategic decision for taking control of your IT infrastructure. The software requires a substantial investment of time and money but for large environments the returns are substantial and worthwhile. A few years ago a paper was published suggesting that an organization running 50,000 clients could save 5,500 man hours per year and $290,000 USD plus some additional one-time savings. However a small additional investment in a full lifecycle ITAM tool can give you a much bigger additional return by giving you visibility and organisational control over those assets through functions that are not available in System Center.

xAssets, via its government partner McCauley Brown (an Alion company,) was awarded a contract to implement its IT Asset Management software solution for use at the United States Air Force in Europe (USAFE) Warrior Preparation Center (WPC) located at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

The US Air Force (USAF) recently certified xAssets IT asset management (ITAM) and fixed asset management (FAM) software tools for use in Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET) and Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET) environments. These two networked environments comprise much of the data necessary to keep the USAF up and running and help keep the nation secure. Following a lengthy vetting process led by USAF IT security experts at the Air Force Network Integration Center (AFNIC), the xAssets software was proven to operate securely on these critical information networks. Beginning in April 2018, xAssets Version 7.2 can be rapidly deployed on SIPRNET and NIPRNET to fulfil complex requirements or very large database implementations requiring an asset-centric solution.