STEAM Overview
Strategic Technology Enterprise Asset Management is an extension of information technology management best practices. STEAM embraces the basic tenets of ITEAM (Information Technology Enterprise Asset Management) which is an extension of enterprise asset management (EAM). EAM is the accepted framework for organisational asset management.
EAM evolved from traditional asset management because, as organisations grew and became more complex, the organisation progressed to systematic or strategic management of its assets. Strategic asset management is central to organisational well – being and, because it is an old and well – matured discipline, it has become one of the focal points of organisational efficiency, profitability and competitiveness.
Supporting the ideals of STEAM needs to be recognised as an ITO CORE OBJECTIVE. STEAM is at the root of strategic technology management, and the manner in which it is approached will determine the ultimate strategic significance of the initiative. Ignoring this objective will cost the ITO dearly in terms of organisational credibility. Attaining the objective is not an insurmountable task and it can be constructively achieved through the auspices of properly constituted initiatives. That is what we hope to achieve here - illustrating how the ITO that recognises the value of going about its business using STEAM will
Strategic Technology Enterprise Asset Management is an extension of information technology management best practices. STEAM embraces the basic tenets of ITEAM (Information Technology Enterprise Asset Management) which is an extension of enterprise asset management (EAM). EAM is the accepted framework for organisational asset management.
EAM evolved from traditional asset management because, as organisations grew and became more complex, the organisation progressed to systematic or strategic management of its assets. Strategic asset management is central to organisational well – being and, because it is an old and well – matured discipline, it has become one of the focal points of organisational efficiency, profitability and competitiveness.
Supporting the ideals of STEAM needs to be recognised as an ITO CORE OBJECTIVE. STEAM is at the root of strategic technology management, and the manner in which it is approached will determine the ultimate strategic significance of the initiative. Ignoring this objective will cost the ITO dearly in terms of organisational credibility. Attaining the objective is not an insurmountable task and it can be constructively achieved through the auspices of properly constituted initiatives. That is what we hope to achieve here - illustrating how the ITO that recognises the value of going about its business using STEAM will
Strategic Technology Enterprise Asset Management (STEAM), promotes an understanding of the following characteristics of managing technology assets:
DISCOVERY – Infrastructure discovery is focused on configuration items. Configuration items are the fundamental units of the infrastructure. Configuration item classification is integral to unraveling the complexities of the infrastructure as well as business and IT alignment initiatives.
DOCUMENTATION – Knowledge of the infrastructure, the configuration items that constitute the infrastructure, the relationships that persist between those configuration items, the services they deliver and how they are delivered is invaluable to system and business managers alike.
DEPENDENCY MANAGEMENT – The foundation of IT governance is the simple dependency: application depends on database, database depends on server, server depends on switch, application depends on application, and so forth.
CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT – Disaster management is a process embracing the policies and procedures relating to the preparation of initiatives that will either prevent a technology outage or ensure the recovery or continuation of technology service delivery. It is a subset of business continuity and its maturity is directly correlated to the maturity of related discovery, documentation and dependency management processes.
STEAM OUTPUTSCAPITAL PLANNING – The planned acquisition of assets is key to cost-effective EAM ensuring budgeted capital expenditure as well as the the redeployment of under – utilized or redundant assets.
PROCUREMENT – Procurement is a natural progression along the asset life – cycle continuum,
ASSET TRACKING AND MANAGEMENT- Asset tracking embraces the recording of the asset location, asset custodian, current end – user and other identifiers. STEAM systems also include details concerning application calibration, usage statistics , inter – asset dependencies, availability and repairs and maintenance.
REDEPLOYMENT – STEAM, facilitates the optimum use of a technology asset, mitigating unnecessary capital expenditure. The redeployment of technology assets forms an integral part of asset funding models.
RETIREMENT OR DISPOSAL – STEAM ensures that assets in this category are disposed of as beneficially and efficiently as possible. There are a number of considerations in the disposal of assets
• The state of the market for assets marked for disposal
• Environmental and regulatory constraints
• Refurbishment options
STEAM OUTCOMES
COST BENEFITS – STEAM delivers information to management in terms of the deployment of technology assets , their utilisation and the services they deliver, as well as the cost involved in sustaining that delivery. This underpins efficient decision-making processes, by promoting cost effective planning, redeployment or retirement.
BUSINESS SERVICE MANAGEMENT – BSM is the wrapper for end – to – end service delivery. The critical success factors of BSM are encapsulated in a strategic view of the technology assets, spanning all of the technology silos and portraying combinations of the configuration items pertinent to those silos. The outputs of STEAM are specifically designed to meet the requirements of all of the BSM success factors.
ARCHITECTURE – Enterprise architecture is comprised of four dimensions: Business, Information, Applications and Technology. The purposes of these dimensions cannot be served by mere reference to a technology asset register; but rather by the ability to refer to a complete library of technology assets, consisting of strategically discovered configuration items, supported by comprehensive documentation and current visibility in respect of configuration item relationships.
DOCUMENTATION – Knowledge of the infrastructure, the configuration items that constitute the infrastructure, the relationships that persist between those configuration items, the services they deliver and how they are delivered is invaluable to system and business managers alike.
DEPENDENCY MANAGEMENT – The foundation of IT governance is the simple dependency: application depends on database, database depends on server, server depends on switch, application depends on application, and so forth.
CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT – Disaster management is a process embracing the policies and procedures relating to the preparation of initiatives that will either prevent a technology outage or ensure the recovery or continuation of technology service delivery. It is a subset of business continuity and its maturity is directly correlated to the maturity of related discovery, documentation and dependency management processes.
STEAM OUTPUTSCAPITAL PLANNING – The planned acquisition of assets is key to cost-effective EAM ensuring budgeted capital expenditure as well as the the redeployment of under – utilized or redundant assets.
PROCUREMENT – Procurement is a natural progression along the asset life – cycle continuum,
ASSET TRACKING AND MANAGEMENT- Asset tracking embraces the recording of the asset location, asset custodian, current end – user and other identifiers. STEAM systems also include details concerning application calibration, usage statistics , inter – asset dependencies, availability and repairs and maintenance.
REDEPLOYMENT – STEAM, facilitates the optimum use of a technology asset, mitigating unnecessary capital expenditure. The redeployment of technology assets forms an integral part of asset funding models.
RETIREMENT OR DISPOSAL – STEAM ensures that assets in this category are disposed of as beneficially and efficiently as possible. There are a number of considerations in the disposal of assets
• The state of the market for assets marked for disposal
• Environmental and regulatory constraints
• Refurbishment options
STEAM OUTCOMES
COST BENEFITS – STEAM delivers information to management in terms of the deployment of technology assets , their utilisation and the services they deliver, as well as the cost involved in sustaining that delivery. This underpins efficient decision-making processes, by promoting cost effective planning, redeployment or retirement.
BUSINESS SERVICE MANAGEMENT – BSM is the wrapper for end – to – end service delivery. The critical success factors of BSM are encapsulated in a strategic view of the technology assets, spanning all of the technology silos and portraying combinations of the configuration items pertinent to those silos. The outputs of STEAM are specifically designed to meet the requirements of all of the BSM success factors.
ARCHITECTURE – Enterprise architecture is comprised of four dimensions: Business, Information, Applications and Technology. The purposes of these dimensions cannot be served by mere reference to a technology asset register; but rather by the ability to refer to a complete library of technology assets, consisting of strategically discovered configuration items, supported by comprehensive documentation and current visibility in respect of configuration item relationships.
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