Asset ownership

[nic123]

Under the ITIL framework, who owns the assets? For example: the computers, printers, software... Are they owned by the employees? or by the IT?

[Guest]

It doesn't matter who owns the assest.

But maybe you need the ownership to calculate some services.

I.e. how many percent of support a department needs. You can calculate it by "how many percent of all pc's the departement owns"

... somtime also an emloye is the owner of an asset. It's usefull to analyse who generates support requests. and who needs some education. But in the real live this way doesn't work like in the book.

in my opinion it's best when the department is the owner of the assets.

[leebc]

I think it is important who owns the asset.

If you are paying for an asset and it affects your bottom line then you will pay much more attention to ensureing that the asset is well maintained and traceable. You are accountable and cost becomes a vitally important aspect.

The same goes for services, as a business unit, department, client/customer (or whatever you may call it) if you are paying for services and they affect your profits and your performance, you will make damn sure that you are getting and paying for good and effective services from your IT department or any other service providers so that you can provide an effective service and meet your performance measures. You will also ensure that you are not abusing the services being provided to you.

The effective management of assets should be a critical metric to measure performance.

Regards
Colin.

[nic123]

Thanks very much for your comments. I'm struggling with this right now as we are working on writing up policies on telecommunication and how our organization (nation wide) will be managing it out of the IT dep.

It's a mess right now and we need to figure out who owns what...
ie: who owns the phones, cell phones, video conferencing equipment etc... as the budget for the services of these (phone lines, long distances, airtime etc...)are now all centralized to IT.

I'm wondering if it makes sense that the individual sections/dept/units own the physical assets and tht IT would own the services that make them run?

Comments anyone?

[leebc]

Thats what I have been alluding to, yes the department must own the asset and be accountable. IT owns the service which ensures the useability of the asset.

[blamblam]

I don't think it matters who owns the assets. It's a financial decision that doesn't necessarily have any bearing on support requirements.

For example, how many organisations own their own telecommunications and data WAN infrastructure? Very few. Lines are usually leased. There's any number of routers and switches involved when you hit a telecommunications provider's core network. You may own the mobiles but you are unlikely to own the cellular network.

Certainly the cost of an asset has an impact on TCO and ROI calculations but the asset at the end of the day it still needs to be supported.

In your situation, I would start with the rationale that IT owns everything. Consolidate/centralise everything with IT and get it under control. I personally don't like the business units owning anything as they tend to think they can do what they like with it and you lose control of what you're supporting. Eventually you may be able to start looking at cost-recovery from the business units, i.e. they pay for the services they use.

Hope this helps...

[Guest]

It is certainly important to know, who owns assets, particularly in IT-Service-Management for ownership is associated with certain rights on one hand and financial claims on the other.
But my understanding is that ITL doesn't make any suggestion as to who should own an asset, so the question can only be given back: In the situation you are in at the moment, who owns the assets? There are certainly cost centres that have paid for the items, one would image, they are interested in owning the assets
But once again: ITIL doesn't contribute to modelling company structures and ownerships.

Just my two pennies ...