Today, LANDesk Software will release more information from its November 2005 survey of 500 enterprise IT managers in the US, UK, Germany, and France. We found the data from LANDesk's first release of information from the survey, about IT as a driver of business value, thought-provoking. (Look for the Vendor Briefing on our conversation with LANDesk about the survey in the March issue of Windows IT Pro.). The second release is no exception.
In the area of attitudes toward managment of IT assets, the survey shows that in the US, only 47 percent of IT managers attest that their record of IT assets is completely accurate and up-to-date. (The survey defined IT assets as hardware and software such as PCs and laptops, servers, and applications.) Believe it or not, this figure is actually better than that for the total 500 IT managers surveyed, only 36 percent of whom are confident that records of their IT assets are accurate. Somewhat frighteningly, 1 percent of US respondents don't keep records of IT assets. Regarding software licensing, the figures are better, with 85 percent of the surveyed managers confident that all the software installed on their company's hardware is fully licensed. Make that 88 percent for IT managers in the US.
What are these IT managers doing to keep track of their hardware and software assets? Well, in the US, 20 percent audit manually, by walking around the office (18 percent of all surveyed managers do this); 39 percent log all assets when acquired (32 percent of the totaly surveyed managers do so); and 14 percent manually maintain a spreadsheet that records assets (19 percent of the total do so). Three percent of IT managers in the US don't do any of those things. Only 21 percent of US IT managers use a single management tool with the sole purpose of discovering, tracking, securing, and managing IT assets. Six percent use a collection of separate tools for tracking assets.
LANDesk's survey asked more intriguing questions, such as "If Microsoft or another significant software vendor for your company wanted to audit its software and licenses tomorrow, how would your company respond?" To see how the surveyed IT managers responded to that and other questions, and for further information about LANDesk's survey of IT managers, visit LANDesk's Web site at http://www.landesk.com. Windows IT Pro will also stay tuned to forthcoming survey results.
Dianne Russell
