IT asset management

The register exists to answer operational questions: what do we have, who has it, is it supported, is it licensed, and when does it need replacing. An inventory that answers none of those is an accounting artifact.

One register, reconciled against reality

A register maintained by hand diverges immediately. Feed it from discovery — what is actually on the network and enrolled in management — and reconcile against procurement and finance records.

The valuable output is the discrepancy list: assets in the register that discovery cannot find, and devices discovery finds that the register does not know about. The second category is the security problem, since an unknown device is unmanaged by definition.

Ownership, not just location

Every asset needs a named accountable person. "The engineering team" is not an owner; when the device needs patching, returning or replacing, a team does not answer.