Home

What is the Purpose of This Application?

Asset management; assets being databases, computers, and web applications. Large organizations divide cost and ownership of assets into different lines of business. Usually, all hell breaks loose when you put this stuff together – you loose relationships, accountability, and transparency.

This application is here to grease the wheels and lessen the pain.

What Problems?

“Workflow?”

How do I procure an asset? What hardware/software is available to me in this organization? Who sets this up? What’s the status of this work order? Can non-employees (contractors) add information to this?

Example story: The project owner approves the purchase of several servers. The work order is created and an email notification is sent to the next party. The next party updates status, assigns to the next team, and we move along until the assets are in place. The final step is to provide the meta-data of this asset (owner, status, administrators, purpose, cost, etc.)

“I need access to this web application, give it to me”

What role do you want? Who is the administrator of this application? Oh, that person’s on vacation, who’s the backup? Wait a second, why should I give you access to this application in the first place? After we sort everything out, what’s the best way to standardize this process, so I don’t have to ask so many basic questions the next time someone needs access?

“Idea! Let’s use a Word document and post it to a Sharepoint site. Solved it!”

“What is this thing?”

Who owns this asset? Who is responsible for maintaining it? What’s the status of this thing, are we patching it soon, scheduling to replace it, or can we take a bat to it? And is this thing related to anything else? I need to know!

“Got history?”

Has this asset been reviewed? Does it meet company standards for security? Who uses this thing? Wait a minute, Bob Johnson no longer works here, he left 2 years ago and he’s still the owner of this asset!? WTH!

“What’s the cost to maintain my infrastructure for this year? Next year?”

What licenses do I have? What assets support production vs. development? When do I need to upgrade from Windows XP SP2 to Vista? How much am I spending on these systems?