IT Asset Management with Stan Sargent

Jay: Hey, welcome! This is Jay and Mike on The IT Director’s Podcast, powered by Clear Winds. We have Stan, our president and owner of Clear Winds, today. We are super excited about having Stan on here today. 

Stan: Well, thank you for having me; I appreciate that.

Jay: We’re going to be talking with Stan about IT asset management.

Michael: Straight from the jump, when we’re talking IT asset management, what is an asset? Let’s go ahead and define it from the gates. What are we talking about when we’re talking about asset management? 

Stan: I mean, it could be anything that’s connected to your technology. So if that’s your client machine that your users are using, or it could be a switch, any kind of network thing. Or it may be in your data center; it could be your servers or your storage. It could even be your software that’s actually running on your servers or your client machines. Really anything that’s connected to your technology. 

Jay: Stan, why do you need to manage your IT assets? So as an IT organization or a company, why is it so important to manage and wrap your arms around your assets?

Stan: If you are an IT director, you end up with a lot of assets out there.

Jay: Yes. 

Stan: I know you know because you have experience in this. There are just so many things you’re constantly purchasing. You got new employees coming on, so you buy them a new computer, or it may be a new phone, or they need some monitors to hook up for their location.

Then you also have your data center. We need a new application, so let’s put up a new server or something like that. Or we need to do some backups. So there’s just a lot of things that you end up having. If you don’t keep track of it, then you don’t know what you got. 

Jay: One hundred percent, yes. When you were talking, Stan, I was thinking about one project that Clear Winds helped with in the previous role I was in managing our Apple devices. We had 21,000 Apple devices, Michael, that we deployed.

Michael: That’s a lot of devices. 

Jay: But we had about 15,000 devices that were unaccounted for because of our inaccurate asset management process. So when you are talking about that, it is so important to be able to manage and wrap your arms around your assets and to know where they are.

Are they old? Right? Do we need to end-of-life them? Are they actually in our environment, or are they stolen? Are they broken? Are they lost? So, it’s pretty interesting because as an IT director, a lot of times they don’t know those things, you know? And if you don’t have the tools to do it…

Stan: That’s right. Those things are so key because, just like you say, you bring in a bunch of assets. Well, the thing is, you need to not only configure them, but then you’re going to hand them out. For your case, you had 21,000. Well, you handed them out to a bunch of people; now where’s it going?

So you have to be able to track it. Or it may be that you have assets in a particular building and you are on a campus or something. So those things are really key to be able to track and know where your asset is and who has it.

But then the other thing is, just like you said, as things get older, do we need to retire them? Is it still good? Is it the end of support? Those things are really critical too, and you have to be able to track those kinds of things. Very, very key to know what you got.

And then it could be that you may have a power user that’s using a more powerful device, but it’s not good for them anymore. So, you may be able to reissue it to somebody else. Rebuild it and give it to somebody else, and it could last them for another couple of years. 

Jay: I was thinking, Michael, as Stan was talking about that, that is the ROI and the financial impact of not managing your assets. We had Mosyle, which is an MDM, and we paid about $300,000 more than we should have because we wouldn’t manage our assets.

We didn’t do the end-of-life cycle. We didn’t retire the old devices. And once you buy those licenses, they’re perpetual. They keep racking up. So when you were talking, Stan, I thought about that. What tools has Clear Winds come up with to help manage that whole process? From procuring the device to the lifecycle to retiring it to managing it. 

Stan: We’ve had our development team actually build an IT asset management system just for this kind of thing. One thing is you have to know where your assets are.

The other thing that we really hadn’t even talked about is what’s actually on that asset. What kind of software and those kinds of things? Those are key. We do that, but we’ve also got a managed service team. They have tools where they go out and discover everything. Maybe you don’t even know what you got, so we’ll go and discover every computer and every server, and we will not only do that, but we also are pulling in all the software that’s on those devices so that we know what’s on there and what version it is. 

What are the implications of not updating your systems? Could be security issues and those kinds of things. What are the financial implications if you don’t know what physical assets you have?

That could be a real problem, right? Because you’re just going to be buying extra stuff. But when you think about the software, I’ve seen many organizations, including ourselves, that have bought extra software licenses that we didn’t really need.

Michael: We’re going to have people from all different backgrounds and organizations, all different types and sizes. Who’s an ideal candidate to take this strategic approach towards this? Do you have to be a bigger company? What’s the ideal size for it to start thinking strategically about creating a system to manage this?

Stan: Any size organization can use this. If you have just a few employees, it’s a good time to start because you think, “Oh, I can just keep that on a spreadsheet.” Well, next thing you know, you’ve got 50, 60 assets. Then every time I’m thinking about it, now I have to go back to that. I have to update it when I could probably do something a lot more automated to keep up with those kinds of things.

So really any size. Now, a company like ours, we can help you with that. So you don’t have to go out and buy an IT asset management system and manage it. So, for your smaller companies, that may be something that you’d like for us to do, or for a larger company, you may want to manage your assets yourself. We can help you out with that, or other organizations can help you out with those kinds of things. 

Michael: We’re kind of talking about it too, the implications of not doing it. From a cybersecurity standpoint, what are the implications of not having a solid grasp on the devices that you have? 

Stan: One thing that you always want to do with any of your assets, from a software and OS type standpoint, is update them. Right?

So those are key things that you have to do all the time. What’s the implication of not doing that? Obviously we’ve already mentioned security. Security can be a big issue that, if you don’t do it, is going to kind of get away from you.

One thing that’s just kind of rolled past us was Windows 10, which has kind of sunsetted now. Microsoft has realized that everybody couldn’t get to Windows 11 that quickly. So, they’ve kind of made a provision to keep on doing security updates for another year or so.

But the thing is, they are not doing all the updates. It’s just the critical security stuff, and you have to pay for that. They want you to move to Windows 11, and there will be a cutoff one day, and that’s it. If you’re not on Windows 11, you’re just kind of up the creek. So that’s very key, the security side of it. 

Jay: You mentioned the cybersecurity part of that. CrowdStrike. That all happened about three months ago, right? It totally wiped out systems. I remember going through the airport and looking up, and half of their monitors were blue-screened. They had the blue screen of death, but that was because they didn’t have the update. So some of the machines had updates, and some of them didn’t.

I remember walking through there thinking, like, “Wow.” I had no idea of the implications of it at that early stage, but if you have asset management software and you have updates and you know what’s on the hardware, then it helps you avoid some of those cyber issues. 

Michael: I’m hearing two things: it’s one thing to have it; it’s another to have somebody knowledgeable monitoring it and understanding what it is. 

Stan: You definitely have to have both so that you know what you got. Just thinking about not having one, it was kind of reminding me of an instance where our company was kind of managing a lot of our IT assets, but we do another thing that is device repair. We repair them for school systems and repair their student devices. But we have to have parts, right? So there are a lot of parts that kind of go into it. When we started out, we’d order parts and bring them in, but we weren’t really putting them into an asset management system.

Eventually we were, so we’re keeping up with everything. But it was interesting. I went out to our warehouse not too long ago and came back. I was talking to my leader there, and I was like, “Back in this cage, we just got boxes and boxes.”

All those were before we were tracking. Just older parts that we don’t need anymore, but we weren’t tracking them, so we didn’t know what we had. So we probably overbought, obviously. If we were doing the right thing, we would’ve saved some money on parts that we didn’t need to buy.

That would’ve been helpful. Anyway, those kinds of things are very key. And then we could also attract those for lifecycle because those parts are only for, let’s just say, certain Chrome HP G4s or something—something that’s kind of sunsetted.

Michael: Tell me about the lifecycle. From a sales seat, I hear so many people think, “Oh yeah, if I buy something, it should last forever.”

Stan: Yeah, if you got a management system, you can look at this. The lifecycle of a device is only so long, and it’s different for different devices. Maybe a switch you might get 6, 8, or 10 years out of, but a user device is probably only going to last less than three or four years.

But the thing is, you have to know when that device is coming up. That’s the great thing—when you get an IT asset management system, you want to be able to have good reporting, right? So you can put all your assets in there, but if you can’t really report on it, it’s not that helpful.

So it’s really key to be able to report on what you got there and say, “What do I have that’s coming out of support?” And even just tracking your hardware and software. When do I need to update my warranty? Servers are a good thing about that. They’ll give you a three-year warranty, but then after that it’s not really supported, but that’s still a critical device for you. So that may last you for two or three more years.

Jay: It helps you forecast. It helps you plan, and your whole thought process is better. I was thinking, we have these kiosks that people clock in and out for work on, and they’re used Chromebooks. Chromebooks that are end-of-life. When they’re end-of-life, they’re just like a brick. We had no asset management around these Chromebooks because they were end-of-life, so they weren’t even manageable in the Google Management Console.

So I was thinking if you had a real asset management tool, you could forecast. You can avoid emergency purchases or a catastrophe where you can’t function as an organization. I really think that the decision-making process is huge.

Stan: It’s kind of interesting you mentioned the kiosk. We got another customer that uses Apples in their kiosk. They’re like, “Oh, those things last forever. You don’t have to manage ’em.” So they didn’t want them in the management system.

Well, guess what? Eventually they kicked the bucket, and they were like, “Hey, what do we need to do about it?” I’m like, well, we’re not even sure because we’re not monitoring. We don’t really know what it is. We have to send somebody out there. It costs them money.

But if you have it under management, you can look at it at a moment’s notice and see what you need. It’s great. 

Jay: You touched on things like the warranty and the contracts, especially on big servers and data center stuff—switches, firewalls. If you have that warranty information tied into your asset management. That’s huge. Because a lot of IT directors probably don’t even know when their firewall is going to be out of warranty until they get an email from the vendor saying, “Hey.”

Michael: Even with that, we work with a ton of organizations, and I hear all the time, “Hey, why do I even need a warranty? Why do I even need this license?” For those who might not have experienced that yet, what does that provide them by being able to have renewal or the warranty? What does that even do for you?

Stan: It gives you support from the vendor. So, if you do have an issue or if something’s going wrong in your firewall that you need to know, it gives you the ability to call them and get help. So that one is really key.

And then, getting all the software and firmware updates and everything that is part of that warranty.  Mm-hmm. As you know, things get older. Threat actors figure things out on your device. So it’s very key for you to have those kinds of things and to have that warranty in that service. Because if you don’t, you’re pretty much on your own. Then you do have a problem. You call up, and it’s like, “Oh, you don’t have a warranty.” And if you needed an upgrade on that, well, you’re kind of out of luck on that too.

Jay: Hey Stan, try to call VMware; if you don’t have a support contract with them, they’re not helping you. They don’t care if you pay them a million bucks, you know?

That’s a great point because, coming from someone who did it for many years, it made me feel better knowing when I had warranty and service and support. But early on in my career, the only way I knew was I got an email from a vendor like you guys. I think something in asset management, Stan, that a lot of people don’t think about is having those contracts tied into that asset. That’s a really good tool, to be honest with you. The more I thought about it.

Michael: I know you talked a little bit about the tool that Clear Winds has. What is that?  

Stan: It’s an IT asset management system. It goes by a couple of different names depending on what you’re looking at. So for schools, it’s called School Manager. There’s a version for the commercial world that we just call IT asset management. What’s great about that is it has a database that you can utilize for your assets, and you can report on it—everything that we’ve talked about. There’s a couple of things that we like about it. One is we built it as a web app so you can just use your phone.

If you need to scan devices into the system, you can pull out your camera, and you just scan, scan, scan, and put it right in. So that’s very nice. Or maybe you have a technician that’s going out for a problem. They can go scan the device, and then everything pops up. All the information about that device can be very helpful, and to have that web app and scan is great. The reporting is super nice. 

The other thing that we heard when we were creating this—we actually sat down with three IT directors, and they were actually complaining, like, “Hey, our system, it just doesn’t work.” So one of the big things they were asking for was custom fills. A lot of them do not offer custom fills out there. So that’s what we did. We put in some custom fills that they can use for whatever they want, and maybe they’ve got their own asset tag or they’ve got other information that they would like to track.

Jay: I’m telling you, Michael, this is a great episode. I think our listeners and our viewers are going to love hearing about this. Number one: Clear Winds offers such an amazing tool for our end users and organizations. But number two is just all of the things around IT asset management that Stan talked about. I think a lot of people let those things fall by the wayside. They don’t think about how important a lot of that is.

Michael: I feel like it’s important to put yourself in a spot where you can hear what other people are doing—what works and what’s not working. So I appreciate you coming on today and sharing that information with us. 

Jay: We’re so glad you came on stand and appreciate you being in the studio with us today—the Clear Winds Studio; we like our setup here. It’s fantastic, and I think it’s going to be great for all of our listeners and viewers because IT directors only know what they know, and a lot of them are super busy. They don’t have time to network and stuff and get around different people. So this is such a great avenue for them to gain some knowledge and different life experiences from people.

What a great show today. We are so glad to have Stan in the studio, and we are super excited about this episode. Tune in, go follow us on Instagram, and go follow us on X. This is Michael and Jay, and we are out.