Host: Kris Johnson, Anglepoint Chief Product Officer
Speakers: Rich Toomey, Lead Consultant; Alan Legerlotz, Principal Consultant

Episode Overview

In this episode of The ITAM Executive, Kris Johnson, Chief Product Officer at Anglepoint, hosts a discussion with Rich Toomey and Alan Legerlotz, two seasoned IT Asset Management professionals. What You’ll Learn

This episode provides a comprehensive discussion on the challenges of integrating various ITAM tools, specifically ServiceNow and Flexera, into a company's ecosystem. Some of the main points touched upon include:

1. Integration Realities: Salespeople often oversell the seamlessness of integrating various tools with ITAM platforms. In reality, the data, such as purchase orders, rarely include all the necessary details for automatic normalization of entitlements, requiring significant manual effort.
2. CMDB (Configuration Management Database) Health: The state of an organization’s CMDB significantly impacts the success of ITAM technology implementations. Customizations can create problems when aligning with the Common Services Data Model (CSDM).
3. Data Quality Issues: Inconsistencies in data between various sources (Flexera, ServiceNow, etc.) and manual updates to the CMDB can lead to significant discrepancies, requiring constant governance and reconciliation.
4. Governance and Maintenance: ITAM processes need continuous governance, including regular health checks of the CMDB, catching discrepancies before they become large-scale issues, and preventing the same errors from recurring.
5. Long-term Strategy: The right ITAM tool today may not be the best one in the future. Businesses should remain flexible and evolve their toolsets as their needs change.

Throughout the episode, both Rich and Alan stress that purchasing and deploying ITAM tools is only the beginning—real success comes from ongoing management, monitoring, and a clear focus on desired outcomes, whether it’s cost optimization, risk mitigation, or something else entirely.