Cloud asset management is the practice of tracking and managing the resources used in an organization’s cloud-based services. It is essential for increasing visibility and control in an organization’s cloud infrastructure and optimizing usage, compliance, security and cost-effectiveness of cloud resources.
Cloud asset management helps manage resources in cloud environments, such as virtual machines, virtual and physical storage devices, servers, network configurations and intangible assets, e.g., software licenses.
Organizations use specialized cloud asset management software to track and maintain these resources, monitor performance and optimize usage. Cloud asset management is useful for organizations that use many cloud-based services, where tracking assets by spreadsheet is not feasible.
What are some examples of cloud assets?
Cloud assets are various resources and services hosted in a cloud-based environment. These assets, which can vary depending on the cloud environment, include the following:
- Applications.
- Compute resources.
- Policies.
- Licenses.
- Monitoring and management tools.
- Networking components.
- Operating system inventory runtime information.
- Security resources.
- Storage services.
The cloud provider typically defines asset types. For example, Amazon Web Services groups asset types differently from Microsoft Azure.
The importance and benefits of cloud asset management
Asset management generally involves tracking and logging any tangible and intangible business assets. However, tracking and managing these physical and virtual assets can be challenging. Cloud asset management is essential for any organization that relies on cloud infrastructure at scale, as it provides the following:
- Accuracy. Cloud asset management software enables organizations to maintain accurate records of all used cloud instances, which helps prevent errors in tracking or managing them.
- Automated processes. Cloud asset management software typically includes some level of automated features, such as automated discovery of new assets, automated tagging and automated monitoring.
- Control and visibility. Cloud asset management software provides increased visibility into an organization’s cloud environment, making monitoring and managing IT teams easier.
- Cost tracking. Cloud asset management software enables an organization to better track associated monetary costs in using its cloud resources.
- Monitoring and maintenance. Cloud asset management software can keep track of different performance metrics, as well as software versions, configurations and licenses, improving management processes.
- Optimized resource usage. Cloud asset management software can identify unused or underused resources, enabling the organization to scale up or down as needed.
- Security and compliance. Cloud asset management software can continuously monitor configurations and policies to help ensure compliance with industry standards.
- Time savings. Cloud asset management helps to automate and streamline the process of tracking and maintaining cloud resources, saving IT teams time.
Common cloud asset management challenges and pitfalls
Although cloud asset management has several benefits, it also has the following downsides:
- Management challenges. Cloud asset management tools can struggle with managing policies, access control and tracking across distributed cloud environments due to the constant changes in cloud infrastructure.
- Limited integration. Some cloud security tools might not be able to integrate with others, and in a distributed cloud environment, this can affect the organization’s security posture.
- Disorganization. Poor tagging of cloud resources can lead to a disorganized cloud environment, making it more challenging to determine usage, ownership and management.
Cloud asset management tools and technology
Cloud asset management tools provide automated features for tracking, monitoring and optimizing cloud resources. They can also typically integrate with larger cloud platforms. The following is a sample of available cloud asset management tools from Gartner Peer Insights:
- EMaint Computerized Maintenance Management System.
- IBM Maximo Application Suite.
- IFS Cloud Enterprise Asset Management.
- Oracle Enterprise Asset Management.
- SAP Enterprise Asset Management.
- UpKeep Asset Operations Management Platform.
Best practices for successful cloud asset management
To help avoid some of the common pitfalls when implementing cloud asset management tools, organizations should do the following:
- Adopt consistent standards. To ensure consistency across cloud environments, organizations should define a clear standard for tagging cloud assets and enforce tagging policies using automation.
- Centralize billing. All related billing information should be centralized to help organizations monitor costs more accurately and optimize spending — even across multi-cloud environments.
- Implement cloud asset security. Organizations should validate a cloud service’s features against its security and governance policies to ensure the services do not have any features or issues that could compromise policies. Likewise, in multi-cloud environments, organizations should use a centralized security platform or ensure security platform compatibility before implementation.
- Link cloud assets to applications. This can help optimize performance by assessing how cloud resources are used. Each resource is linked to specific applications and users and to cloud usage monitoring using application performance monitoring software.
- Optimize tools. Organizations should also be open to using multiple tools, as no single tool fits all their needs when managing cloud assets.
There are multiple options available when it comes to choosing asset management software. Learn more about available enterprise asset management software products.
