1. How effective is your current ITAM program for corporate-owned, on-premise assets?
Assessing your ITAM program’s strengths and weaknesses will help you understand the effort it will take to manage cloud assets and the improvements you need to make.
2. Can your current tools be used to manage cloud assets?
What will your discovery tool discover? How effective will your usage tool be in monitoring usage?
3. Are you involved in the negotiations with the cloud vendor?
Like software assets, the terms and conditions are critical for managing vendor performance, costs, and risks.
4. What information will you need from the cloud vendor to monitor usage and cost?
If your tools do not provide the information you need to manage cloud assets, what reports can the vendor provide to help?
5. How will you assess the cloud vendor’s performance?
You will need access to the cloud contracts, including the service level agreement and access to the people using the cloud assets to manage the cloud vendor effectively.
The cloud asset is a new type of IT asset that comes with its own unique challenges. And while you can leverage knowledge and experience from managing other asset types, you will need to expand your skill set to become a successful cloud asset manager.