Symptom
CMDB records 20-30% more or fewer devices than a physical spot check finds
- Root cause
- No automated discovery feeding the CMDB, updates rely on manual entry
- Business risk
- Inaccurate risk and cost reporting, failed audit evidence
Managed IT · Asset & Licence Management
IT Asset & Software Licence Management
IT asset management is the ongoing tracking, reconciliation and lifecycle governance of hardware and software assets against a central configuration management database (CMDB), used to control cost, licence compliance and audit exposure. Evolvice operates asset and licence management as a managed service, reconciling inventory monthly and defending against vendor audits.
- ISO 27001
- NIS2
- BSI-Grundschutz
- GDPR
Overview
Technical Overview
Enterprise IT estates accumulate assets faster than anyone retires them: laptops from a merger, SaaS seats provisioned by individual teams, licences renewed automatically without a usage review. Most organizations discover the gap between their CMDB and reality only when a software vendor initiates an audit. We run asset and licence management as a continuous discipline, not a pre-audit fire drill.
What we put right
- CMDB drifts from reality within months, with no automated reconciliation process
- Software licences renewed on autopilot regardless of actual seat utilization
- No true-up process ahead of vendor audits, creating exposure to back-payments and penalties
- Decommissioned hardware not retired from asset records, distorting cost and risk reporting
Diagnostic
Common Failure Modes in IT Asset & Licence Management
Patterns we repeatedly find when taking over asset and licence management for an existing estate.
Symptom
Annual software spend includes licences for accounts deactivated a year earlier
- Root cause
- No linkage between HR offboarding and licence de-provisioning
- Business risk
- Recoverable cost silently lost every renewal cycle
Symptom
Vendor licence audit results in an unbudgeted six-figure true-up invoice
- Root cause
- No entitlement-vs-deployment reconciliation performed before the audit notice
- Business risk
- Budget shock, weakened negotiating position with the vendor
Symptom
Retired laptops still appear as active assets with open security patches overdue
- Root cause
- No decommissioning workflow that updates the CMDB and asset register together
- Business risk
- Inflated attack surface reporting, wasted patching effort
Accuracy
Asset management is not a spreadsheet — it is a defensible record of truth.
A spreadsheet updated once a year tells you what was true then, not what is deployed now. A defensible asset register is reconciled against automated discovery on a fixed cadence, so it can be produced as evidence the moment an auditor or regulator asks for it.
Our asset management practice treats the CMDB as the single source of truth that cost control, security patching and licence compliance all read from.
Definition
Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
A Configuration Management Database is a structured repository that records IT assets and their attributes and relationships, providing the authoritative reference used for change management, cost allocation and compliance reporting.
Delivery model
How We Operate IT Asset & Licence Management
A repeatable five-step engagement we run for every asset estate we take over.
- 1
Discovery & Baseline
Automated hardware and software discovery across the estate, reconciled against the existing CMDB and licence entitlements, with findings delivered in 10 working days.
- 2
CMDB Remediation
Correction of stale, duplicate or missing records, and integration of discovery tooling so the CMDB updates automatically rather than by manual entry.
- 3
Licence Reconciliation
Entitlement-versus-deployment comparison per publisher, identifying both over-licensing (wasted spend) and under-licensing (audit exposure).
- 4
Lifecycle Governance
Defined workflows for provisioning, transfer and decommissioning that keep the asset register and CMDB synchronized with HR and procurement events.
- 5
Continuous Reconciliation & Audit Readiness
Monthly reconciliation cycle, quarterly licence position reporting, and audit-ready evidence packages maintained on an ongoing basis.
Compliance
Compliance Mapping — IT Asset & Licence Management
How our delivery model maps to the four reference frameworks German enterprises are audited against.
| Control | ISO 27001 | NIS2 | BSI-Grundschutz | GDPR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asset Inventory Management | A.5.9 / A.8.1 | Art. 21(2)(a) | CON.9 | Art. 30 |
| Software Licence Compliance | A.5.32 | Art. 21(2)(d) | OPS.1.1.6 | n/a |
| Asset Decommissioning & Disposal | A.7.14 / A.8.10 | Art. 21(2)(e) | SYS.1.8 | Art. 17 |
| Configuration & Change Management | A.8.32 | Art. 21(2)(b) | CON.8 | Art. 32(1)(b) |
| Third-Party & Vendor Records | A.5.19 / A.5.20 | Art. 21(2)(d) | OPS.2.2 | Art. 28 |
Questions & Answers
Questions enterprise buyers ask
Definitions, delivery detail and commercial answers in one place — written to be quotable by search and AI answer engines, and readable by your team.
How it works
IT asset management is the process of tracking hardware and software assets across their lifecycle — from procurement through deployment to decommissioning — to control cost, security risk and compliance exposure.
Working with Evolvice
In the cluster
Managed IT & End-User Support
Service desk, devices, endpoints and IT operations run to agreed SLAs for your whole workforce.
Part of our Managed IT & End-User Support practiceTalk to the Evolvice team.
We start with a 30-minute diagnostic of your current delivery — at no cost and with no sales pitch. You leave with a written summary of findings either way.