// Blog
Practical reads for IT teams managing assets without enterprise budgets.
One trend, a few category moves, three reads, one thing to do this week. Ghost assets have crossed from budget leak to reportable-breach risk, the HIPAA Security Rule final rule lands with an explicit asset-inventory mandate, and IDC says PC prices still aren't done climbing.
One trend, a few category moves, three reads, one thing to do this week. Memory costs are pushing PC prices up 17%, the Windows 10 retirement wave is straining disposal capacity, and NIS2 enforcement just got real.
One trend, a few category moves, three reads, one thing to do this week. CIS Controls v8.1 tightened the asset-inventory baseline, the Ivanti breach reinforces why you can't secure what you can't see, and IDC is calling 2026 the biggest PC refresh year in a decade.
One trend, a few category moves, three reads, one thing to do this week. Shadow AI subscriptions are creating a new class of untracked spend, the tariff impact on hardware procurement is no longer theoretical, and Gartner's latest framework expands what counts as an IT asset.
One trend, a few category moves, three reads, one thing to do this week. The FinOps Foundation and ITAM Forum formalized their partnership, Forrester is calling time of death on the monolithic CMDB, and InvGate's funding round signals a real category shift.
Your spreadsheet worked when you had 20 devices. Now you have 150, three people editing the same file, and no idea if the data is current. Here's how to know when you've outgrown it.
Lansweeper is a powerful discovery and inventory platform built for enterprises. If you're a smaller team paying for capabilities you'll never use, here's what to look for instead.
Freshservice bundles ITAM into a full ITSM platform. If you just need to track assets, here's why smaller teams are looking for something leaner.
ManageEngine AssetExplorer is feature-rich and affordable — but the setup complexity and Zoho ecosystem lock-in aren't for every team. Here's what to consider.
One trend, a few category notes, three reads, one thing to do this week. The EU's Right to Repair Directive is real and dated, Device-as-a-Service is gaining ground in mid-market, and CISA's Hardware Bill of Materials framework is on the implementation slope.
One trend, a few category notes, three reads, one thing to do this week. Hardware refresh budgets are under pressure (the cause is DRAM, not tariffs), every ITAM vendor has bolted on an AI agent, and SaaS-seat reclamation remains the highest-ROI audit a small IT team can run.
Six months after Windows 10 end-of-life, most lean IT teams still can't answer the question that matters: how many of our machines are on a supported OS? Here's what we're seeing — and what to do about it.
Lost laptops, missed warranty claims, and onboarding chaos. The numbers add up to $4,500-7,500/year for a 50-person company.
A practical spreadsheet template that tracks what you actually need: devices, assignments, warranties, and purchase info. Imports directly into assetcompass.
Asset Panda's flexibility and per-asset pricing look great in the demo — until you get the quote and realize most of the customization goes unused.
When your inventory is distributed across 30 cities and every asset movement involves shipping, the spreadsheet stops working fast.
Open source, freemium, or spreadsheets — every flavor of "free" has a trade-off. Here's how to know when it's time to pay for something.
Enterprise tools assume you have a team. Spreadsheets assume you don't grow. Here's what works in the middle.
Covers the gaps most teams miss — warranty blind spots, ghost assets assigned to departed employees, and devices stuck in "ordered" limbo.
That shared spreadsheet with the name ending in "v3 - USE THIS ONE.xlsx" isn't scaling. Here's when to move to a real tool.
Snipe-IT is free and open source — until you factor in the ops burden. What to look for in a cloud-native alternative.