If you ask Mckinsey and Forbes what the 2030s will look like, their answer points to space tourism, flying vehicles, and humanoid robots as the norm. In just five years we might actually be living in the future that "The Jetsons" heralded since the sixties!
On the flip side, if you ask an IT asset manager what they would like the future of ITAM to be like, their answer might be more practical –like having basic processes in place for any and all organizations.
Although they might be excited about the latest tech, they would be happier to have features and products that make their work lives easier –or at least more predictable. Having accurate SLAs from providers and early onboarding notices from HR might just be their definition of a rosy future.
IT professionals need tools that work well and features that keep their business running, whether it’s done with the latest technology or improving the existing one. In 2030, IT asset management will need to continue to adapt to hybrid work environments, shift completely to the cloud –with all the financial implications that that has–, and adapt the AI features that keep IT teams agile.
When we talk about the future of IT asset management, we also need to talk about the future of work, as this determines where IT assets live. Whether on-prem or on the cloud, IT professionals need to be prepared to have the necessary infrastructure to enable work wherever it takes place.
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Remote work expert Nick Bloom has four main predictions for 2030, according to Flex Index. These predictions include which work model will dominate by 2030 –hint: the future is hybrid–, the impact of technology on remote work, the risks to the growth of Fully Remote work, and the impact that this will have on commercial real estate.
First, Bloom predicts that in 2030, hybrid work will be the norm. Employees are likely to favor working remotely during part of the week while coming to the office on others, with Tuesday to Thursday being popular office days.
Bloom envisions significant tech improvements that will make remote work more effective by 2030. That can look like having innovations that simplify virtual collaboration, offering an experience close to face-to-face interactions and enabling smoother transitions between remote and on-site work. AI and automation will likely be behind these innovations to support the hybrid work model.
As Bloom suggests: “By 2030, it could easily be Holograms, massive screens, multiple cameras over the screen, so whenever you look at any part of the screen, it appears you're making eye contact [...] we'll look back at 2023 and think ‘Did we really have all these calls on these little laptops with one camera sat at the top of the screen within a connectivity flaking in and out?’”
Despite these tech improvements, Bloom anticipates that fully remote work could be threatened by offshoring and artificial intelligence. Jobs that can be done remotely are also the ones that can be easily moved to regions with lower labor costs or replaced by AI. This may drive a preference for hybrid work over fully remote as job security becomes a concern.
Finally, the rise in remote work is leading to a decline in demand for traditional office spaces. This will impact commercial real estate, possibly leading to repurposing of office space into coworking hubs or flexible living environments designed for remote and distributed teams. Developers who adapt to this change have the opportunity to serve new business needs in the commercial real estate market.
As the hybrid work model becomes the norm, there will be a need for technology and tools that allow workers to transition seamlessly from the office to their home. For the IT asset management function, that means adopting cloud environments so that users can work effectively without having to go into an office at all times.
FinOps experts Rob Martin and Brian Adler explain in the ITAM Review: “Nearly every organization in the world will be impacted by the shift to cloud. And to a greater or larger degree, all will need to take action to adapt. We are moving from a world where we centrally procure, own and optimize our finite IT resources, to one where any of our engineers can lease any of hundreds of thousands of resources that might suit their needs, bypassing traditional checks & balances.”
Under this circumstance, ITAM will have to include the discovery, categorization and classification of cloud assets, including specific Financial Management and optimization of those cloud assets. Cloud FinOps is an emerging discipline that helps organizations in this matter, aligning their IT, Finance and Business teams to better control and optimize cloud costs.
While FinOps focuses on cost-efficiency in cloud usage, ITAM professionals ensure that savings on infrastructure aren’t wiped out by expensive licensing fees when moving services. Collaboration between ITAM and FinOps can lead to savings, at a time when managing software assets in the cloud is becoming more crucial and complicated.
Although it is only just taking off, we predict that by 2030, the IT asset management function will have to collaborate closely with FinOps and Cloud management to ensure that organizations have visibility over cloud assets and help leadership make better decisions about their cloud spend.
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In the coming years, AI is expected to enhance ITAM tools to automate everyday tasks like inventory tracking, license managing, software deployment or even procurement. These new AI-powered tools will be capable of analysing past trends and data to create maintenance forecasts, identify opportunities for cost savings or improve resource allocation.
We can expect AI to transform all aspects of ITAM. For instance, when it comes to laptop inventory management AI can make it easier to locate lost laptops or ensure that only specific users have access to certain assets.
IT asset management tools like GroWrk, have already started to implement AI into their solution. The expectation is that by 2030, these systems will be completely fine-tuned with totally accurate results.
However, we also anticipate that in 2030, some IT professionals will still need help in getting the basics of IT asset management right, be it by having the most advanced large language model or simply some very robust processes.
As ITAM professional, David Foxen puts it: "We are still finding organizations with a relatively low ITAM maturity level. When this is the case, organizations should focus on getting even the most basic ITAM processes and controls in place. They do not have to be amazing or mature. Still, as long as they are documented and communicated and promote a steer toward ITAM best practice, it is a great start."
By 2030, we expect AI to be able to help IT professionals set those best practices and establish solid bases for their IT asset management tasks. AI can help with this by providing insights into what is happening in the environment, what needs to be done, and how it can be done more efficiently.
We’re almost five years away from 2030. If the past five years can teach us anything is that a) global events happen unexpectedly and b) tech is moving faster than ever. Looking ahead, the most important quality any business should have is being agile and capable of adapting to changing circumstances.
For the IT asset management industry, this means continue adapting to hybrid work and leveraging the necessary technology to make that happen as seamlessly as possible by using cloud-based tools and AI. While this shift is already taking place, not all organizations have adopted the technology or the processes to make this a reality.
The challenge will reside in having the tools that can accurately track and manage the devices of those location-independent employees throughout their entire lifecycle with the least friction possible. As we’ve already mentioned, IT professionals need tools that work and make their lives easier, whether by using the latest AI technology or mastering the very basics of IT asset management.
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