1.3.2 Integrated management of corporate asset information
Managing corporate assets requires various types of information, such as information about devices, software programs, networks, and about maintenance and lease contracts. Defining inter-relationships among these information types allows you to effectively use this information. For example, you can perform operations such as comparing licenses installed on devices to the number of licenses owned by each group.
An asset management system based on Asset Console can achieve integrated management of the asset information needed for asset management. For any specific device or software program, asset information can be added based on a variety of approaches. Corporate assets, such as equipment and networks, can be managed comprehensively by storing asset information in an asset management database.
Additionally, you can easily handle changes to the organization because the information managed for each group can be extracted from the centrally managed asset information. A user to whom a division is assigned can also manage the asset information of other groups.
The following figure shows the concept of the integrated management of asset information using Asset Console.
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![[Figure]](GRAPHICS/ZU010200.GIF)
Asset Console can manage many types of information, in addition to those shown in Figure 1-2. Figure 1-3 shows the connection between the various types of information managed by Asset Console and asset management databases.
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![[Figure]](GRAPHICS/ZU010600.GIF)
Information that can be managed by Asset Console can be classified broadly into hardware asset information, software asset information, contract information, user information, and location information.
Asset information is management information created for each and every unit of hardware and unit of software. The information is designed to connect the various types of attribute information of each asset. Asset information is also used as a generic term to refer to information that can be managed by Asset Console.
The various types of interconnected information, such as network information, IP address control information, and IP group information, can also be associated and managed in the asset management database. For details about how to manage information using the asset management database, see 10.1 Asset management database.