RFID Asset Tracking for IT Assets - Sponsored Whitepaper

Making the Case for Investing in IT Asset Management

In Predictions 2007: Prospering in an Era of Hyper Disruption, industry analyst firm IDC reports that worldwide spending of information technology (IT) will grow 6.6 percent in 2007, up from 6.3 percent in 2006. Although increased IT spending bodes well for the global economy, individual businesses are not investing enough in tracking the location and movement of their costly IT equipment, making them vulnerable to theft, or at the very least, misplacement.

The number of lost IT assets and related data is staggering, eclipsed only by the impact on those individuals or organizations whose proprietary information was stored on these assets.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, employee theft costs about $50 billion annually. The FBI estimates that one out of every 10 laptops will be stolen within the first 12 months of purchase. Of these, 90 percent will not be recovered. Gartner Research calculates that a single lost laptop can cost an organization more than $6,000 just in terms of the hardware, software, and labor required to restore lost data. There's also the lost productivity of the employee while waiting for a replacement laptop. On top of that, the average value of intellectual property on a laptop in the United States is estimated at $28,000.

Examples of companies and individuals impacted by the loss of IT equipment or data: