The market for IT asset management (ITAM) tools is showing strong growth and is on the verge of mainstream adoption, says a new report from Gartner. The report, "MarketScope for the IT Asset Management Repository, 2008," includes an analysis of 11 software vendors.

According to Gartner, IT asset management (ITAM) solutions have now reached 35% market penetration. This growth will continue as customer look to ITAM system to help better management their IT assets, and provide integration with enterprise asset management (EAM) and configuration management database (CMDB) systems. Gartner expects market penetration for centralized ITAM repositories to grow to 70% over the next five years.

The ITAM market has evolved during the past few years in part because of vendor consolidation. Users are also increasingly adopting IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes, including CMDB usage, which support requirements that are different from, but complementary to, ITAM. The ITAM tool market is shifting toward a financial/compliance approach that is managed in concert with CMDB, providing IT service view data and cost information on the assets that make up a service.

"The future of ITAM repositories will unfold in two directions," the report says. "First, the market will continue evolving toward the alignment of costs, compliance and contractual information with IT service management. This market is most familiar to customers that have established asset management programs. The second area is the intersection of [project and portfolio management] PPM toolsets. At the risk of oversimplifying, all projects become assets, and all assets ultimately leave as part of a project."

ITAM products are evolving to include more data analysis and better integration within product suites and with third-party products, such as CMDB, PPM and facilities management systems. Customers are especially looking for integration with adjacent toolsets such as service desk, purchasing and configuration management.

"The combination of tighter integration and better financial information will provide the chance to identify opportunities for IT asset portfolio efficiencies and to more-directly align costs with customers that are driving down costs," the report says.

As part of the report, Gartner evaluated 11 vendors, giving them ratings that ranged from "caution" to "strong positive":

Altiris - Promising

Axios Systems - Caution

BMC Software - Positive

CA - Strong Positive

Eracent - Caution

HP - Strong Positive

IBM - Positive

Provenance Technologies - Promising

PS'Soft - Promising

Staff&Line - Caution

USU - Promising

Gartner gave its highest "strong positive" ratings to HP and CA. According to the report, CA has a "strong enterprise offering in the ITAM repository space, but it must continue focusing on integration (in its own toolset and with third-party vendors) for it to maintain a leading position in this market."

HP's AssetCenter product also received high marks, although Gartner cautioned that the company faces integration issues because of its acquisition strategy.

Axios Systems received a "caution" rating because of its limited ITAM capability. Eracent also received a "caution" because it lacks portfolio management and a wide array of IT service management tools, although it is strong in the software asset management space. Gartner felt that Staff&Line, on the other hand, has a limited appeal beyond its traditional European market because it lacks features like decision modeling and analytics.