Asset and CI: The Relationship

My following three points would help us in understanding the relationship between asset and CI:

1. All assets are not CIs
2. All CIs are not assets
3. Some assets are CIs and some CIs are assets

Confused!!!

Please refer to my previous post "Understanding A Configuration Item (CI)". This post would help you understand how we can validate if an item qualifies to be a CI.

Let me clarify each of these points with an example:

All Assets are not CIs:

Items like phones or our office ACs are assets but these are not delivering any IT service and thus does not qualify to be a CI

All CIs are not Assets:

Various documents like Process Documents, SOP, Agreements, etc. qualify to be a CI. Also, items like freewares, ports, virtual machines, etc. qualify to be a CI. But none of these has a financial value attached to it and thus they do not qualify as an asset.

Some Assets are CIs and some CIs are Assets

Some of the assets like physical servers, licensed softwares, etc. are an asset and qualify to be a CI as well.

Thus, using set theory we can define relationship between Asset and CI as:

Understanding A Configuration Item (CI)

A Configuration Item (CI) can be defined as any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service. It should be manageable and traceable. It is an asset or a service component that is under the control of configuration management.

Attributes of a CI

•  Category 
•  Relationships
•  Status

For any asset or service component to qualify as a CI ALL of the following conditions have to be met:

1. It MUST be required to deliver an IT service
2. It MUST be identifiable as a unique entity 
3. It MUST be manageable 
4. It MUST have some characteristic that can change

Examples:

Item	Delivers IT Service?	Is Unique?	Is Manageable?	Has Characteristics That Can Change?	Qualifies As A CI?
Server	P	P	P	P	P
Process Doc.	P	P	P	P	P
Telephone	O	P	P	P	O
Building	P	P	P	O	O
AC	P/O	P	P	P	P/O
Projector	P/O	P	P	P	P/O

Example of a Building - A building does not has characteristics that can change. Its area, floors, wings, etc. will remain the same. We do find building or location information captured in CMDB but then it is the information about a CI which tells us where it is physically or virtually located.

Example of AC - An AC in a data center will qualify as a CI since cooling is one of the key parameters which affects performance of a Server by ensuring that CPU temperature is under control. But in all other cases where it is just keeping our offices, conference rooms, etc. cool, it does not qualify as a CI as it is not delivering any IT service.

Example of Projector - For an organization which is into delivering Training services, Projector would qualify to be a CI. For all other cases it would not.

Thus, a key point to note is that whether any item would qualify to be a CI would also depend on the type of service that the organization is into.