IT directors need to take control of their companies' software and hardware assets if they are to succeed in putting technology at the heart of business, according to senior industry figures taking part in a London debate yesterday.

Geoff Webster, chief executive of the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST), claimed IT departments often have no accurate idea of the equipment present in their organisations. He said: "Most of the blame has to fall on the IT director, for a lack of attention to IT management."

Simon Young, UK Vice President of infrastructure management software company MainControl, which hosted the debate, said this neglect reduces responsiveness to changes in business which, in turn, erodes the IT department's credibility. "The IT department must run itself as a business to be credible to the rest of the company," he commented. "Part of this is remaining in control of company IT inventories."

The conclusions of the debate come after research by research Gartner Group revealed that 70 per cent of organisations have a 30 per cent discrepancy between their planned and actual IT inventories.

Anna Lagerkvist