Most IT directors and ITAM (Information Technology Asset Management) team leads learn on the job. ITAM is specialized enough that one cannot pick-up all the nuances without a lot of mistakes and pratfalls. This book, then, will help accelerate the ITAM program, set baselines for proper measures of success, and ensure both business leadership and the ITAM team are speaking the same language. The stakes couldn't be higher. Worldwide enterprise IT spending estimate is $3.9 trillion USD for 2020, and expected to continue to increase at about 10% per year. However, software publishers estimate they are losing out on an addition $46.3 billion USD yearly revenue due to software piracy and volume license key abuses. To make up these losses, software companies engage in a policy of 'auditing' their existing customers to ensure software contract compliance.

68% of all US companies can expect to be hit and fined by a software audit in any given 12-month period, with an average fine of $500,000 USD per audit event. Corporate ITAM initiatives keep failing because they are following the wrong methodology. Asset management should be an exercise of epistemology (as opposed to the transactional or accountancy methods most businesses use today). Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge: what do you know, and how can you prove it. Pragmatic ITAM will take the reader through a brief review of three Western philosophers: Socrates, Rene Descartes, and Blaise Pascal, and present 7 of their basic tenants on the topic. The next section uses these philosophical tenants to explain the ISO/IEC's reasoning in building out their best business standards for corporate ITAM teams. The reader can then better interpret the "data lake."