Architecting an Asset Management Database

Question

Does anybody have any recommendations for handling company assets? Servers, switches, telephones, monitors, desks, Blackberrys, software, etc. How would you design a database to handle these different types of assets without being too vague or too precise in the database design?

For instance, if I have a field for the physical asset tag that you would place on an object, how would I handle software that was downloaded? What if I would like to track machine names but I don't want to give a desk a machine name? These different types of assets are what is throwing me off a bit.

Answer 1

Have you considered the open source OCS Inventory project, either as a solution or a starting point?

Answer 2

I found this the other day: http://assetpad.com/ (Free beta available)

Answer 3

Microsoft also has an Access template that you can easily download and play around with. We used this as a starting point, and then added to it as we went on. Once we had what seemed to be a pretty stable tool, we ported it over to Sql Server and wrote a new front end. You can find the template here.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC012253421033.aspx?CategoryID=CT101428241033