BDNA Technopedia Meets Microsoft SCCM From Raw Data to Actionable Information for IT Decision-Making

Transcription

1 BDNA Technopedia Meets Microsoft SCCM From Raw Data to Actionable Information for IT Decision-Making

2 BDNA Technopedia and Normalize bring transparency and rapid time-to-decision-making to the world s most widely used enterprise system management solution. Introduction Delivering more with less has become the order of the day in IT departments around the world. This imperative goes beyond simple cost cutting, but also covers increasing positive economic returns from IT hardware and software assets. Here, IT departments pursue a never-ending series of initiatives to eliminate inefficiencies in existing infrastructure on one hand and invest in new technologies virtualization, cloud computing, dynamic IT asset management, green computing etc. on the other. IT decision-makers know that they can t manage what they can t see, and have deployed processes and technologies focused on identifying, inventorying and tracking the lifecycles of IT hardware and software assets. Since a contemporary IT infrastructure can encompass thousands to hundreds of thousands of computers distributed across the globe, automated asset management solutions are essential to making rational, informed decisions on information technology investments, programs, and policies. Microsoft SCCM Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) has become one of the most-used system management tools in the IT industry. While SCCM is an outstanding platform for enterprise system management, many IT experts agree that the sheer volume of data reported by SCCM can easily overwhelm its users. Even a moderately sized infrastructure can generate SCCM asset inventory reports containing millions of listings. While the data may be thorough, actionable decision-making information is often hiding in plain sight. Figure 1: Actionable information for IT decision making is often hidden in plain sight in Microsoft SCCM configuration output. Also, what constitutes useful information is highly subjective, revolving around the specific decision an organization seeks to make. Typical decision questions can include: Is this right time to replace a defined group of PCs? Which server workloads should be consolidated? What do we need to do to achieve compliance with a new industry standard? Stand pat, virtualize, or outsource to the cloud? These and any number of equally critical questions will require different data sets and analysis frameworks3 Page 1 1

3 From Raw Data to Actionable Information Transforming Microsoft SCCM data into actionable information useful for IT decision making involves a process of normalization. Normalizing, in this case means sifting through the enterprise-specific asset data generated by SCCM and correlating it with an independent source of IT industry product knowledge. Depending on the actionable information required by IT decision-makers, the normalization process can involve a number of steps: Filtering out irrelevant data. De-duplicating and consolidating redundant data. Detecting and identifying assets not directly seen and reported by SCCM based on fingerprints and signatures. Showing relationships between products; for example, recognizing Adobe Creative Suite as an umbrella identity for Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat and other suite components. Standardizing product names, which can vary widely especially when originally entered manually. Enriching SCCM-generated data with externally sourced product lifecycle, sales and marketing history, licensing, enterprise-specific licensing and cost of ownership information. Classifying assets into defined categories applications, computers, middleware, operating systems, processor cores (often relevant for software license management exercises), network infrastructure, etc. Since every IT policy and asset management decision is different, the normalization process will be guided by the needs of a decision-maker, for example, whether a Chief Security Officer assessing compliance with a government PC configuration standard, or a purchasing manager preparing for an annual software license audit, or a CIO making a keep-consolidate-virtualize-outsource decision regarding a set of servers carrying a common workload. BDNA Technopedia : The Power of Knowing As noted previously, normalization involves cross-referencing enterprise-specific asset inventory and configuration data with an external knowledge base. The BDNA Normalize solution leverages BDNA Technopedia to supply the industry knowledge required to uncover the actionable information required for a decision-making exercise. The product of over 10 years of ongoing research, BDNA Technopedia has been recognized as the world s most complete data store of specifications, development evolution, and marketplace history of commercial IT hardware, software, and associated products. BDNA Technopedia currently contains over 9,500,000 data points on 850,000 variables on products from 10,000 vendors. Technopedia s product knowledge extends well beyond technical specifications supplied by vendors. It covers economic and historically valuable information on how a product has evolved over the years, including patch and update history, licensing costs and models, service and support, vendor business moves (particularly mergers and acquisitions). It should also be clear that BDNA s universal approach to cataloging and normalizing IT product-related information enables decision makers to map and analyze all products and technologies in their infrastructure, not just those recognized through SCCM asset discovery. Through the normalization process, IT decision makers gain an understanding of their entire IT infrastructure what BDNA calls the IT Genome unique to their organizations. The IT Genome represents the sum total of products, configurations, usage patterns, costs and benefits that define the contours and attributes of an organization s IT infrastructure. Page 2 2

4 Figure 2: Informed by Technopedia, BDNA Normalize filters and adds market and customer-specific information to Microsoft SCCM data, refining it into actionable information supporting an IT management decision. By automating the Normalization process BDNA has also radically reduced the time and effort required to ascertain information required for decision-making. Actions that formerly would have required a dedicated task force working for months or years can now be completed in hours or days. Of course, by their very nature, complete IT genomes are very complex and in a state of constant change. BDNA understands that decision makers want answers to specific questions and have therefore designed BDNA Normalize to enable its users to focus down onto specific factors that inform decision-making. The practical effect of radically streamlining and sharpening the focus of normalization lowers the cost of acquiring actionable management information. To cite how this plays out in just a few real world use cases, consider: Which systems have the highest availability, and which ones trigger the most trouble tickets. Approaching vendor software licensing audits and true-ups with the balance of information in your favor. Knowing the power consumption of every device in your infrastructure. Ability to combine asset inventory, external market and product lifecycle information, with customer-specific information (actual asset cost of ownership, end user information, utilization metrics, availability, etc.) to gain a complete picture of all factors relevant to a decision or management action. Identifying systems that have fallen dangerously behind security patch and service pack levels. Which servers can quietly disappear during a consolidation project. Which applications should be virtualized, migrate to the cloud, or be outsourced. Which software applications performing equivalent functions should make the cut in a vendor reduction drive. Discovering rogue, or unsanctioned, assets that may pose risks to IT security. BDNA and the Microsoft Systems Center Alliance BDNA s support for Microsoft SCCM and its demonstrated track record in adding value to SCCMbased asset management processes has qualified the company for membership in the Microsoft System Center Alliance partner program. While Microsoft does not expressly endorse specific companies or products accepted into the System Center Alliance, BDNA s membership in the MSCA partner Page 3 3

5 program recognizes it as providing complementary solutions that add value to Microsoft-based enterprise computing environments. Summary and Conclusion Often conflicting imperatives to cut costs while improving IT quality of service and support new initiatives have brought new urgency to the task of IT asset management. Under these circumstances, IT managers and executives need to quickly and reliably access actionable information on their IT infrastructure to make informed, rational decisions. BDNA Technopedia and Normalize technologies bring three key attributes to the decision making process: Access to the world s most complete and growing resource of enterprise IT product and lifecycle history information. Automated normalization and data synthesis that speeds time- to- decision for a wide variety of specific IT infrastructure management questions. Synergistic, value- added relationship with Microsoft SCCM, the most widely used enterprise IT management tools portfolio. As forces driving change in the IT sector accelerate, and infrastructures become more complex, IT decision makers need to see the trees and the forest and avoid paralysis by analysis. Together, BDNA s Technopedia-based normalization technologies and Microsoft SCCM bring new levels of transparency and incisiveness to the IT decision-making process. The BDNA value proposition is compelling: for a modest incremental investment in BDNA IT Genome Center technologies, IT organizations can dramatically increase the value of management technologies they already know and trust in this case Microsoft SCCM. # # # BDNA: The IT Genome Company BDNA s unique IT genome technology enables organizations in all sectors of the global economy to achieve deep visibility into what their computing hardware, software, network infrastructure, and technology usage patterns are made of. Informed by Technopedia, a constantly expanding body of knowledge currently covering 95,000,000 lifecycle history data points on 87,000 IT products, BDNA s Discover asset inventory and Normalize data enrichment solutions help save money and speed time-to-decision for software license optimization, technical controls compliance, information security, green computing, infrastructure consolidation/virtualization, capacity planning, business continuity, and ROI maximization initiatives. To learn what BDNA is made of, visit Headquarters East Coast Europe Asia-Pacific 339 North Bernardo Avenue, Suite 206 Mountain View, CA T: (650) F: (650) [email protected] Georgetown Place st Street NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC T: (202) F: (202) Rue Edouard Vaillant Levallois-Perret France T: +33 (0) F: (0) [email protected] 202 West Tower, JiaDu Building JianZhong Road TianHe District Guangzhou GuangDong Province China T: IT Genome, IT Genome Center, BDNA Technopedia, and BDNA Normalize, are trademarks of BDNA Corporation. Other trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks are property of their respective owners. WP.SCCM Page 4 4