An InControl Technology White Paper

Transcription

1 An InControl Technology White Paper Defining Asset Intelligence and the evolution from IT inventory InControl Technology, Inc Camino Del Rio South, Suite 300 San Diego, CA Phone: (1) Fax: (1)

2 Table of Contents Section 1: Introduction Section 2: What is Asset Intelligence? Section 3: InControl Technology Overview Section 4: Uses for Asset Intelligence Section 5: Summary Page 2 of 10

3 Section 1: Introduction Defining Asset Intelligence and the evolution from IT inventory The competitive landscape and regulatory and compliance requirements of today s business environment have prioritized the need for reliable and comprehensive (intelligent) IT asset management. Traditional mean-time-to-repair and the contribution to output per employee can be calculated for IT Assets but this only scratches the surface of what is needed when determining overall cost and contribution. Corporations are realizing that IT assets have life cycle cost that must be factored into the overall contribution to the cost of the asset over its useful lifetime. Corporations now have the need to automate the analysis of how support contracts, security, risk management and asset inventory relate to the overall contribution to corporate revenue and cost. To analyze these factors and make educated decisions based on that information, there needs to be intelligent aspects to the gathering, storing, sharing and reporting of that information. Fundamentally, there needs to be intelligence in the support systems. Intelligent Asset Management must be built on sound, accurate information and extends the concept of Asset tracking to more fiduciary responsibilities including sharing information on contracts, warranties, leases, retirement of assets, service level agreements and total cost of ownership. Intelligent asset management is critical to how an IT asset needs to be managed. The evolution of physical inventory to an integrated support system has morphed from individual disciplines of discovery, inventory, inventory automation to a homogenous building block with which business intelligence can be created. New IT devices are more manageable, which allows automation and a subsequent higher order of integration. Organizations are now able to lower their costs to manage the workflow for procurement, contract, financial, support, and service level agreements through asset intelligence. - Meta Group Data Trend: disparate asset management systems will evolve from their current focus to become centers that financially optimize assets across all enterprise IT resources. Page 3 of 10

4 Section 2: What is Asset Intelligence? ASSET INTELLIGENCE is a best of breed Asset management solution which has the ability to automatically discover all networked attached devices, hardware and software inventory of those devices, tracking of people, locations, lines of businesses assigned to the asset, and provides empirical decision framework about the IT infrastructure. Asset Intelligence is made up of integrated functional building blocks that include Full Life-Cycle-Management, Security and Risk Management, Automated Inventory Discovery, and Business Technology Management. Inventory Automation (IA) Risk Assessment (RA) Life Cycle Management (LCM) Business Intelligence (BI) Inventory Automation Critical to the success of any intelligent system is the ability to gather accurate, reliable, and timely data. There is also a fundamental need to gather the data in a way whereby not affecting the devices which you are attempting to monitor. In simple terms, you do not want make the patient sick while taking their temperature. With the large number of IT assets, potentially dynamically changing in many physical locations, it is also a requirement to automate the way inventory is gathered. Automated inventory gathering is critical to the success of any analysis. It is equally important that the inventory automation system is integrated and should be part of the core technology. - By automating the ability to gather IT inventory, organizations are able to determine what IT assets you have, who has them, changes, and where they are located. Risk Assessment For most corporations there continues to be the constant threat of outside attacks from malicious viruses and hackers and the need to understand how vulnerable key assets are to these threats. Recently (in 2002) the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and actions by the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission has imposed new requirements on auditors, corporate boards and management. This in addition to the standard threats requires that corporations know exactly what IT assets they have and the associated financial risk. Using inventory as the basic building block, asset intelligence provides information that will allow organizations to assess their accounting and security risks. Compliance with software licensing contracts might be an even greater risk to organizations. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) estimates that during 2002, thirty-nine percent of software used worldwide was pirated. Many enterprises are not aware that they are at risk of being Page 4 of 10

5 audited because they do not have an asset management or software licensing process in place to keep executive-level management aware of such issues. If an enterprise does not have a strong asset management process, including systems that can track software license agreements and use rights, it is at a high risk of being audited during the next two years, with negative results. Through 2006, forty percent of midsize and large enterprises can expect an external softwarelicensing audit. - By understanding corporate risk, organizations are able to protect the company from catastrophe. Life Cycle Management Life Cycle Management is the management of an IT asset through the procurement process to retirement (end-of-life). With multiple independent IT systems in place this process is usually done manually, if done at all. Asset intelligence provides the integration necessary to track IT assets from purchasing and receiving to how the asset is utilized by an individual or line of business. Key integration with existing ERP, Service Desk, and Directory Services is required to link contracts, assets, people and locations. Asset intelligence supports Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) practices and standards for Information Technology (IT) service management. ITIL provides the framework for tracking the costs associated with an IT asset including: Service Support Management Configuration Change Release Incident Problem Service Delivery Management Service Level Capacity Financial (for IT Services) Availability IT Service - Life Cycle Management allows organizations to calculate the total cost of IT Assets, financially account for, individually link, value and retire. Business Intelligence Business Intelligence (BI) is the ability to gather data from multiple systems in raw form and turn it into something usable that business decisions can be based on. It is the umbrella that ties together other closely related data disciplines including data mining, statistical analysis, forecasting, and decision support. Business Intelligence is often the top layer of collected information, which allows business managers to make IT capital expense decisions or provides information on how to optimize existing infrastructure. The presentation of Business Intelligence requires flexible and customizable reporting, since the information will be shared and presented to potentially many lines of business and levels within an organization. - Asset based business intelligence provides information which allows business managers to make capital decisions or find ways to do more with less. Page 5 of 10

6 Section 3: InControl Technology Overview InControl Technology Inc. is a leading provider of intelligent asset management systems. InControl s suite of products includes IT asset discovery, inventory and management solutions. The company designs, develops, sells, and supports solutions for Global 2000 organizations and managed services providers worldwide. The InControl MasterControl Suite delivers a comprehensive, web-based, IT Asset Management solution that is specifically designed to be implemented in days not months and integrate with leading enterprise applications including SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel, LDAP and others. - Definition of IT Asset Management: These tools capture and integrate physical, financial and contractual data to help manage the IT asset life cycle something that is necessary for effective management and optimization of IT assets' performance (Gartner Research 2004). InControl MasterControl Suite Product Architecture and Features Architecture Open architecture based on Microsoft s.net framework Web based user interface Seamless integration with Web Services compliant applications (published XML I/O) Industry Standard database Component based and scalable Standards-based (WMI, SNMP, WBEM, CIM) Agent-less device agnostic discovery and inventory MasterControl User Interface Page 6 of 10

7 ApplicationTracker ApplicationTracker delivers solutions that provide organizations with a complete understanding of how their employees interact with their IT assets and how their IT assets support their employees in delivering their business objectives. These IT asset management capabilities allow: Identification of redundant, under or improperly utilized IT assets (asset management) Accurate software license management Accurate billing and charge back Server consolidation based on actual usage Full IT policy compliance Full internal security policy compliance Identification of training requirements Identification of IT infrastructure requirements Audit legacy system for usage or retirement ApplicationTracker is a complete business process solution designed specifically to address the interaction of computer hardware and software with an organization's staff. ApplicationTracker will give you an understanding of how your computers are used, when and by whom. Using this information, you will be able to analyze the efficiency of your working processes. Inefficiencies and low performance areas can then be identified and corrected and the proper procedures and policies implemented to ensure maximum Return on Investment for your assets. Until now, asset management and metering software have been limited to reporting on the device or application and its basic properties. ApplicationTracker bridges the important gap between the device and the user, to help you understand your assets and your business processes. ApplicationTracker is a performance management and monitoring tool that provides mission critical information on your organization's resources. ApplicationTracker allows you to: Monitor Software License Inventory: more than just software metering, monitor the software used in your organization, who it is used by and what it is used for. Recognize which applications are required for your business and eliminate non-essential packages and their associated costs. Creating software standards throughout an organization reduces license, support and training costs. Page 7 of 10

8 MasterControl Product Features ireporter Comprehensive Reporting Line of Business Reporting Customizable enhanced searching Advanced Search Engine for plain language searches Asset Tracking Enhanced alarming and notification Security Scans and alerts Microsoft Security Patch scans and alerts Software Application Usage Directory Service Integration LDAP Active Directory Novell Directory Services ERP integration Support for Wake-up on LAN Enhanced Search capability Wireless LAN support iscanner Automated IT discovery Hardware Scans Software Scans Network device Scans Inventory indexing and dependencies Customizable throttle rates, scans and scheduler DeviceInspector intelligent ibusiness Manager Hardware Contracts Software Contracts and Audit Compliance Maintenance Contracts Leasing Manger Warranty Manager Move, Adds and Changes (MACS) Financial Manager Outsourcing Work Flow Manager Page 8 of 10

9 Section 4: Uses for Asset Intelligence Risk Assessment o The company has received an audit letter from Microsoft. o The Auditing firm has requested a report on the IT Infrastructure for Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) compliance reporting. Life Cycle Management o A business unit is requiring a new application or a new version of software to be rolled out. o Bringing the Service Desk Asset Information is current. Inventory automation o Corporate acquisition or downsizing. Business intelligence o Setting corporate IT budgets (where to invest capital for highest return). Software License control o Understand what is being used versus what you have installed in the field. InControl Technology provides a vital and compelling way for organizations to auto-discover and inventory trusted IT asset data. The basic building block for Life Cycle Management, Risk Assessment and Business Intelligence all rely on the inventory data to be accurate and trusted (interpreted based on a set of valid standards). As an example, most inventory scanning technology is not able to auto-discover system asset information without manual intervention to normalize the data to make it trusted. Simple scanners return values that would need interpretation as the typical scanner returns the system CPU information as P-IV, Pentium-4, P4 and Pentium Four for the processors. In reality these should describe four instances of the same thing. Without InControl s built-in intelligence in the BTL ireporter to normalize the data into a trusted format, you would need to manually resolve the description to identify four instances of that processor in your environment. It is this intelligence that allows InControl to offer trusted data and accountability. For corporate governance and compliance obligations that rely on accountability, trusted data is not an option. - Autodiscovery, inventory analysis and normalization of information allows InControl to offer customers intelligent inventory automation vs. traditional potentially unreliable inventory scanning. Intelligent Asset Management, using MasterControl technology, is the optimal solution for inventorying trusted data involving.net and Web Services. The MasterControl suite can accommodate extensions to the ireporter s rule base through the loading of self-describing XML documents that are available for many of the standards that organizations use as guidelines to produce trusted data and achieve accountability. This business intelligence capability allows customers to minimize their risk and lower their costs. For example, FAST (Federation Against Software Theft) is an emerging standard in Europe. FAST and InControl have partnered together to allow our customers to produce an Applications Audit report. This will enable our customers to shorten the time required and cost of implementing standards that supply trusted results. InControl technology allows companies to lower their risk through business intelligent audit management. Page 9 of 10

10 Section 5: Summary Defining Asset Intelligence and the evolution from IT inventory Asset intelligence is the combination of the ability to automatically and reliably gather data on IT Assets throughout the network and share that information with other IT support systems. Asset intelligence is the ability to use this trusted data to track an assets life in an organization, from purchase through to retirement, while understanding the costs and risks associated with the asset. Asset intelligence is the ability to mine asset data in raw form and turn the data into information which financial business decisions can be made. Asset intelligence is the combination of inventory automation, risk assessment, life-cycle management, and business intelligence, which is required to compete successfully in today s competitive and legislative landscape. The evolution from physical inventory to an integrated solution for asset intelligence allows organizations to automate what was once unmanageable based on cost. Integration of top-level decision support systems with accurate and reliable information and track assets total life cycle reduces bottom line cost, lowers risk and optimizes asset utilization. The MasterControl Suite is Asset Intelligent; having the integrated ability to deliver reliable data and present meaningful IT Assets information for regulatory, top level, and bottom line, decisionmaking. To learn more about InControl s products and solutions, please visit us on our web site at: Page 10 of 10