How equip! for IT asset management is compared to other IT Asset Management Software Solutions

Transcription

1 How equip! for IT asset management is compared to other IT Asset Management Software Solutions Table of Contents The context for comparing equip! for IT asset management to other solutions... 2 What is IT asset management?... 2 Major providers of IT asset management solutions... 3 Integration capability is a strength for equip! -- how equip! integrates with other applications

2 The context for comparing equip! for IT asset management to other solutions IT asset management solutions are seeing increasing demands across the board, including private businesses, large non profit associations, and government agencies. The demands are driven by multiple factors, including the pressure for software license management compliance, increasing number of Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD), scrutiny on IT hardware audit to secure data, and simply the need to manage a tight budget by preventing over spent or loss of equipment. Many vendors claim they provide IT asset management solutions. These solutions range from simple RFID asset tracking, inventory management, network auto discovery, configuration management, IT support desk, IT service management, to full blown asset management that supports the life cycle management of physical and fiscal information of IT assets. For buyers who are researching for IT asset management solutions, this can be confusing. What is an IT asset management solution? What is the scope of the must-have functionality in an IT asset management solution? What are optional nice-tohave features and functionality? This article attempts not only to bring clarity to these questions, but also present a summary view of the competitive landscape of the providers of IT asset management solutions for different sizes of businesses. In that context, we present equip!, our IT asset management solution, as a competitive solution to small to medium sized businesses and government agencies. What is IT asset management? According to the International Association of IT Asset Management, IT Asset Management joins the financial, inventory and contractual responsibilities to manage the overall life cycle including tactical and strategic decision making. Essentially, an IT asset management solution needs to keep track of the IT asset information in three broad categories, from the time the asset is acquired to the time it is disposed. 1. Financial information of assets: acquisition costs, depreciation, residual value, revenue from recycling or reuse, life time maintenance costs 2. Contractual information: terms and conditions, service contracts, purchased licenses and entitlements 3. Physical inventory information: quantity, where they are located, who have custody of them, maintenance condition 2

3 The Core of IT Asset Management Functionality An IT asset management solution is not to be confused with many point solutions. The following table lists some examples of point solutions and why they are not IT asset management solutions: Example of IT point solutions Why it doesn t meet the needs of IT asset management Software License Management Doesn t track and manage the physical inventory, financial or contractual information of hardware IT service desk support Doesn t track and manage the physical inventory, financial or contractual information of hardware and software Auto discovery Doesn t support the business process of receiving, managing, and retiring of assets Doesn t track the financial or contractual information Fixed asset management Doesn t manage assets that are not capitalized by the Accounting Department Doesn t support the business process of receiving, managing, and retiring of assets Configuration management Doesn t track and manage the physical inventory or financial information of hardware Major providers of IT asset management solutions For this article, we leverage Gartner s research Marketscope for the IT Asset Management Repository, authored by Patricia Adams in April of 2013, and our own expertise in designing an IT asset management solution that supports the ITIL processes. The Chief Technology Officer of E-ISG Asset Intelligence Eric 3

4 Beser is certified in ITIL, and he designed E-ISG s IT Asset Management SaaS application equip! to support ITIL v3 best practices and processes. We have selected the providers rated as promising and positive by Gartner, and assessed equip! in the same criteria used by Gartner in this marketscope research. Gartner used 8 requirements as criteria for including these providers in the list. These requirements are what Gartner has observed in the market place as requirements from mid to large enterprises. To be included in the list, providers ITAM solutions must have at least four of these requirements in production. These 8 requirements are: 1. Software entitlement controls 2. Asset catalog/service request 3. Software license and hardware asset management 4. Integration capability 5. Financial management 6. Workflow automation 7. Decision modeling 8. Relationship mapping The following 2 tables are a summary of Gartner s analysis on these providers. In Table 3, we have presented equip! in similar context to compare it to these IT asset management solutions. 4

5 Table 1: Providers of IT Asset Management Solutions to Large Enterprises Vendor/ITAM product BMC Software/ Remedy Asset Management Product notes Strengths Weaknesses Customers typically buy Remedy in addition to BMC s other suites like Atrium CMDB, Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Highly integrated Remedy ITSSM solution reduces concerns about data sharing Inventory data stored centrally in Atrium CMDB and shared with Remedy Asset Management Largest market share among Gartner clients Slow adoption of SaaSbased ITAM Software license entitlement functionality needs expansion Lacks robust, scalable agent-based discovery CA Technologies/IT Asset Management Three components under a single license: Software Asset Manager, Asset Portfolio Management and CA Business Intelligence dashboard reporting Enhanced software license entitlement management is available through a partnership CA Clarity PPM provides high-level project costing Low-cost provider, compared with other enterprise vendors No OOTB (out of the box) predefined roles Customers report difficultly with defining a software relationship on the fly that requires manual correlation Lack of robust agent-based discovery HP/ HP Asset Manager IBM/ IBM SmartCloud Control Desk The four modules that comprise Asset Manager are Contracts, Financial, Procurement and Software Asset Management. ConnectIT is an integration engine that imports data from thirdparty tools, such as ERP and HR systems Part of a SmartCloud suite solution that includes Tivoli Service Request Manager (TSRM) and Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB) Software counters that track virtual, physical and subcapacity, and convert based on software OEM license terms Integration with HP Cloud Service Automation HP Universal Discovery, a combination of Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced (DDMA) and Discovery and Dependency Mapping Inventory (DDMI) Suite-based reduced price point Integrated ITSSM toolset and integration with operational technology assets, such as power plants IBM Global Services sells effectively into its installed base Customers report that this is typically, the highest-cost provider to buy, implement and maintain Long deployment cycles for many customers Market share decline The IT asset management module can t be purchased alone Limited product innovation since acquisition in 2006 Confusing array of discovery tools Minimal support for non IBM software licenses 5

6 Vendor/ITAM product USU/Valuemation Product notes Strengths Weaknesses ITAM functionality is located in the Service Asset Lifecycle Management suite, which includes service request management, procurement, contract management and software license management ITAM is part of a complete suite targeted at midsize and large enterprises Improved process automation Tool supports multitenancy, which enables location-specific data that can be rolled up centrally Limited presence in North America and modest, but growing, presence outside of Germany With customers preferring full-service suites, there isn't native client configuration management, although there are partnerships and integrations Lacks a native autodiscovery/inventory tool Table 2: Providers of IT Asset Management Solutions to SMB Vendor/ITAM product Product notes Strengths Weaknesses BMC Software/Numara Numara, a mid market provider of IT service and support, is acquired by BMC Its agent-based PC discovery tool will become BMC Footprints Asset Core Limited ITAM functionality ASG/ ASG IT Asset and Service Management Supports more of a CMDB approach to asset management, where the inventory data is visualized in a hierarchical relationship map. Applied the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC) for defining an asset taxonomy to the product Integrated ITSM suite (with CMDB) A cost-effective solution for pricesensitive organizations Lacks support for complex license models Has a small customer base outside of Europe Has limited financial management capabilities Axios System/ assyst10 ITAM functionality is no longer a module, but is included in other areas, such as CMDB and service catalog Fully integrated suite that is also available on SaaS platform Strong presence in EMEA Ability to track a wide range of assets, including facility assets (e.g., fire extinguishers) Lacks support for complex license entitlement tracking Lacks strong decision support and analytics Discovery strategy is not clearly articulated or robust 6

7 Vendor/ITAM product Product notes Strengths Weaknesses EasyVista/ EasyVista 2012 Including CMDB, discovery, and software asset management Available via SaaS for midmarket companies Limited support for complex license entitlement tracking Part of an ITSSM suite with ITAM, CMDB and discovery sold together Low cost Lacks an agent-based discovery tool for mobile devices Lacks a standard asset catalog for purchasing Eracent/ Enterprise Entitlements Management (EnterpriseEM) and Enterprise Lifecycle Management (EnterpriseLM) With a larger installed base with its Enterprise Asset Management (EnterpriseAM) autodiscovery/inventory tool, which tends to pull its other products into deals for evaluation Functionality and ease of use make the vendor's products attractive to midsize and smaller large enterprises Easy-to-generate dashboards and reports Tool requires aboveaverage administrative overhead Customers report problems with discovery of Linux and Mac OS Lacks support for virtual machine clustering in EnterpriseEM Provance Technologies Built for Microsoft's System Center Service Manager (SCSM) 2012 platform Tight Microsoft SCCM integration Available in English, German, French and Russian Can ship updates out of band with Microsoft's SCSM release schedule Windows 8 support released in January 2013, but unproven Customers report manual reconciliation across various inventory sources No capability to provide multitenancy for large organizations ServiceNow/ IT Service Automation Application Suite Having built the entire solution organically, the combination of an agentless inventory (which requires a Java on-site server that runs within the customer's network environment) and a CMDB, both on the same architecture as the ITAM module, reduces integration issues and improves ease of use. Ease of use Cost-effective if organization has purchased other modules Separate physical data segregation by customer (multitenant SaaS) Needs an agentbased discovery solution Limited IT cost and billing capability Basic contract management functionality 7

8 Table 3. Strengths and Weaknesses of equip! IT Asset Management Vendor/ITAM product E-ISG Asset Intelligence/eQuip! Product notes Strengths Weaknesses OOTB (Out of the Box) features include all the core functions in IT asset management as defined by the International Association of IT Asset Management. Workflows and processes support ITIL v3 All core functions for IT asset management in one application CMDB is an integrated within the application Mobile device management is available through partnership with SOTI Available in both SaaS and On Premise Easy integration with other applications via Cloud Based data collection and integration service, equip! Anywhere Low cost to integrate with RFID readers Quick to deploy, easy to import and export data and customize reports Low cost Doesn t offer other IT service management tools (e.g. support desk, discovery) Lacks support for complex license entitlement tracking Lacks a native auto discovery tool Integration capability is a strength for equip! -- how equip! integrates with other applications equip! takes a unique approach to collecting and integrating data. E-ISG Asset Intelligence has developed the cloud based data collection and integration service, equip! Anywhere, which aggregates vast types of data into one storehouse of information that is available in real time, scalable and accessible using simple API services. equip! Anywhere has four distinguished features. 1. equip! Anywhere supports a document oriented approach to collecting data. This approach eliminates the need to create and maintain tables for a variety of data needs, handles data changes without the need to recode or reorganize, and makes this data searchable and actionable in a variety of settings. This is a much more efficient way of collecting and integrating data than the traditional database method. To illustrate, the traditional database method uses tables to store data, creating joins and views to show data at the application: 8

9 Using the database method for interoperable data storage poses challenges in availability, performance and configuration control. For example, a document is composed of a variety of tables. Changing this document to reflect changes in some tables requires new coding. Moreover, storing geographic data and images of equipment requires additional knowledge of how this data is structured and stored. So the traditional database method poses significant challenges for quickly collecting and integrating data. Using a document oriented approach makes the data easy to collect, distribute and search. Using this approach, data can be stored without altering tables, without altering indexes, and be retrieved quickly and safely: 9

10 2. equip! Anywhere is API driven. Almost any action can be performed using a simple RESTful API using JSON over simple web protocol. 3. equip! Anywhere manages data in low cost Linux based servers so that clusters of servers can be used to create safety and redundancy. equip! Anywhere clusters are resilient and will detect failed nodes immediately and remove them to preserve the safety of data. 4. equip! Anywhere is powered by Lucene to provide the most powerful full text search capabilities available in any open source product. Search comes with multi-language support, a powerful query language, support for geo location, context aware did-you-mean suggestions, auto complete and search snippets. As a result, as a service to collect and integrate data, equip! Anywhere is reliable, scalable, flexible, with high performance standards. This allows customers of equip! for IT Asset Management to easily integrate the application with its ERP, procurement, and HR systems. About E-ISG Asset Intelligence E-ISG Asset Intelligence provides cost effective software solutions to manage enterprise assets. Our software equip! is delivered as Software as a Service. It can also be installed on-premise. Our solutions help customers to streamline their business processes and manage the assets throughout their lifecycle, including acquisition, assignment, maintenance, and disposal. We have out-of-box IT Asset Management solution, which supports the life cycle management of IT assets, including financial, contractual, and physical inventory information. It supports open source network discovery tools, mobile device management, RFID asset tracking. It is easy to deploy and easy to integrate with other applications. If you would like to learn more about equip! for IT Asset Management, please call , you can also send an to sales@e-isg.com, or visit our website at 10