SAManage IT Management Blog

Companies dealing with unallocated computers (PCs they own, but are not currently in use) often find themselves struggling to administer these important assets.  Unallocated computers can exist for a variety of reasons.  For example, when staff members leave a firm, their computers may be put into storage until replacement employees are hired.  Or, a business may buy computers in bulk to obtain a large discount from the vendor, then keep those PCs on hand as spares to replace computers that break or become outdated, or for when new workers are brought on board.

Why track unallocated computers?

Even though they are not being utilized at the present time, unallocated computers still need to be effectively managed, much in the same way as those assets that are currently in use.  Losing track of unallocated PCs can result in a variety of issues, including:

• Overbuying. Companies who cannot accurately monitor their unallocated computers may find themselves wasting money by purchasing equipment they do not need.
• Equipment shortages. When IT teams cannot account for unallocated assets, they often struggle to address emergency situations, which can ultimately lead to lost productivity.  For example, if they do not know where unallocated computers are located, they cannot provide an employee with an immediate  replacement if their PC suddenly breaks, or has to unexpectedly go in for repair or service.
• Becoming outdated. Unallocated PCs are often forgotten when important upgrades, patches, or enhancements take place.

Creating an “Asset Pool” in SAManage

Here are some tips on effective ways to monitor unallocated computers with SAManage:

1. Create a new department, called “unallocated computers” or “computer pool“, then assign any PCs that are currently in stock – but not in use – to that department.
2. Frequently review unallocated PCs by running a report of all assets by department, then selecting the one (“unallocated computers” or “computer pool”) to which all unused PCs were assigned.  This will provide an at-a-glance view of the status and location of all unallocated computers, and allow IT staff to “drill down” on the history and related activities of each one individually.
3. When an unallocated computer is assigned to a user, update the asset status and department to the new department (i.e. “accounting” or “sales”), effectively taking it out of the “computer pool”.

Visit our Web site to learn more about SaaS IT asset management from SAManage, and how it can help your company better track and manage its unallocated computers, and other important technology systems throughout their lifecycle.

Ready for next generation IT Management?

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Get started today: Sign up for a free 30-days trial of SAManage IT Management service.

No matter what size your company may be, your technology assets play a crucial role in facilitating the kind of productivity and agility you need to sustain a competitive advantage.  That’s why even the smallest businesses can benefit from powerful, innovative cloud-based IT management services.  These robust applications can help organizations of all types and sizes to realize the full potential of the significant investment they’ve made in their technology solutions.

Like most other small business software systems, the cost and resources required to purchase and support many of the IT management software products has historically been prohibitive.  As a results, smaller firms have been unable to streamline and automate related processes.

All that has changed with cloud computing.  The cloud computing model, also known as hosted, on-demand, or software-as-a-service (SaaS), has eliminated many of the barriers to small business software, such as high price tags, long and expensive implementations, and extensive ongoing maintenance that drains staff resources.  Smaller organizations can now subscribe to (or rent) software systems – which have already been installed, tested, and provisioned at a third-party provider’s site – for an affordable monthly fee, which includes all upgrades, enhancements, and repairs. This provides them with access to the same kinds of technology solutions that their larger competitors are leveraging – without busting their budgets.

Think about it like this: Cloud computing is transforming enterprise software into a commodity. What gmail did to email (why would you run an email server anyway?) and Salesforce.com did to CRM, is now happening with many other areas of enterprise software, and small businesses can take advantage of it today.

The same holds true for cloud-based IT Management solutions.  For many years, mid-sized and larger enterprises have relied on these tools to achieve significant advantages, including:

• Increased control over and visibility into even the most complex IT architectures
• Better tracking of PCs, servers, and other components throughout their lifecycle – from acquisition through obsolescence
• Minimized risk through faster, better detection of network security threats like viruses and spyware
• Enhanced software license compliance through more precise contract management
• Improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness of key IT management processes

Why is on-demand, or cloud computing, so valuable to smaller companies?  Because for the first time, it empowers them to leverage the same types of IT management solutions, as well as other small business software applications, so they can realize the same substantial benefits. Visit our Web site to learn more about cloud-based IT management systems from SAManage, and how they can help small businesses increase control over their technology infrastructures, and maximize return on their IT investments.

Cloud-based IT Management Software

Discover how Cloud-based IT Management software can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and know exactly what you have.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage IT Management service.

Our powerful Help Desk software, which is fully integrated with our IT asset management system, offers a wide array of benefits, helping support teams to dramatically enhance the way they track and manage tickets and support requests from the time they are opened, until they are resolved.

But, did you know that our Help Desk software solution can make a significant impact on your support processes each and every day?  In this post, we’ll highlight the five major daily improvements you’ll achieve with the SAManage Help Desk:

Improved End-User Convenience

Our solution centralizes all ticket activity and related information, providing your end users with a single, easy-to-access help desk portal.  End users can use this personalized portal to quickly and conveniently submit support requests, or they can open new tickets by sending an email to your SAManage help desk system. They can than track the status of each support request and correspond with your support team by requesting information or updates on issue resolution.

You can fully customize your end-user portal in a variety of ways, such as branding the support email with your own domain (for example, support@acme.com) or align your SAManage help desk software with any internal support processes you may already have in place.

Retain Knowledge

Our Help Desk software streamlines the way service requests are received and processed, allowing support staff to more rapidly review new tickets, and search for similar solutions in a comprehensive online knowledge base. When a ticket is resolved, it automatically becomes a new solution in the help desk, which can be easily searched for and located when similar issues arise. This improves staff efficiency and accelerates ticket completion through the collection and storage of all knowledge gained when working on tickets and resolving issues.

Increased Staff Efficiency

Streamline work among your support team, and take a “divide and conquer” approach to issue resolution by intelligently distributing and assigning tickets across your help desk staff.  You’ll be more productive, working side-by-side to eliminate duplication of efforts and redundant work, which will ultimately optimize service delivery to end users.

The SAManage Help Desk allows you to automatically assign certain types of tickets to certain team members, based on their background, knowledge, and skill set.  For example, acquisition requests can be routed to the purchasing department, or phone-related inquiries can be sent to the support professional who oversees the telephony system. This accelerates ticket routing, ensuring the fastest, most efficient response times possible.

Improved Ticket Initiation

With the SAManage Help Desk, your end users can access an intuitive online portal that allows them to quickly create and submit new tickets the moment a problem arises.  Your IT staff can also  instantly generate inventory-related trouble tickets by reviewing hardware inventory and past support requests on each computer, then creating help desk tickets  – in just a single click – as soon as they discover a problem, or notice something that requires further investigation.

Support team members can also quickly conduct an audit of changes to any computer, to identify modifications that may have caused the current support issue. By providing closed loop IT Asset Management and Help Desk software in a single, integrated platform, your team is empowered to better manage your IT resources and understand the entire support history of each asset.

Enhanced Collaboration

Our robust Help Desk software allows you, and the users you support, to work closely together to correct issues.  You can comment on tickets they submit, ask questions to obtain more information to aid in resolution, and more.  Any comments and correspondence you add to a ticket will be sent to the ticket initiator via email.  They can then simply reply to the email as needed.  Their responses will be dynamically captured by the system, and added to the ticket details.

Visit our Web site to learn more about our innovative, comprehensive Help Desk software, and how – when used in combination with our leading-edge SaaS IT asset management system – it can help you better track, manage, and support technology investments across your organization.

Online IT Management and Help Desk Software

Discover how on-demand IT Asset Management and Help Desk software from SAManage can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and improve your service levels.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage.

Manual IT asset management processes are highly error-prone, causing significant mistakes and inconsistencies in the way PCs, servers, and other technology components are logged and tracked.  One of the most frequent errors is duplicate assets – when the same component is counted two or more times within a company’s IT inventory.

In this post, we will investigate why asset duplication occurs, what corrective steps to take, and how an automated hardware inventory system can help control this common inventory issue.

What are the key causes behind duplicate assets?

• Evolving business needs - Expansion, downsizing, even employee promotions or transfers all call for the reallocation and reassignment of technology assets.  When handled manually, this leaves room for human mistakes.  For example, the same IT asset may end up being logged into inventory twice, but with different locations and primary users.

• Technology changes - quite often computer’s operating system has to be reinstalled or the entire computer has to be reimaged to the original configuration. This results with changes to the asset identifiers and can cause duplication of assets.

• New employee requirements – As staff members take on new responsibilities or move into new roles, the software applications they need to perform day-to-day activities will change.  Software gets uninstalled from one user’s PC, and is then installed at a later date on another user’s computer.  When not handled properly, inconsistencies in license allocation records can emerge, hindering effective license compliance and putting companies at risk of fines and penalties.

• Geographically-dispersed networks – As companies expand and globalize, their technology infrastructures become scattered across wider areas, and throughout more locations.  This makes it much harder to keep track of where components reside, and who is using them, which can lead to duplicate assets.

Dealing with duplicate IT assets:

When duplicate assets are discovered, the components involved must be closely reviewed, and computer inventory records must be reconciled and corrected accordingly.  For example, you should determine the “old” and the “new” asset in your inventory based on certain properties such as usage, mac address, and OS installation date. For the “old” asset, you want it outside of your active inventory but still accessible for auditing and compliance purposes. However, without an IT asset management solution in place, detecting these duplications, checking the assets in question, and making the needed modifications to existing computer inventory will present quite a challenge.

How SAManage can help:

Automated IT management services like SAManage can help fully streamline key activities from end to end, allowing businesses to more rapidly and precisely locate duplicate assets in inventory.  SAManage is designed to dynamically analyze your inventory for duplicate assets on a regular basis.  When one is identified, the user can review the asset properties and mark which asset to continue and manage from this point forward. The “old” asset will get excluded and archived, so it does not appear on the actual inventory but can still be accessed for auditing and compliance purposes.

With SAManage, the user can review the component and remove the obsolete entry.  As a result, computer inventory records are always accurate and up-to-date at all times. Visit our Web site to learn more about our SaaS IT asset management system, and how it can help your organization eliminate duplicate assets and other IT inventory issues.

The Business Case for IT Asset Management

This paper outlines the steps needed to create a compelling business case for an IT Asset Management solution.
Download our building the business case for IT Asset Management white paper.

SAManage Partners with Jamcracker to Offer On-Demand Business Applications to Communication Services Providers and Resellers

SAManage IT Management Suite to be provided through Jamcracker’s Services Delivery Network

SEATTLE, WA, October 20, 2009 — SAManage, a leading provider of on-demand IT Management tools, and Jamcracker, the on-demand services delivery company, today announced that SAManage IT Management Suite is available immediately for resale through the Jamcracker Services Delivery Network (JSDN).

JSDN allows service providers, resellers and vendors to quickly and efficiently deliver on-demand services to businesses and consumers. This partnership enables resellers, including communications and IT services companies, to offer the SAManage IT Management Suite through the JSDN global services-delivery network, providing their customers with an innovative on-demand software that simplifies the management of IT assets and delivers a web-based IT Help Desk.

“This partnership enables SAManage to leverage Jamcracker’s global network of service providers and resellers, creating an important delivery channel that will increase our small business subscriber base,” said SAManage CEO Doron Gordon.

The SAManage IT Management Suite enables business of all size to:

• Manage PC and software inventory online, easily view what assets are on the network
• Audit changes to IT assets such as new software or hardware changes
• Organize software licenses and IT contracts, track purchases and terms and receive renewal reminders when contracts are due
• Detect risks such as illegal software and license compliance gaps
• Deliver integrated web-based IT help desk service to end users

“Jamcracker enables communications and IT services providers to create their own branded marketplaces and offer best-of-breed SaaS applications to their small business customers.  We are pleased to add the SAManage IT Management Suite to our On-Demand Services portfolio,” said Steve Crawford, vice president of marketing at Jamcracker.

About JSDN

JSDN enables communication service providers, resellers, and software vendors to deliver on-demand applications to businesses and consumers without complex, costly technology investments. The JSDN  streamlines all of the operational processes required to offer private labeled application services including a hosted services-delivery platform, content/ISV wholesale distribution agreements, help desk services, billing, collections, settlement, and infrastructure management. JSDN seamlessly integrates with reseller and service provider web sites and networks. Customers can choose from a catalogue of hundreds of leading software services in the JSDN catalogue.

About SAManage

SAManage is a leading global provider of on-demand IT management solutions that helps organizations better control their IT inventory, organize licenses and contracts, detect risks and license compliance gaps and provide IT help desk service. SAManage empowers companies of all sizes with IT management capabilities that were previously available only to large companies, making it easy to automate and simplify the daily tasks associated with establishing IT governance, control, compliance and user satisfaction. For more information or to sign-up for a free trial, visit www.samanage.com or call 1-888-250-8971.

About Jamcracker

The Jamcracker Services Delivery Network enables Telcos, Internet Service Providers, VARs, and SaaS vendors to profitably deliver on-demand services to businesses of all sizes. Founded in 1999 by K.B. “Chandra” Chandrasekhar, the founder of Exodus Communications and chairman of e4e Services and Aztec Software, Jamcracker’s mission is to enable on-demand service delivery on a global scale.  Jamcracker is a privately held company with headquarters in Santa Clara, California, and offices in Bangalore, India. For more information, visit www.jamcracker.com.

SaaS IT Management Software

Discover how SaaS IT Management software can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and know exactly what you have.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage IT Management service.

Today, we’re adding a new feature – computer assignment rules – to help you more easily correlate assets to sites and departments. These new computer assignment rules will allow you to automate how computers will be assigned to sites and/or departments, based on the domain they belong to, an IP address range, or the prefix in the computer’s name.

The new rules are accessible from within the organization setup section of your SAManage account. This section is where you create your sites and departments in the system. As you enter new sites and departments, you can now also add rules that correlate assets into each organization unit. Any time a computer in your inventory matches one of these rules, the rule will be automatically invoked and the computer will be assigned accordingly.

Setup your organization's sites and departments

To use the new assignment rules, simply navigate to the organization setup section, and click on ”Add Rule” next to the site or department.  Or, you can click on ”Create New Rule” at the bottom of the page. Select the rule type (domain, IP range, or name prefix) and the matching value, then select “Assign to Site”, “Assign to Department” – or both. When you’re finished, click on “Create Rule” to add it to the system.

Create computer assignment rules

As you create or modify rules, you can test them by clicking ”Apply Rules”.  This will immediately execute all rules. The system will also periodically invoke your rules, to accommodate for any alterations, or any new computers that have been added to your computer inventory since the rules were last executed.

The new assignment rules make it easier to manage and organize your asset inventory. Learn more about IT asset management solutions from SAManage, and how they can help you better manage your technology environment.

According to Goldman Sachs, US companies spend more than $25 billion each year managing their business contracts.  And while all contracts are important, many experts will argue that IT contracts are, by far, the most critical, and must be tracked and administered in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

IT contracts come in many forms.  There are software licenses, hardware leases, subscriptions to online services such as salesforce.com or SAManage, maintenance and service agreements, and warranties – just to name a few.  Each of these IT contracts includes different terms, restrictions, and conditions, and may be acquired through various different sources (directly from a vendor, through a reseller, via an OEM partner, etc.).  This makes accurate organization, monitoring, and maintenance a complex and overwhelming challenge.

Additionally, since many companies manually manage the very technology assets that are directly related to those contracts, the ability to correlate agreements to their hardware and software inventory in order to ensure adherence to all contract guidelines is nearly impossible.  For example, companies that haven’t automated their IT asset management processes often lose track of systems when they are reallocated or reassigned.  This, in turn, can hinder software license compliance and put them at significant risk.

Proactive IT contract management is the key.  By implementing an automated system to streamline the tracking and management of all IT contracts, as well as the technology assets they govern, organizations can:

• Reduce excessive or wasteful IT expenditures by knowing exactly what they need, and purchasing solutions/licenses in accordance with specific business requirements
• Minimize the risks associated with poor software license management, and avoid the fines and penalties imposed for illegal software use by rapidly identifying and correcting compliance gaps
• Demonstrate full compliance in the event of an IT audit
• Improve vendor relationships by more efficiently managing contract renewals
• Enhance IT budget management by better tracking upcoming contract expiration dates, giving them more time to shop around for better or more economical solutions

SAManage empowers companies to manage all their IT contracts from a single, centralized, easy-to-access place.  They can capture, track, and analyze all pertinent information, including proofs of purchase and terms/conditions.  Asset inventory – regardless of its location – is then dynamically monitored in real-time, and compared against those agreements, with instant notifications sent when issues are uncovered.  As a result, firms can better align their IT contracts with key business strategies, while facilitating full compliance and increasing the cost-efficiency of IT operations.

Visit our Web site to learn more about our SaaS IT asset management solutions, and how they can help you to better organize, track, and administer your IT contracts and related technology systems.

The Business Case for IT Asset Management

This paper outlines the steps needed to create a compelling business case for an IT Asset Management solution.
Download our building the business case for IT Asset Management white paper.

IT management isn’t what it used to be.  Gone are the days when an IT manager’s success was measured by the size of the network he was responsible for.  Today, the effectiveness of an IT manager is dependent on their ability to demonstrate clear and tangible return on investment (ROI) from the infrastructures they manage, while working within budgets that get smaller and smaller each year. Who said IT Management is easy?

What has caused this shift?  many reasons, IT has become a commodity, part of the cost of doing business, and economics has brought ROI to the forefront.  With fewer dollars to invest, companies want to get the most value out of what they spend their hard-earned dollars on.

The rise to prominence of software-as-a-service (SaaS) has helped make this evolution possible.  By moving mission-critical business applications from the desktop to the Web, SaaS provides an option that is not only more affordable and budget-friendly, but one that takes the focus off of tedious day-to-day technology administration, and puts it where it really belongs – on the benefits that can be derived through an application’s adoption and use.

SaaS has also taken the guesswork out of application acquisition.  IT managers no longer need to question whether or not a new system is worth the high cost of its software and hardware components, or the time and money needed to configure, host, and maintain it.  By “renting” the use of an application from a third-party, who will also be overseeing its ongoing administration, companies can make their technology purchase decisions based solely on anticipated ROI.  And, because SaaS is more economical, that potential ROI will be much greater, and much easier to achieve.

Additionally, IT managers can more readily ensure the reliability, performance, and scalability of their technology environments with SaaS. Because the grid-like cloud computing architecture that SaaS is built on is virtually infinite, any SaaS-based system can be instantly enhanced or expanded to satisfy any new or emerging business need.  And since pricing structures for SaaS solutions are typically based on utilization, their costs are easier to predict, and are more directly tied to organizational performance (for example, a company will purchase and pay for additional licenses only when growth and prosperity call for the hiring of new users).

At SAManage, we are fully leveraging the SaaS revolution. Our robust, comprehensive IT asset management (ITAM) solutions are delivered via a cloud computing environment, giving companies the ability to reap the benefits of powerful IT management capabilities, without the high cost or the hassle associated with buying, implementing, and maintaining related components.  The rollout and day-to-day management of the IT management system is simplified, while IT staff members have an improved ability to better track the contracts, licenses, and service level agreements (SLAs) associated with their SaaS solutions.  As a result, they can maximize ROI from all their technology assets.

To learn more about our SaaS IT management solutions, and how they are helping to change the face of IT management today, visit our Web site.

Online IT Management Software

Discover how on-demand IT Management software from SAManage can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and improve your service levels. Sign up for a free trial today.

We’re excited to announce the release of our enhanced Mac agent including a new installer that makes it a lot easier to deploy SAManage’s SaaS IT Asset Management service on Macs and effectively manage the inventory of your Mac computers. The Mac agent deployment is now completely wizard driven and can be easily deployed on Mac’s running MacOSX 10.3 and above by following the instructions available on our deployment guides.

The updated Mac agent is a great enhancement to our on-demand IT Asset Management service. We already have many customers that are using SAManage to manage their Mac asset inventory and we believe the new release would make it even easier to get your Mac inventory in order.

SAManage Mac Inventory Agent Installer

The SAManage Mac agent is available for download on our website, and there is a detailed deployment guide with step-by-step instructions.

Ready for next generation IT Management?

Discover how you can gain instant visibility into your assets, know exactly what you have and what risks exists in your network.

Get started today: Sign up for a free 30-days trial of SAManage IT Management service.

Multi-tenant SaaS architectures are becoming more and more prominently used among software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers.  In a multi-tenant environment, all clients and their users consume the service from the same technology platform, sharing all components in the technology stack including the data model, servers, and database layers.

In our experience, the benefits of using a multi-tenant architecture translates to significant benefits for our customers, including:

• Scalability. A multi-tenant infrastructure makes it easy to increase capacity when more horsepower is required.  When adding new hardware to the platform, the total capacity of the entire environment increases, becoming more scalable for not just a single customer, but for our entire client base. Scaling a well-architectured multi-tenant SaaS platform is, in many cases, a matter of simply plugging more hardware into the different elements contained within the technology stack.
• Performance. The nature of a multi-tenant architecture makes it easier (as compared to a single tenant environment) to maximize the performance of the different elements in the technology stack, so optimum speed and reliability can be ensured at all times.  For example, with multi-tenant architecture the provider can more precisely assess such factors as utilization, speed, and response times across the platform, and more efficiently fine tune our technology stack whenever needed.
• Service. Having to monitor and administer just one platform (instead of managing different sets of technology stacks for each client), a multi-tenant SaaS provider can deliver more efficient and effective service and support, including troubleshooting and problem resolution.
• Upgrades. Upgrading the software version or elements in the technology stack (such as databases, servers, and the operating system) is easier since there is a single, centralized place to go to make adjustments, install patches, etc.

Some experts believe that what makes the multi-tenant model a superior one from a customer’s perspective, is the fact that the service provider has a more vested interest in making sure everything runs smoothly and it helps the service provider apply lessons learned into the operating procedures and improve the service quality (see Phil Wainewright’s Gmail failure is good for us).  Think about it this way, in a single-tenant environment, if a server goes down, only one client is impacted.  But, in a multi-tenant architecture, each and every customer will be affected by even the slightest technology glitch.  Therefore, providers must take extra measures to ensure uptime, continuity, and performance and constantly deliver improvement opportunities to their business.

SaaS-based IT Management and Help Desk Software

Discover how on-demand IT Asset Management and Help Desk software from SAManage can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and improve your service levels.

Sign up for a free 30-days trial of SAManage.