SAManage IT Management Blog

A new white paper is available through our partner Servoterra, a leading provider of SaaS-based IT Asset Disposal solutions. This white paper provides an overview of the synergies between IT Asset Disposal and IT Asset Management.

Online IT asset management (ITAM) by SAManage is a proactive approach to managing assets and monitoring changes to these assets throughout their life-cycle. The same proactive approach to maximizing ROI and capital expenditure is now extended to IT asset disposal (ITAD) through the Servoterra platform.

Readers will learn how they can gain the business intelligence for planning the decommission of your assets based on current remarket values, technology refresh roadmaps and ability to supplement capital expenditure budgets for acquisition of new assets.

Get the white paper and learn how IT Asset Disposal and IT Asset Management synergies could benefit your company!

The implementation of “virtual” infrastructures is rapidly increasing in popularity, due to the many benefits they offer.  Virtual environments can deliver significant increases in productivity and performance, freeing companies from the limitations and burdens of physical computers.  For example, unlike standard servers, virtual servers can run multiple applications or operating systems simultaneously.

In addition to enhancing the efficiency and reliability of technology systems, virtualization can also reduce the costs associated with setting up and maintaining data centers, and helps companies achieve “green” computing models through consolidation and waste elimination.  And, industry experts like Forrester Research have claimed that virtual servers can enhance IT predictability and continuity, making it faster and easier for organizations to recover from disasters.

Image by RabunWarn

But, perhaps most importantly, because virtual servers are more flexible, firms can run their business in a more agile fashion, adjusting their technology environment more rapidly in response to changing market conditions or evolving business requirements.

Yet, what many companies forget when outlining their virtualization strategies is that these virtual assets must be effectively managed, much in the same way that traditional systems are.  Robust IT asset management tools must be employed to ensure that all virtual servers and PCs are accounted for throughout their lifecycle – from the time they are assigned an owner and configured, through maintenance and re-provisioning, and finally, when they are disposed.

Additionally, virtual assets are subject to the same software license compliance guidelines as physical systems.  Companies must effectively audit and monitor the software applications that are installed on their virtual servers, to ensure full adherence with vendor contracts at all times.

And, IT management tools must be used to accurately link virtual assets to the physical systems that run them.  This is critical to ensuring smooth change management – for example, it will help companies understand how virtual servers will be impacted when the physical ones they are tied to are modified or rendered obsolete.

Visit our Web site to learn more about our robust SaaS IT management solutions, and how they can help your company better manage its virtual assets.

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-day trial of SAManage IT Management service.

We are off to a great start in 2010, and we’re very excited about what we have planned for the year ahead. We wanted to share some of the things we’ve been working on recently.  We’re really looking forward to launching these updates, and we hope you will be too:

IT Asset Management

• Software Metering. Many users have asked us to add this capability.  We’re planning on releasing an updated agent with software metering capabilities shortly. You’ll be able to see which software is actually being used and how often.
• Agent Auto-Update. The new software metering agent will support remote auto-update, and provide an easier way to update your SAManage agent in the future.

IT Service Management

• ITIL-Based Service Desk. We are busy upgrading the help desk component to a more comprehensive IT service desk based on ITIL. This is going to be a great addition to our service, as it will allow users to implement the ITIL framework in a way that is tightly integrated with our IT Asset Management capabilities.
• Service Catalogs. Allow IT organizations to manage and publish a service catalog defining all services available by the organization. Based on the ITIL framework, service catalogs allow organizations to further streamline their service and support processes.

Platform

• Dashboard. We are getting ready to release a new version of the dashboard.  This new edition will offer more extensive customization, a wider variety of widgets, and enable you to add as many widgets as you’d like from all areas of the service.
• Customize Views. Select the columns in each view, and re-order them based on your unique preferences or needs.
• Mass Update. This feature provides an easier way to make bulk changes in each area of the service.  For example, you can close multiple tickets, reassign a group of computers to a site, change the status of multiple assets, and much more.

We’ll keep you posted as each of these new features becomes available.  And, of course, we continue to welcome ideas and suggestions from you.  Your feedback and input helps us determine what new capabilities and enhancements should be added in the future.

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.

Companies who use manual processes to manage their IT assets are often plagued by numerous errors and mistakes in their inventory.  And one of the problems that occurs most frequently is duplicate computers – those PCs, servers, and other systems that are accounted for more than once.

How do duplicate computers get created in your inventory?  And, how should you deal with duplicate assets?

1. Changes to a business. Expansion and downsizing, as well as adjustments to HR hierarchies like promotions, transfers,or reorganizations, often require assets to be moved, re-assigned, re-installed or taken out of service.  All this activity, when handled manually, leaves much room for error.
2. Re-installing computers. Many times during typical course of business computers would get re-installed or re-provisioned from a standard image. This is done to correct a software problem, to wipe a machine clean before reassigning it, or simply to restore to a standard baseline. When computers get re-installed, they could appear as duplicates in the inventory.
3. Technology innovation. Combined with dynamic market conditions, prompt companies to continuously replace old, outdated assets with newer, better ones to keep up with new employee needs and customer demands.  Once again, logging all these changes by hand can result in human mistakes, creating serious inconsistencies and replications in inventory.

The creation of duplicate computers can cause numerous issues.  For example, it can hinder the effectiveness of IT asset management efforts.  It can make it difficult to accurately account for all the company’s assets, or it can make it difficult to properly track software installation and usage, putting a company’s license compliance standing at risk.

SAManage: The Fastest, Easiest Way to Handle Duplicate Computers

IT asset management solutions from SAManage are designed to help ensure the precision and accuracy of your computer inventory.  End to end automation of all related activities – from scanning for duplicate computers and allowing the administrator to easily mark a computer as duplicate and remove it from the system inventory as needed – makes it quick and simple to detect and correct the problem of duplicate computers.

And now, a new enhancement to the SAManage user interface – a “Find Duplicates” icon conveniently located at the top right corner of the Inventory > Computer Module screen – empowers users to initiate the process of locating and rectifying duplicate computers in just a single click!

Visit our Web site to learn more about our SaaS IT management solutions, and how they can help you more efficiently and effectively avoid duplicate computers in your inventory.

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-day trial of SAManage IT Management service.

More and more corporations are adding Mac OS computers to their portfolio of technology assets.  A recent survey conducted by analyst firm Yankee Group claims that the number of businesses that have Macs in house has close to doubled over the past two years, and is now as high as 80 percent.  As Mac OS computers become more widely-used among today’s enterprises, the need for comprehensive inventory software for Mac is becoming increasingly urgent.

But for many companies, tracking two types of desktop computers can present many challenges.  For example, in the past, the tools available for managing Mac OS inventory have been limited, and have forced firms to manage the two sets of systems separately.

But, when it comes to IT asset management, Macs post the same kind of issues as Windows-based systems, and should not be ignored – even if only a handful of them exist across a business.  There are many important things to consider, like software license compliance, which require formal, automated IT management processes.  And because Macs are becoming such a crucial part of technology infrastructures, they need to be handled in the same way as Windows PCs, servers, software solutions, and other systems.  A powerful mac inventory tools must be used to ensure that Mac OS inventory is audited, logged, and monitored closely as systems are upgraded, enhanced, and modified.

In response to this trend, as well as demand from our own customers, SAManage has developed a new Mac OS agent that is currently available in Beta version. This Mac OS inventory agent provides end-to-end Mac asset management, helping companies to better keep track of both Mac OS inventory and their Windows OS inventory through the same IT Asset Management tool. With our Mac agent, companies can more effectively:

• Audit Mac OS inventory, know the exact configuration and instantly identify and correct duplicates
• Facilitate better software license compliance for all applications installed on Mac OS computers
• Improve security by detecting and removing any malware, spyware, or illegal software that poses a threat to the environment
• Optimize employee productivity by enforcing guidelines against games, peer-to-peer programs, and other applications that distract from job performance
• Using the same inventory tool for inventory tracking Mac OS and Windows OS computers
• Ensure that all Macs have the appropriate patches and upgrades, so they are up-to-date at all times

Visit our web site to learn more about our new Mac OS agent, and our suite of powerful on-demand IT asset management solutions.

SaaS-based 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.

Drexel University Online Boost Productivity, Security, and Compliance with SAManage

Drexel University Online is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Drexel University, offering accredited online degree programs to professionals who want to complete or advance their education at an online college without compromising quality.

Better managing its complex and multi-faceted IT environment with limited resources is a key priority for the institution. Carl Lahetta is Drexel University Online’s Sr. Manager Technology, charged with overseeing all aspects of the organization’s technology architecture.

“What impressed me from the start about SAManage was the fact that they offered a free trial,” said Lahetta. “Any company confident enough to do that must really have faith in their product.”

Among the many reasons Drexel chose SAManage over other tools was its Software as a Service (SaaS) deployment model, which maximizes accessibility and ensures that the latest enhancements are immediately available to users.

SAManage is used by the Drexel team to support a variety of critical IT management functions, such as inventory, keeping end-user PCs and Macs up-to-date, and managing software license compliance.  Deploying only a small-footprint agent on end-user machines, SAManage automatically collects inventory-related data, making the logging and auditing process far more efficient.

“SAManage automatically gathers inventory information for us. This really makes our team more efficient and enables us to focus on the bigger picture.  We can now spend our time assessing what’s going on across the environment, instead of collecting data one asset at a time.”

Read the complete report: Drexel University Online Boost Productivity, Security, and Compliance with SAManage

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.

More and more businesses are choosing Salesforce.com as their software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.  In fact, over 63,000 customers currently use the various hosted applications that Salesforce.com offers.  Now, these companies can maximize their investment in cloud computing, while enhancing the way they track their IT inventory, by organizing and managing their assets from directly within their Salesforce.com account.

Our IT asset management system seamlessly integrates with the Salesforce.com environment.  This allows organizations to incorporate data directly from SAManage into Salesforce.com, providing them with an efficient way to:

• Review the configuration, location, usage details, and repair histories of PCs, printers, servers, and other assets.
• Immediately track changes such as upgrades or re-assignments.  All modifications to assets in inventory are automatically captured in real-time, and uploaded into Salesforce.com.
• Link assets to support requests, with asset-to-cases lifecycle tracking capabilities that expedite issue resolution.

With SAManage IT asset management for Salesforce.com, inventory and configuration data is dynamically collected and imported into the Salesforce.com application.  So, companies have complete, unhindered visibility into their entire IT infrastructure.  IT professionals can easily view, analyze, and update critical asset inventory information at any time, right from within the familiar Salesforce.com interface.

As a result, Salesforce.com customers can accelerate the troubleshooting and resolution of support cases, minimizing user downtime and eliminating business disruptions, while improving the efficiency of IT support teams and optimizing the performance and value of vital technology investments.

Visit our Web site to learn more about SAManage, and how our powerful SaaS IT management software can provide dramatic benefits for Salesforce.com users.

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.

All IT asset management (ITAM) tools are valuable, helping users to more effectively monitor, control, and manage their increasingly diverse and multi-faceted technology environments.  And while ITAM applications delivered via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) or on-demand model are growing in popularity, many companies are still using on-premise ITAM tools.

What these organizations don’t take into consideration is just how much these on-site solutions may be costing them.  In fact, industry research shows that an on-premise ITAM tool can cost more than three times as much as its hosted counterpart in the first year alone. Here’s how to identify these hidden costs:

High Initial Expenditures

Firms who purchase on-site ITAM must lay out tens of thousands of dollars in licensing fees upfront – which can drain shrinking technology budgets, and make it harder to get executive sponsorship for an IT asset management project.  On the other hand, acquiring and deploying a SaaS-based ITAM system can cost a 500-employee company as little as $10,o00 annually when procured as a subscription service.  This makes on-demand ITAM the far more budget-friendly approach.

The annual subscription allows companies to pay only for what they need today. If technology requirements change due to a growth or decline in assets, the subscription can be adjusted accordingly the next year. But with on-premise tools, firms must commit to paying an upfront license fee, with no way to recoup their investment if they have lesser needs or fewer devices down the road.

In other words, because SaaS ITAM offers greater flexibility, better alignment of investments with needs, and “pay as you go” subscriptions, it is substantially more economical that on-premise systems.

Maintenance Burden

On-premise ITAM vendors typically charge for annual maintenance and upgrades.  These fees average about 15 percent of total initial license costs.  So, for a company with 500 PCs, this additional expense could be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,200 each and every year – on top of the tens of thousands of dollars that have already been spent on licenses, hardware, and implementation.

When budgeting for an in-house ITAM system, many companies forget to quantify the effort involved with patching bugs or upgrading the on-premise tool, including testing the new version and rolling it out across the company.

With SaaS-based ITAM tools, there are no upgrades to worry about. As with Gmail and other hosted applications, the on-demand ITAM vendor takes care of all extensions and enhancements behind the scenes. And the biggest benefit is that when new functionality becomes available, gaining immediate access to those features involves absolutely no effort on the client’s part (with the exception of any customization that may be needed). You will never have to upgrade your software again.

Complex Deployments

An on-premise ITAM solution requires the purchase of extra hardware, adding approximately $5,000 per application server to the already high initial costs.  Additionally, implementation, system integration, and training can put a strain on scarce IT staff resources.  For example, an on-site IT asset management solution can take at least 40 hours to install and roll-out.  With the average IT technician earning around $33 per hour, according to Salary.com, that can result in further expenses of more than $1,300.

By comparison, SaaS-based IT asset management systems can be implemented in just a fraction of the time – as little as half a day.  Companies who choose on-demand ITAM also eliminate the need to buy new equipment to support the environment.

Hidden Hardware Costs

There are also other costs to consider, such as data center capacity, server OS and database licenses, database back up tools, storage and backup costs, and the time IT staff will spend conducting routine administration.  These costs can quickly add up, further chipping away at human and financial resources.

But with SaaS ITAM, upgrades, ongoing maintenance, and enhancements are all the responsibility of the service provider, and are all included in the subscription fee.  Additionally, since the provider administers all hardware and related data, any associated costs are incurred by them, not the client.  So, there are never any “surprise” costs above and beyond the agreed upon per-user price.

Better Service Levels

Using a SaaS-based ITAM service instead of an on-premise ITAM tool lets IT staff focus on more critical priorities and projects, instead of overseeing day-to-day operation of yet another IT application.  Because running the ITAM service is the sole focus of the provider, vendors like SAManage can offer a great and transparent service level.

SaaS vs. Legacy IT Management Tools

Visit our Web site to read our “SaaS vs. Legacy IT Management Tools” white paper.  You’ll learn more about the hidden costs of on-premise ITAM systems, and how on-demand IT asset management solutions can deliver greater value and faster return on investment.

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?

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.

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.