Dassault Gains Asset Visibility with SAManage
“SAManage was very easy to deploy and use. We were able to start using the service and get visibility into our hardware and software in no time.”
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Background
Dassault Systèmes Israel is the Israeli branch of Dassault Systèmes, a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. Headquartered in Paris, France, Dassault Systèmes is traded on Nasdaq and Euronext.
Located in Kfar Saba, Dassault Systèmes Israel has 200 employees, most of them responsible for the product line ENOVIA SmarTeam within the ENOVIA PLM brand portfolio of DS. ENOVIA SmarTeam is a leading provider of full Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to mid-market businesses and engineering departments for larger enterprises. It enables its best-in-class customers to create excellent products through its portfolio of PLM products and solutions. The company has more than 6,000 customers worldwide.
Challenges
The IT department at Dassault Systèmes Israel’s faced a number of challenges related to the management of IT assets throughout the company. To track computer inventory, the IT department was using Microsoft’s Systems Management Server (SMS). However, SMS fell short on collecting and analyzing the inventory information and pointing to issues that required the attention of the IT department, such as unprotected machines and missing security updates. In addition, the inventory view presented in SMS was cluttered with instances representing system drivers, service packs, and patches, which made it difficult to correctly analyze the information collected from hundreds of PC's and take the appropriate action.
SMS required manual installation on each machine, which made the process prone to errors and omissions. To make things worse, some savvy end users were able to remove the SMS agent, causing their computers to become invisible to any asset tracking. Another limitation of SMS resulted in the inability to track virtual machines commonly used across the network and computers that were not part of any domain.
Last but not least, Dassault Systèmes Israel’s IT department lacked the ability to effectively track software licenses, contracts with IT vendors and service providers, and software keys used across the network. With no centralized system in place, the department had to spend considerable time and effort tracking such contracts and reconciling them with actual usage.
Solution
Looking to overcome the shortcomings of the Microsoft SMS solution, Dassault Systèmes Israel selected the SAManage on-demand IT Asset Management solution to track computer and software inventory, detect risks, and streamline the organization of IT contracts and software licenses.
SAManage is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) that requires no hardware or software installation and maintenance, enabling Dassault Systèmes Israel to roll out the solution throughout the organization with minimum effort and no capital equipment investment. “SAManage was very easy to deploy and use,” says Miki Shvo, Director of IT at Dassault Systèmes Israel. “We were able to start using the service and get visibility into our hardware and software in no time.”
Results
SAManage provides Dassault Systèmes Israel with accurate inventory tracking of IT assets, enabling the IT department to proactively detect risks and enforce compliance with software licensing. “SAManage dynamically updates the information we are tracking and presents it in an actionable format, which means that we can immediately take action when a risk is identified anywhere throughout the organization,” says Shvo. “By providing clear and accurate visibility into our IT inventory information and highlighting the areas that require attention, SAManage has eliminated a labor-intensive process that was a source for risks with the previous system,” he adds.
