What is SAManage?
SAManage is an easy to use on-demand IT Asset Management service that provides information about hardware and software assets across your company. SAManage helps gain better control over your IT assets and consolidates asset information against contracts and software licenses to help you manage your IT assets and reduce your IT costs. The SAManage SaaS service is accessible over the web and requires no software or servers, enabling multiple users across your company to easily access your asset information and run reports.
How does it work?
SAManage requires no software or servers to deploy and manage. The on-demand service is provided over the web using inventory information collected by a small agent installed on each computer at your site. The agent periodically collects inventory information and transmits it to our secured data center for processing. The SAManage service than process and classifies your inventory automatically using our vast database of software titles and hardware information. Once classified, your PC and software inventory is scanned for potential risks and exposures, license compliance gaps, and any deviations from policies you defined. We’ll even verify that all there are no illegal software such as games or p-2-p file sharing programs on your networks, and that your computers are running with proper anti-virus protection. Your information is always accessible to you and your users through the SAManage secured website and available through reports, custom queries and periodical email notifications.
What are the benefits of using SAManage?
The SAManage service helps you know what PC and software inventory you have, what is running in your network, and helps manage and track your software licenses and ensure that you are always in compliance with software license agreements and your internal software usage policy. SAManage helps detect unauthorized software used across your company, software that needs to be upgraded or creates a security hazard, and detect other risks to your IT, such as workstations without an anti-virus protection. SAManage also helps plan and prepare for infrastructure changes and migrations, such as migrating to Windows Vista or deploying new versions of software across your IT.
I am already using an Inventory Management system, why should I use SAManage?
SAManage provides additional functionality on top of traditional Inventory Management systems: first, its on-demand so you don't have to manage any software or servers. Second, SAManage analyzes your inventory and highlights areas requiring your attention and gets your inventory organized (by removing patches, drivers, and software updates). In addition, SAManage helps you manage and organize your IT contracts, service agreements, leases and software licenses (either traditional software or subscription based services), track terms and purchase records, and manage their expiration and renewal schedules. SAManage constantly compares your inventory information against licenses and agreements to detect risks to your assets and license compliance gaps. SAManage even lets you define a software usage policy and enforce it for you, providing alerts of any policy deviations across your IT enterprise.
What are the benefits of the on-demand model?
SAManage on-demand service is based on a monthly subscription, so you don’t have to purchase and commit to perpetual software licenses. With SAManage, there is no software to manage or maintain locally, no expensive servers to provision, manage and backup, and no software to maintain or upgrade – it’s all part of the benefits of the on-demand delivery model. Getting started with SAManage is extremely fast so you eliminate the risk of a long implementation projects and can gain immediate value from our service. Lastly, when we introduce new features and functionality to our service they become immediately available to you without any upgrade or deployment cycle.
Deployment
How do I deploy the agents across my computes?
The SAManage agent can be easily deployed across your computers using one of the following methods:
- SAManage remote deployment tool
- using a domain login scripts
- using an active directory group policy option
- Software distribution solutions (such as Microsoft SMS)
- Manually (for remote computers without a network connection)
To learn more about the different deployment options and to choose the approach that best fits your infrastructure, visit the online deployment guides.
Can I deploy silently?
Yes, you can deploy the SAManage agent using silent install without any user intervention by using the /s command line option. Once installed, the agent appears in the Windows Add/Remove Program list, and operates as an independent Windows service. By operating as a service, the agent will continue to report its inventory even when your computers are not connected to the corporate network - so that you can easily track your laptops and remote assets. Once installed, the agent only needs an active internet connection and will report its local inventory periodically without any user intervention.
What if the computers are not connected to my network?
You can collect inventory information for machines that are not connected to your network or the internet manually using the SAManage agent. You can install the agent manually by emailing your users asking them to install the agent on their local machine. Once installed, the agent will run as a Windows service and reports its local inventory to the SAManage servers.
Technical
What are the hardware/software requirements?
There are no hardware/software requirements. SAManage is an on-demand service and does not require any servers or hardware to maintain.
What operating systems can I inventory with SAManage?
The SAManage agent can be installed on the following operating systems:
- Windows 95 (with DCOM), Windows 98, Windows NT (Workstation and Server with IE4 and up)
- Windows XP (Home and Professional)
- Windows 2000 (Professional, Server, Advanced Server)
- Windows 2003 (Server)
- Windows Vista (all versions)
- Windows 7 (all versions)
- Linux (RedHat, Suse, Centos, Debian, Fedora Core, Mandriva, Ubontu, Trustix, Slackware)
- MacOS X v10.3 and higher)
- Sun Solaris (Sparc 8 and above), FreeBSD v6.1 x86, OpenBSD v3.8 x86, NetBSD v2.0.2 x86
- IBM AIX v4.33 and v5.x and HP-UX
What kind of information does the agent collect?
The agent collects information about hardware configuration and installed software using WMI and other methods. For hardware configuration, the agent collects information about the BIOS, Processors, Memory (physical and virtual), input devices, system ports, slots, controllers, storage devices (physical, logical, partitions), sound devices, video and display adapters, modem and network adapters, and printers attached. For software configuration, the agent collects information about the operating system, software information (through add/remove, control panel, registry and executables).
How does the agent connect to the internet?
The agent connects to the internet by using TCP Port 80 by default, and can be configured to use any other port as required.
Can the agent work with our proxy server?
Yes, the agent can be configured to use a local proxy server in your network and upload inventory to the SAManage data center through your proxy.
How much bandwidth does the agent use?
The agent uses very little bandwidth as all collected information is compressed. The typical size of the agent inventory file is approximately 5K, depending on the computer configuration. In additions, the agents are running at random intervals (on average, every 10 hours an inventory collection is scheduled by the agent) so that bandwidth usage would be spread across the day ensuring that there are no spikes in network bandwidth consumption even for large networks with thousands of computers.
How often does the agent perform inventory scans?
The agent launches every 10 hours of computer activity to perform an inventory scan. If the machine is not connected to the internet or turned off, the agent would re-run the inventory scan when the machine starts and connect to the SAManage data center the next time the machine connects to the internet.
Security
How secure are the agents?
The agent operates like other software that runs in your network today and connects to a server on the internet, including Windows Update service, Adobe Acrobat Reader or your anti-virus protection. The agent only connects to the SAManage server, and no communication is initiated with other destinations. In addition, the agent does not receive requests from any device or server, internal or external to your network, but only initiate requests. This approach ensures that no other service can exploit the agent.
How my information is protected in your data center?
SAManage has taken numerous security actions from the physical access to our data center to the security of the service layer itself. SAManage servers are hosted in a secured SAS70 certified Tier4 class A Data Center. This means that physical access to the SAManage servers is restricted to authorized operators only, and no other personal can access our hosting area. Our network is protected by the latest Firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems and is monitored 24x7 by network and security teams. Learn more about security practices at SAManage and review our privacy policy.
Support
What kind of support do you provide during the deployment?
We are available to help you get started with SAManage. We offer a free phone activation session that takes up to 30 minutes where we walk you through the signup and activation steps. When you sign up to SAManage a dedicated Support Team member is assigned to you. The Support Team member will introduce himself as your single point of contact, and will be available to answer any deployment or usability questions you may have, and guide you through the process.
What kind of on-going support do you provide?
SAManage provides email and phone based support in normal business hours. You can submit support tickets and request assistance through calling us, using the support section in our website, or by emailing us at support@samanage.com. We are at your service.
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