SAManage, a leading provider of on-demand IT Management solutions, announced today that over one million assets are now managed through the company’s SaaS IT Asset Management platform.
Companies in 56 countries around the world are using the SAManage on-demand service to manage their PC and software assets. Over 50,000 different software titles from over 7,000 manufacturers are tracked and managed using SAManage, which helps companies organize software licenses as well as detect unauthorized and unlicensed software installations.
“We help companies ensure their IT assets are used for their intended purposes,” explains Doron Gordon, SAManage’s CEO. “We have already detected over 16,000 IT risks including unprotected computers, games and file sharing programs, and license compliance gaps. By helping companies detect these risks and remediate them, we allow them to protect their IT investments, regain employee productivity, and reduce the risk of a software audit.”
Delivered as an on-demand service with no software or servers to manage, SAManage is easily deployed across multiple locations within minutes, making it easy for companies of all sizes to establish IT governance, control, and compliance. “With summary reports reflecting areas that actually matter and the benefit of having the audit results stored securely off-site, SAManage delivers real and tangible value,” says Micha Katz, head of technology at 10X Investments.
A new era in IT Asset Management has begun today with launch of the SAManage free SaaS service. For the first time, organizations around the world have an easy way to control and manage their IT assets, with minimal effort, and at absolutely no cost.
Using the free of charge SAManage IT Asset Management solution, IT departments are empowered with complete visibility into the entire IT environment, so they can more effectively manage their assets and ensure that assets are fully utilized. Delivered on-demand over the Internet, the SAManage solution provides a real-time view of PCs, laptops, servers, and other IT assets throughout the organization, including assets that are not connected to the company network. With the instant access to asset configuration data enabled by SAManage, IT departments are able to improve service levels, reduce problem resolution time, and easily audit changes to their assets.
The SAManage Software-as-a-Service application removes the costs and efforts associated with the deployment of traditional IT Asset Management solutions: it requires no hardware or software infrastructure, no implementation effort, and no ongoing maintenance. Now, with the launch of the free SAManage service, organizations and their IT departments can enjoy the benefits of SAManage at no cost whatsoever.
Animus Solutions, a vendor-neutral provider of IT asset management and service management consulting, and RF Code, a leader in automating physical asset tracking, announced an alliance that will help organizations incorporate the use of active RFID extensively into a broad range of IT asset processes.
These processes include asset identification and tracking for instant inventory and audit. Active RFID is a widely used technology providing instantaneous inventory access to all physical assets that are managed. RF Code’s customers and partners use its active RFID-based solutions in a variety of applications, including IT asset tracking, real-time inventory, tracking/ordering, inventory audits, personnel tracking and security and across major industries such as healthcare, retail, and manufacturing.
“The use of active RFID technology has barely cracked the surface for IT asset business processes,” stated Walter Darrough, Vice President of Sales and Business Development for Animus Solutions. “Through this alliance with RF Code, we will use our expertise to help RF Code customers and partners realize the additional value from their investment in the technology by expanding usage into service management and best practices for IT asset management.”
On July 1st Microsoft announced a new licensing program designed for large organizations with multiple affiliates. Called Select Plus, it is another sign that Microsoft is trying to reign in its complex licensing system.
If a company has several affiliates in different locations, Select Plus will enable your affiliates to take advantage of price-level adjustments that are based on the actual purchase volume for your entire organization.
Registration has been simplified to one page making it faster and simpler to register each affiliate. Under the plan your company can purchase software licenses at any time, easing planning and deployment as your needs change.
The Select Plus licensing program is due to start up in October 2008
Microsoft lists these as the top five reasons to choose Select Plus:
Keeping track of your shipments can be a time consuming task. Orders from a variety of different vendors using different shipping services can have you web site hopping to try to track down where your items are.
A web site called TrackMyShipments.com offers a free order tracking service. You simply email the “Your order has shipped email” or create your own email message with the tracking number and shipping service. Their system will examine your email and extract the shippers name and the tracking number.
This is the second in a series of articles to help you improve your inventory management system. Read the first installment in the series IT Asset Management - Part 1 Catalog of Assets.
Usage Tracking
Usage data is a key part of an inventory management system. The data provide from usage tracking will help you:
- Determine the minimum on-hand inventory you need to maintain
- Help you set minimum inventory levels to trigger ordering
- Spot trends in usage that indicate the need for root cause analysis
- Give you snapshots in time of inventory usage
What Do You Need to Track?
Everything. Whatever you use, internal or external needs to be tracked. If you have it in inventory you should track it. If you order it you should track it. If you must maintain on-hand inventory you should track it. I also like to break down the data between our different internal and external customers. This shows what is going where and provides data that can be used in other reports such as for a particular customer.
Touchpaper, a IT Business Management provider announced the launch of the Touchpaper Asset Management Process Pack, designed to extend the reach of Configuration Management into the asset management process.
“The Asset Management Process Pack is a total lifecycle approach to asset management that allows IT directors to keep track of an organization’s computing assets through the entire lifecycle; from procurement, ongoing management and change of IT assets, to their eventual disposal.”
This is the first in a series of articles about setting up and running an IT Asset Management System. This article will focus on a Catalog of Assets. The catalog serves as a framework for other areas of your system as well as a quick reference for all of the assets you need to track.
You can use products such as Excel to create a basic system. For a more inclusive system you may want to use database software such as Access. There are also a host of commercial software packages out there to choose from.
