Using software tools to keep track of your technology
assets will help with regulatory and licensing compliance and can
net some businesses big savings
Almost 66% of IT managers admit to not having a completely
accurate record of their IT assets, according to a survey
commissioned by configuration and security management company
LANDesk. And only 28% use a single management tool to discover,
track, secure and manage all the IT hardware and software assets in
their organisation.
Instead, most respondents profile their IT assets using manual
methods, usually by physically checking the location of equipment
in the office or logging all new hardware and software as it
arrives, and then manually updating spreadsheets.
IT asset management is becoming increasingly important due to
the need for businesses to meet regulatory compliance. Laws and
industry regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel 2 require
organisations to provide better visibility of operations, including
IT. In many cases, this means compiling a complete inventory of IT
assets.
In addition, non-compliance with software licensing carries
heavy penalties. Organisations such as the Business Software
Alliance (BSA) and the Federation Against Software Theft (Fast)
actively investigate companies that are suspected of using
unlicensed software.
According to the BSA’s figures, this could be as many as 27% of
UK businesses – and in October 2004, the BSA announced that it had
collected £1.2m in penalties from 25 companies in its annual
software piracy sweep.
Not only that, but non-compliance with software licensing rules
is a punishable offence under UK law – albeit one that is rarely,
if ever, applied. Under legislation that came into effect in
November 2002, UK company directors face up to 10 years in prison
if they fail to stamp out the use of unlicensed software within
their businesses.
“All too often IT policy enforcement and management is left
solely to the IT department, in the belief that when IT staff say
that correct licences are in place, they are. But the directors
themselves will be held culpable. Company directors need to have a
firm grip on their technically able IT staff,” said John Lovelock,
director general at Fast.
IT asset management software from companies such as Peregrine
Systems, BMC, CA, Monactive and Altiris can help organisations
track software usage.
These tools perform a number of tasks. They run “inventory
discovery checks” to assess what software and hardware is in use in
an organisation, controlling its use and storing information about
these assets in a central repository. Key inventory information
includes specific location data for each device, and this often
includes the country, city, office name, floor and location.
Also important is detailed device information, including the
model number and its associated serial number (always key for
external support suppliers) and the software version running.
The IT asset management software also provides tools to control
the IT procurement cycle, processing user requests for hardware and
software, confirming their entitlement and then tracking the
testing, evaluation and release of these products to users.
Finally, these products manage IT contracts, alerting managers
when discounts for bulk purchases should be requested from
suppliers and alerting them when licences are due for renewal.
Frances O’Brien, an analyst at research firm IDC, suggests that
companies should get started on IT asset management initiatives
immediately. “If your business has not yet made a commitment to
asset management, there is significant opportunity to focus
resources on this area and achieve a disproportionate benefit,” she
said.
Since any money saved through an IT asset management programme
is saved for the duration of the contractual commitment, companies
that do not begin to manage these costs now will not be competitive
in the future, because they will be building their budgets from a
much higher cost base, O’Brien said.
Effective IT asset management can reduce the cost of maintaining
IT assets. Ian MacDonald, senior product marketing manager at IT
asset management specialist Peregrine, which was bought by
Hewlett-Packard in September 2005, said, “When IT does not know
what is installed on an end-user’s PC, it cannot easily diagnose
problems or pinpoint PCs that need updates when application
security vulnerabilities arise.
“As a result, the average time it takes to resolve an incident
increases and additional support expertise is required to handle
the additional applications.”
IT asset management can also assist companies in implementing
“charge back” schemes, under which individual departments and
business units pay IT directly for the IT resources they consume.
“In order to implement charge back, you need to know what IT assets
you have, who is using them, when and what for.
“Putting a relevant and efficient system in place for charge
back requires not only a willingness from both enterprise IT and
its supported customers to map the impact of service usage across
service-related assets to cost, it also requires effective software
investments to make that mapping relevant, accurate and adaptive to
change,” said MacDonald.
“All this information can be captured and held in an IT asset
management system and easily extracted in the form of management
reports.”
But manually tracking IT assets is cumbersome. Tony Probert,
director of sales and marketing at specialist software firm
Monactive, said, “Gaining visibility into and control over IT
assets is an extremely difficult task to accomplish using manual
methods and spreadsheets.
“Efforts quickly become too fragmented and unco-ordinated –
often because IT purchasing responsibility falls to numerous people
within the organisation. Not only do IT assets become difficult to
track, they become even harder to manage.”
The situation is exacerbated by rapid product lifecycles and the
need to regularly patch and upgrade software. Using IT asset
discovery tools, users can reduce the cost of maintenance and gain
a much better view into what assets are duplicated and what areas
of IT need to be rationalised.
Wigan finds out where to cut costs
Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council must be able to demonstrate
that it spends taxpayers’ money wisely. In IT terms, that means
keeping a close eye on costs and accounting for every piece of new
equipment and software that is installed.
But when the council recently investigated its IT assets using
an automated asset management system from Monactive, it got several
surprises.
Within two days, it discovered about 100 “redundant” PCs on its
premises that were in good working order and could be reallocated
to users. It found “numerous” copies of unlicensed, unauthorised or
out-of-date software sitting on desktops that needed to be removed
or updated.
In one area of the council, it found that software that it had
licensed for use on 68 desktops was being used on four times as
many machines. In another, it found a 25% oversubscription to an
anti-virus package.
That information has not only enabled the council to make
immediate cost savings, it will be used to drive better purchasing
decisions, said Paul Fairhurst, IT infrastructure manager at Wigan
Metropolitan Borough Council.
“It is easy to cut IT costs when you know what you do not need.
And understanding our true needs means we have a stronger
negotiating position with our IT suppliers.”
Case study: Friends Provident uses asset management tool
for upgrade to XP
Insurance firm Friends Provident is in the process of upgrading
its corporate PCs and laptops from Windows NT to Windows XP.
To do this effectively, the company needed to know the exact
number of clients that required upgrading, the applications running
on them, who used them, and whether each client had enough memory
and processing power to run the new operating system.
“The challenge of this project is replacing like for like,” said
Nicky Mortlock, technical project manager at Friends Provident. “We
need to be able to see exactly what applications are on each
individual desktop and replace them, along with the new operating
system, to give users the same experience as they had before.”
That is no easy feat when you have 3,500 desktops scattered over
a wide geographic network. For that reason, Friends Provident is
using CA’s Unicenter package, which provides tools for asset
management, software delivery and remote control.
Using this package, it is no longer necessary for Friends
Provident’s technical staff to visit each PC individually,
ascertain what is on it, and perform the upgrade locally.
“We are using Unicenter Asset Manager to identify specific
targets, such as PCs and laptops, to verify their specification and
to audit locally-installed content, all from a central location,”
Mortlock said.
This is already saving money on software licences, she said.
“For example, where a user has installed Microsoft Project for a
task they completed a year ago but no longer uses it, we can remove
the software from that desktop and redeploy it to someone who does
need it.”
Friends Provident is also using the system to get the most out
of older assets. “A lot of PCs will need replacing either
immediately or in the near future and we know exactly where they
are and have timetabled their replacement.
“But at the same time, we have been able to take a lot of our
lower specification PCs and give them to users who access
applications sitting on a server through Citrix Terminal Server,
because they do not need a new, high-specification PC to perform
their roles effectively,” said Mortlock.
In future, Friends Provident will use CA Unicenter to assist in
keeping a handle on its IT inventory, leading to further cost
savings and efficiencies, said Mortlock.
“It will enable us to maintain a consistent environment in which
application deployment and software upgrades will be kept under
firm control. Knowing what assets we have, where they are and who
is using them allows us to more proactively demonstrate the value
that IT delivers to the business as a whole.”