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IT software specialist LANDesk unveiled the latest version of its IT Asset Management (ITAM) Suite, which includes a Workspace, targeted at IT asset managers.
The suite, which provides a simplified view of IT assets in one central place, lets users know what assets they have, where they are, how they are used and how they are performing.
“Asset managers have been forced to use tools that aren’t well suited for the tasks they are trying to complete. They have to dig through too much information and manually track data to gain insight into what licenses they may be over or under purchasing,” Steve Morton, executive vice president at LANDesk, told eWEEK. “With this new release, we’ve taken all the busywork out of tracking your assets, bringing your inventory and purchasing information together and applying license intelligence that helps you visualize, at a glance, your compliance risks, along with potential savings by making better use of the software licenses you already own.”
For example, new reports can enable a customizable dashboard that allows users to focus on the data they are interested in viewing when they log in, which Morton said means users don’t have to waste time by running reports when they log in, because they see precisely what they are interested in.
By providing a complete look at assets, the ITAM Suite helps IT managers stay updated by automating hardware warranty, lease and refresh tracking, in addition to asset recalls.
The suite also offers detailed licensing information, helping IT managers monitor their current state of compliance and respond faster to software audits.
Leveraging Workspaces, the ITAM Suite overall provides better visibility into software compliance, hardware asset life cycles, license entitlement and hardware refresh policies—an integration that provides opportunities to drive cost savings in IT by reclaiming unused software and repurposing underutilized hardware.
“A major challenge for businesses is knowing where to start when looking for an IT asset management solution,” Morton explained. “Good asset management initiatives can require connecting to several different systems to pull in data on things such as inventory, location, users and purchasing information.”
Morton also noted that asset management technology is being forced to evolve quickly in response to rapid technological change.
“More and more devices and device types, bring your own [devices], cloud and SaaS apps, IoT [Internet of Things], external cloud services, mobile apps, new and more complex licensing types—all of these business drivers will create new challenges for asset managers,” he said. “Let’s not forget that new government regulations will also impact asset management. For example, when the Affordable Care Act was passed, health care organizations that didn’t have asset management programs had to quickly ramp up so they could be reimbursed under the meaningful-use clause in the act.”