Asset Management Tools Root Out Unneeded Applications, Hardware

Tag : Hardware And Tools

That's not unusual for any large organization, which is why theasset management discipline emerged. The first step is figuring outwhat useful and not so useful computer gear is hanging off yournetwork, then lay to rest those wasting time and money. A project to do that at the U.S.Army has so far produced multimillion-dollar savings and now theDoD itself wants to replicate it, says Joe Paiva, a leader in the DoD responsible for IT portfolio management strategy and policydevelopment.
Paiva worked with asset management software from BDNA Corp., aprivate company in Mountain View, Calif. In one day, he and histeam installed the BDNAInsight "agentless discovery" product on servers in one Army office, tosearch various servers and PCs at major Army bases and facilities.
"Agentless discovery" means the software automatically crawls an IPnetwork to record every device and piece of software attached toit. Initial scans take about a day, Paiva estimates. BDNAInsightthen spits out a report that can be sorted by type of device,server crawled and other variables.
The process turned up some surprises and has helped the Army closemoney leaks.