Optimizing IT Asset Management with SCCM and xAssets

System Center represents a great strategic decision for taking control of your IT infrastructure. The software requires a substantial investment of time and money but for large environments the returns are substantial and worthwhile. A few years ago a paper was published suggesting that an organization running 50,000 clients could save 5,500 man hours per year and $290,000 USD plus some additional one-time savings.

However a small additional investment in a full lifecycle ITAM tool can give you a much bigger additional return by giving you visibility and organisational control over those assets through functions that are not available in System Center.

By connecting xAssets IT asset Management into your SCCM implementation, you can:

• Add full lifecycle asset management functionality to your SCCM data
• Add IT data from all sources into a single repository of asset and service information
• Discover non windows endpoints such as routers, switches, IP phones, printer cards, Linux and Unix, SNMP v3 devices, SSH devices and Apple MAC
• Import hardware purchases from manufacturer provided spreadsheets such as those provided by Dell and HP
• Add in service management data from your help desk, or indeed use the xAssets Help Desk provided
• Import Software Licenses and Contracts
• Create or import inter-asset relationships to establish dependencies and risk measures
• Develop a set of KPI's to ensure you drive continuous improvement in your ITAM processes

Pulling data from disparate sources into one logical database gives a holistic view of your entire IT asset infrastructure. The below diagram shows typical data flows into and out of the xAssets solution.

SCCM surveys and discovers networked devices, including servers, client PCs and smartphones, connected to your system through Active Directory. For end-to-end software asset management, license optimization and full lifecycle asset management capabilities, additional features are needed that do not exist today in SCCM. It therefore makes sense that you need complementary software and applications to make the most of your information. Also, that software needs an easy way to connect with SCCM.

SCCM integration is included "out of the box" with xAssets, and can function cloud hosted implementations with our secure (USAF tested!) collection server technology.

The end result is a unified view of all IT assets deploy within the organization, relationships between assets and is able to “drill down/up” based on a solution type, physical hardware, location or any other classification.

Key Functions

• Asset register includes all lifecycle processes
• Discover with any discovery tool
• Integrate to any IT systems
• Software includes License Compliance
• Hardware data from many data sources
• Network equipment is discovered and classified
• Contract Management includes SLAs, hardware and software contracts, providers, leases and warranties

Any function from any other xAssets solution can also be included, see the list of functions for more information.

Asset Lifecycle Processes

The full asset lifecycle is covered from procurement, through the operational life of the asset and beyond to obsolescence and disposal.