The xAssets Blog

A lot of companies offer their products in some kind of hosted form these days, some even have a non browser based product which you pay for annually to download, like office. These products are often not inherently designed for the cloud and become a management nightmare for system administrators because they have to install those products on every client endpoint and then manage and troubleshoot them. It is much easier to manage products which are browser based and therefore can be used from any client PC or device without being installed on that device.

Whereas products like xAssets Solutions are inherently designed to operate in a cloud environment and the technology going into this isn't just a simple web application or an old application front ended by a web interface. By designing your products from top to bottom to perform in the cloud, customers gain far more benefits in terms of ease of use, performance, scalability, productivity, communication and integration.

These technical advantages have far reaching benefits for end customers and users, who pay less and have an excellent solution on which to base their asset management.

Ten great things about our new release, version 7.2

xAssets IT asset management software is now in its seventh edition after over 18 years of aggressive product development, most of which has been driven by customer needs, feedback, architectural inventions and technology shifts. The latest release was the result of eight years of progressive development and over 50 separate research and development projects contributed to it. We continue to drive value for customers with accessible pricing, rapid configuration, excellent performance, scalability, ease of use and ease of deployment. This article gives a summary overview of the main reasons our user base like our software.

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 now it is no secret that IT asset management solutions and systems that calculate and report an organization’s degree of software license compliance (or lack thereof) are valuable assets to any IT operation. However, let’s be frank here, the economic times "ain’t what they used to be." Many IT budgets have been slashed and programs have been cancelled or postponed across the board. Traditional ITAM and SAM systems have a reputation of being expensive and complex, putting new systems out of the reach of many organizations and companies. So, what are your options if you really need a solution right away?

It is axiomatic that good information leads to good decisions. The cost of perfect information has long been debated in business schools, but no real answers were ever forthcoming. However, most business leaders would gladly pay a small amount to improve the accuracy, level of detail and reliability of the information their systems generate.

System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) surveys and discovers networked devices, including servers, client PCs and smartphones, connected to your system through Active Directory. SCCM installs client software on each node and compiles an inventory database with records on each asset and the software installed on each device along with the details about the hardware configurations. It uses this data to target application deployments to groups of devices or users.

SCCM provides application recognition capability, which is necessary to get a usable understanding of what software is installed across the IT estate. SCCM’s inventory agent can also collect application usage data, which shows what software is not only installed but actually being used. All of these are important pieces of an overall software asset management (SAM) and license optimization program, but knowing what is installed is only the first step in the process.