xAssets Resources
Industry News
Click here to see our Industry News Resource, a roundup of
news articles from around the web relating to cloud computing, asset management, compliance, financials, IFRS and asset systems.
Click here to read our blog, a collection of articles surrounding asset management, software licensing and compliance.
Ed Cartier of xAssets at the IAITAM conference, Nashville in October
xAssets and Microsoft SAM Assist Audits
Microsoft sponsors SAM Assist audits through Microsoft Large Account Resellers. These audits serve to establish the licensing usage of MS products for the next term of the Microsoft agreement, and will also enable the customer to understand their licensing position on other products.
xAssets Software Discovery Service (SDS) is one of the preferred tools used by Microsoft Large Account Resellers to audit end customer software implementations. This is a hosted service which discovers the network for 30 days and then extends reporting and recognition fine tuning for an additional 30 days.
This is a low cost service, and any company can sign up direct with xAssets or through their LAR.
Proactive Support
xAssets has released a white paper setting out our customer intensive approach to support
The Right First Step
In March of this year the CIO of the United States of America, Vivek Kundra, mandated that government agencies and departments begin to develop plans to consolidate their data centers. With 1,200 data centers currently identified as being in operation, the mandated task will not be an easy one. However, a successful project outcome would bear real fruit. With software and file servers accounting for more than a quarter of the federal IT budget, and with server utilization estimated to be under 15% of total capacity, consolidation would result in real budgetary savings, likely measuring in the billions of dollars.
How to Write an RFP
In a recent interview, I was asked if knew of a good Request For Proposal (RFP) template that applied to the selection and acquisition of enterprise IT asset management systems. I told the interviewer that unless any number of companies or organizations have exactly the same needs, budgets and organizational structures, such a template would have no value. I was then asked if I could write an article on how to write an RFP, as it seems to be a task that a number of people struggle to accomplish. Having worked on more RFP’s than I care to remember, and having some thoughts on how to make the process more effective, I agreed.
Agentless Discovery versus Agent-based Discovery
The comparison between Agent-based Network Discovery and Agentless Network Discovery very much mirrors the comparison of staging an application on an internal network versus staging on a hosted network. Executed properly, any choice in both scenarios will provide the same very useful result, however, in both cases the remote solution greatly reduces overhead in both cost and manpower.
Considering Software-as-a-Service in the Asset Management World
Is Your Business Up In The Clouds?
The concept of providing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has been growing in interest within recent years, and has now reached a critical-mass of acceptance within the IT field, becoming a fully viable option for service and application provision.