Moving away from HAM Pro

[VernYerem]

Good afternoon!

My org has initially thought HAM and SAM would be useful. It doesn't seem like a cost benefit analysis was done on ITSM Asset management vs HAM&SAM, and we assumed that there were no asset management capabilities with ITSM. Our asset count doubled in the last year, and its licensing cost has us looking at it now.

I'm finding that most of HAM Pro are configurations rather than actual functionality. There is some functionality I do find, like model normalization. No matter how I configure a solution like that, I'll never have the amount of data provided by the normalization feature. Looking for what else we'd lose by moving away from HAM Pro. Are there any tables specific to HAM Pro that we'd lose access too? Other than HAMP OOTB Flows, Dashboards, Workspaces, recommendations, what else would be lost? 

[Ashok Sasidhara]

Apart from what you have mentioned already, HAM has advanced mobile capabilities also. You can refer the following URL for more details:

https://www.servicenow.com/standard/resource-center/data-sheet/ds-hardware-asset-management.html

Normalization is the most critical feature among these. If you have lower number of devices and hence you are able to do the normalization by checking each record manually, then you may be able to manage without HAM pro. But as your number of devices increase in future, you would definitely need to revisit whether to start using HAM pro or not. 

In the case of SAM, it is recommended to use SAM pro if you don't have any other SAM tool like Flexera. Base ServiceNow instance doesn't have much capabilities to deliver benefits and mitigate risks through SAM. 

[Ryan S]

Concurring with Ashok. Dropping HAM Pro you'll lose Normalization, but otherwise HAM is just paying for pre-built configurations to increase your speed to delivery. You can do everything, including most of the mobile piece, within ITSM Asset Management. You may have to rebuilt the functionality.

As for SAM, what use cases are you using now? Within ITSM you can do terribly basic Software Asset Management, but it may be sufficient for your needs. Assuming you have device integrations to CMDB, you'll still have the software data. Actually tracking entitlements, deploying/reclaiming software and preparing for audits can still be done but you'd literally be starting from scratch on it.

[Michael Scognam]

Hi there,

My name is Michael, and I'm a Product Manager on Hardware Asset Management. Thank you for your question!

It sounds like you have experienced a dramatic increase in asset counts within the last year, and thus increased licensing charges. First, I want to remind you that you can always exclude assets from HAM functionality in an effort to focus your resources on specific resource categories. You can do this at the asset level and at the resource category level (i.e. say you only want to pay for Hardware Asset Management lifecycle functionality for end-user devices and severs). This allows you to manage spend in the short term to give you breathing room to develop and expand your utilization of HAM.

To the matter of what HAM provides on top of ITSM, this is a concern that some customers has raised before. Our team has put together the attached to help articulate the value of buying Hardware Asset Management versus building it. Many find that Hardware Asset Management elevates the role of an asset management above data management stewardship that can too often weigh them down, allowing them to achieve unprecedented visibility into and control over their asset estate. 

This document articulates the value that HAM brings across multiple categories, while estimating the cost to build and maintain that functionality on your own. While every company is different, this document should provide a helpful, directional indication of the sort of value brought in areas across:

• Normalization
• Capital and Estate Planning
• Workflow Automation
• Auditing and Mobile capabilities
• Data Management
• CMDB Health Cost and Maintenance

[Ryan S]

@Michael Scognam I don't want to derail this thread, but do you happen to have a similar infrographic for EAM?