STORY: “Hannah and the Case of the Missing Hardware Assets”
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Chapter 2 – The path to inventory is in your hands (literally)…*
Since there are five data centers located across the world, Hannah especially wants to know what is in each data center. She really wants an accurate inventory of all hardware. She wants to make sure there are no vulnerable devices being used. And truthfully, she doesn’t know.
She has tried many times to get this inventory done. She ends up with spreadsheets containing serial numbers and manually entered text. It takes her team weeks to get the spreadsheets and then weeks to try to capture the data. And after all that work, Hannah never really knows if the spreadsheets are complete or accurate.
Instead, Hannah uses the new Mobile Inventory Audit features included with Hardware Asset Management.
She gets the data center manager, from each of the five data centers, to be in charge of the inventory with network operators to help out. Using only their mobile phones, each network operator downloaded the Now Agent to access the mobile inventory audit features.
Let’s take a closer look at how the inventory was conducted at one of the data centers:
This data center is located in the foothills of North Carolina. The data center manager logs into the Now Agent app on his phone. He opens a Location Audit record for his data center. The four network operators also login on their own phone and open the same Location Audit record. The data center manager and network operators each audit 1/5 of the data center.
As the data center manager scans the asset tag and serial number for each server, rack, and appliance in their portion of the data center, the results are recorded against the Location Audit record. As each operator scans the devices in their part of the data. center, the results of each operator are also recorded against that same Location Audit record.
When all five completed their scanning, here were the results:
Scanned and expected: 15,687
Scanned and not expected: 3,421
Expected and not found: 26
New: 568
When the Location Audit was finished, the data center manager marked the Location Audit as complete.
Hannah asked for a second audit from the data center manager to look for the 26 assets that were not found. (The data center manager found out that one of the network operators skipped a couple of server racks.)
The data center manager sent Hannah an email saying, “Hey Hannah, that was the easiest inventory I’ve done in 15 years!”
Hannah agrees. No spreadsheets. The results of the audit instantly aggregated and updated in ServiceNow.
Hannah now has accurate information with no extra manual work.
Stay tuned for Hannah’s next step on the HAM journey: time travel, well not really, more like starting at the beginning of the asset lifecycle, but it’s kind of like time travel, right?
For more information on Hardware Asset Management, go to servicenow.com/HAM
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*The details of the company described in this story are fictional and only represent the profile of a Fortune 500 company. The details are not indicative of any existing company, past or present.
