Asset Management Questions

jherrell · ‎07-24-2018

We are setting up asset management and are hitting running into a few issues. Are any of these possible and if they are what are the best ways to go about getting them worked out.

1. We have a pretty complex network setup and are spread across the USA in about 15 states. Some of our locations are on Cisco ASA routers. Our scans are not currently able to scan these locations.

2. The locations we are able to scan; We get all equipment except for our Dell Wyse terminals, or any USB devices. Is it possible for these scans to pick this information up? if so what is the best practice for getting this setup?

3. Our scan currently picks up software as well. There is a lot of software that we don't care to be scanned. Can we exempt this software from our scans? If so what is the best practice for filtering out what software is scanned?

We are currently running on ServiceNow Istanbul.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Daniel Slocum · ‎08-22-2018

I'd concur with Mike that you raise this in the Discovery section. However, I'd like to address your statement about wanting to exclude some software. I do understand that there are some titles an organization simply isn't concerned with. However, it is still important to scan and return everything. Here are a couple of reasons:

1. If you are audited what you have omitted could potentially burn you. Licensing models are fluid and software title ownership is transferred between publishers. What you didn't care about yesterday, could become a liability tomorrow. It's better to scan and have visibility but not act on the data until it is needed vs. not having it at all.

2. Precluding scan of something may accidentally preclude the scan of something else which could be of major importance. I recently spoke to a customer who didn't want visibility of any software save a few select titles. This is a narrow mindset which gives great clarity to the few titles but doesn't protect the enterprise from rogue software installation. If you somehow preclude visibility to a few titles, you have no idea when something licensable and costly has been introduced into the environment outside of a governed process.

3. Security Considerations. Similar to my argument in number two above, if you limit visibility you won't return a footprint for software which may be installed outside of process. Some of these titles may pose a security threat to the network. As your organization's SAM Practice matures, you'll want to leverage the data in our SAM Professional product for use by your Security teams. You won't be able to do that if you limit what you scan for.

View solution in original post

mikewhalley · ‎07-29-2018

Since this question is more related to discovery systems, I recommend that you post this question to the ITOM Community.

Regards, Mike.

Daniel Slocum · ‎08-22-2018

I'd concur with Mike that you raise this in the Discovery section. However, I'd like to address your statement about wanting to exclude some software. I do understand that there are some titles an organization simply isn't concerned with. However, it is still important to scan and return everything. Here are a couple of reasons:

1. If you are audited what you have omitted could potentially burn you. Licensing models are fluid and software title ownership is transferred between publishers. What you didn't care about yesterday, could become a liability tomorrow. It's better to scan and have visibility but not act on the data until it is needed vs. not having it at all.

2. Precluding scan of something may accidentally preclude the scan of something else which could be of major importance. I recently spoke to a customer who didn't want visibility of any software save a few select titles. This is a narrow mindset which gives great clarity to the few titles but doesn't protect the enterprise from rogue software installation. If you somehow preclude visibility to a few titles, you have no idea when something licensable and costly has been introduced into the environment outside of a governed process.

3. Security Considerations. Similar to my argument in number two above, if you limit visibility you won't return a footprint for software which may be installed outside of process. Some of these titles may pose a security threat to the network. As your organization's SAM Practice matures, you'll want to leverage the data in our SAM Professional product for use by your Security teams. You won't be able to do that if you limit what you scan for.

Runjay Patel · ‎12-15-2020

Software Asset Management (SAM - Pro)

Check out this video, it will clear all your doubts and help you to understand Software Asset Management (SAM - Pro) in details.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIGcZxQaeEoh0bObsaDpMeYk2N2QXAtBK

It will help you resolve below queries:

SAM Offers / Challenges
Deep Understanding about SAM Terminology
IT Assets & Configuration Items
IT And Software Asset Lifecycle
SAM Optimization Checklist
Plugins For Software Asset Management
Software Entitlement
- Software Entitlement Import
- Benefits of using software entitlements
- To download to entitlement import template
- Entitlement Import Process
- Entitlement Import Errors
- Entitlement Review and Clear Errors
Software Asset Management (SAM) Lab
- Play with SAM Roles
- Upload Software Model/ Product Catalog
- Various way to do Normalization
- Creating a Custom Products
- Reconciliation
- Understand Entitlement Metrics
- Software Usage
- Reclamation