Consolidate and Expand Your Discovery Data _Build a More ...

WHITE PAPER: IT ASSET MANAGEMENT

Consolidate and ExpandYour Discovery Data: Builda More Proactive AssetManagement ProgramJANUARY 2008

John FultonBUSINESS SERVICE OPTIMIZATION

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

SECTION 1 2The Challenge to Do More with Less

Increasing Demands on IT

SECTION 2 3Consolidate and Expand Your Discovery Data

SECTION 3 12Efficient, Effective IT Asset Management

Improve Decision Making

Reduce Costs and Risk

Manage by Exception

Increase Accuracy and Confidence

SECTION 4 13Conclusions

SECTION 5 14References

SECTION 6 14About the Author

ABOUT CA Back Cover

Copyright © 2008 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. To the extent permittedby applicable law, CA provides this document “As Is” without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. In no event will CA beliable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised of such damages.

WHITE PAPER: IT ASSET MANAGEMENT 1

Executive SummaryChallenge

IT organizations are challenged to improve service in the face of limited resources, staticor declining budgets and increased regulatory demands. IT managers can no longer relysolely on asset discovery tools to give them the answers they need to be an efficient andcost-effective IT department. Many organizations struggle to consolidate data sourcesand track critical ownership information including location, warranty and maintenance,status and individuals responsible for IT assets. Technicians need more asset informationto make optimal decisions for maintaining or improving service levels.

Opportunity

This White Paper discusses how to make the leap from basic asset tracking to a morerobust asset management program that can improve decision-making and service levels,reduce costs and mitigate risks. The focus is the CA IT Asset Manage ment solution’sability to accelerate your IT Asset Management (ITAM) program’s maturity by providingasset ownership information (the complement to discovery information). This solutionhelps to consolidate and expand your discovery data, leveraging an easy-to-use rules-based hardware reconciliation engine and import tool. The reconciliation engine isdesigned to capture, reconcile and update hardware asset information through the entirelifecycle including requisition, discovery, management and disposal while the intuitiveimport tool will empower you to expand your data beyond discovery information.

Benefits

Leveraging the out-of-the-box integration between CA Unicenter® Asset Management,CA Unicenter® Asset Intelligence, CA Unicenter® Asset Portfolio Management and thirdparty discovery tools to expand your discovery data enables you to accelerate thematurity of your ITAM program, which results in:

IMPROVING DECISION MAKING by Consolidating and Expanding Your Discovery Data.

REDUCING COSTS by Identifying Available, Unauthorized and Missing Equipment.

MANAGING BY EXCEPTION to Focus on What Impacts Business Most.

INCREASING ACCURACY AND CONFIDENCE by Automating the Creation and Managementof Your Assets.

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SECTION 1

The Challenge to Do More with LessIncreasing Demands on ITSome days it feels like new IT demands and challenges appear around every cubicle, office,rack or data center corner. The demands are coming from all directions, spanning technologytrends like virtualization and VoIP to government regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.The primary business drivers are revolving around corporate governance, business alignment,cost reduction and risk mitigation. Adding to IT’s challenge is the ever present executive levelmandate to perform more with less.

These increasing pressures further expose the need for organizations to implement a mature ITAsset Management (ITAM) program.

CHALLENGES AND LIMITATIONS OF DISCOVERY DATA In past decades, many organizationsrelied solely on their discovery tools to answer most, if not all, of their asset managementquestions. Those organizations were not able to identify available equipment, the physicallocation of an asset, if it was under maintenance or a warranty and the history of changes justto name a few examples of discovery data gaps. Compounding this, today we find manyorganizations, as the result of mergers and acquisitions or siloed departments, with more thanone discovery tool posing the added challenge of providing a consolidated view of all enterpriseIT resources.

In addition to the data consolidation challenge, today’s pressures also expose the requirementto manage the lifecycle of the company’s assets, including information that in most casescannot be discovered. The need for expanded information includes contractual information (i.e.maintenance and warranty information), costs (e.g. purchase, lease, maintenance, and servicecosts), vendor information, status/availability, and ownership information (e.g. cost center,department, and user). Having ready access to this additional information is critical to fieldtechnicians who support the asset base. Service levels cannot be maintained or improved withjust discovery data; discovery data must be expanded to reconcile and track this additionalinformation.

Organizations today must compare what they have purchased or leased to what has beendiscovered. Those who rely on discovery data will never know if a purchased laptop wasactually received, or even more disturbing, was received but disappeared. The opposite case isalso a concern. If an employee brings his own laptop into the corporate environment, or buysand attaches a non-standard laptop, the discovery tool will not identify the laptop as one thatdid not go through the proper procurement process posing both security and financial risks.

VIRTUALIZATION — BACK TO THE FUTURE The use of virtualization software is rapidlyaccelerating due to numerous drivers including cost savings by consolidation, disaster recoveryand improvements in the software which manages the virtual images. This poses a veryinteresting challenge. Many organizations started their IT Asset Management program bymanaging hardware, in part, because hardware is tangible and relatively easier to manage thansoftware. With the increased adoption of virtualization, the trend is to go ‘back to the future’.Today, we are seeing a move toward the mainframe computing model, in which multipleimages are consolidated on a single machine.

WHITE PAPER: IT ASSET MANAGEMENT 3

It is ironic that virtualization, in essence, turns hardware (at least the virtual images) intosoftware. Now, with the advent of virtualization, the relatively simple task of hardware assetmanagement becomes increasingly complicated. You can no longer look at a server anddetermine if the machine is functioning as a single server or multiple servers. The implicationsof this change affect all areas — compliance, cost and governance.

The challenge of efficient and effective asset management will only increase as the popularityand ease of using virtualization software grows. The virtualization trend reinforces the need foran enterprise IT Asset Management program.

DISPARATE INFORMATION Today, nearly every department in an organization has some assetmanagement data somewhere. In fact, most organizations have data ‘somewhere andeverywhere’ — in spreadsheets, in a discovery tool repository, (or in many cases, multiplediscovery tools), in Access databases, or even on paper! Typically the data is departmentalized,where each group or department (e.g. IT, Legal, HR and Procurement) collects only theinformation they need on only the assets they have. The challenge is to compile, standardize,analyze and convert this data into information that aligns with the needs of the business andcrosses departmental boundaries.

When all the sources of asset information are associated to give a comprehensive asset view,the result is a useful synergy that can benefit all departments. For example, those organizationswith discovery data may have contract and vendor information, HR data, a spreadsheet withwarehouse/available assets, advanced shipping notices (ASNs) which contain core assetinformation (make, model, serial number, etc.) in various locations and formats. Associatingthese multiple sources of information can improve decision-making, reduce response time andimprove service levels by providing technicians with more comprehensive information at theirfingertips. In many cases technicians may be able to access the latest discovery information fora machine they are supporting, but may not have warranty and maintenance information orother critical ownership information. Having a broader set of asset information would allow atechnician to determine how best to provide the support requested.

Disclaimer: Technology can enable organizations to mature their ITAM programs, but without solidprocesses, success will be ever-elusive. This White Paper does not discuss the best practices forimplementing and enforcing processes, policies and procedures, but focuses on the technologies,specifically hardware reconciliation and simplified import tools, as enablers towards a more matureITAM program.

SECTION 2

Consolidate and Expand Your Discovery DataThis whitepaper holds two key recommendations around discovery data: consolidation andexpansion. As discussed above, many organizations are challenged to consolidate multipleasset discovery tools into a single enterprise view. CA provides the technology to unite thesesources. The CA Asset Converter for Microsoft SMS® solves this challenge by transferring theinventory data collected by Microsoft SMS into the CA Enterprise Management Database.This provides a single point of analysis with the ability to leverage the broad range of integratedCA management solutions, including Service and Support, Software Compliance, ServiceManagement, Lease and Contract Management, Financial Management and Decision Support.

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In addition to the SMS integration, CA provides the mechanism to accept any third-partydiscovery tool data. This provides a gateway to import data into the CA EnterpriseManagement Database thus achieving the goal of consolidating discovery data into anenterprise view.

The second key recommendation is the expansion of discovery data. This can be one of themost effective ways of becoming more proactive with the management of your assets. Byidentifying and analyzing the numerous data sources (i.e. finding commonality), you canexpand/supplement your discovery data with the other sources in your organization. In mostcases, there is a common link between the information; it could be a serial number, anemployee id, an asset tag, or something unique to tie the information back to the asset,contact, company and/or contract.

Figure A represents the concept of ‘expanding discovery data’ by identifying the common dataelements which are typically added or linked to discovery data. These common data elementsallow you to identify the physical location, owner, costs, maintenance and warranty informationnecessary to reduce response times and improve service levels while lowering costs and risk.

GO BEYOND DISCOVERY DATAFIGURE A

Extend your discovery data with avariety of sources to improve decisionmaking, service levels while loweringcosts and risk.

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CA IT ASSET MANAGEMENT SOLUTION CA IT Asset Management (CA ITAM) proactivelymanages all IT assets in your business environment and provides instant knowledge of whatassets are deployed. Equally important, CA ITAM provides knowledge of assets you own thatare not currently deployed. It delivers full-featured asset tracking capabilities throughautomated discovery, hardware and software inventory, configuration management, softwareusage monitoring, software license management and extensive cross-platform reporting. TheCA IT Asset Management solution, which includes Unicenter® Asset Management, Unicenter®Asset Portfolio Management and Unicenter® Asset Intelligence, can:

• Easily identify unauthorized, missing and under-utilized assets to optimize your hardwareasset base

• Track discovered asset configuration changes including memory and disk space

• Add owned hardware assets from discovery under a controlled process

• Link assets to financial and contractual information

WHERE YOU ARE TODAY Before you can identify where you can improve your IT AssetManage ment program, you must identify your current state. Maturity models can be usedas a framework to assess and guide next steps in an ITAM program. Below is one exampleof CA’s maturity model which highlights the characteristics associated with the fourmaturity levels.

This whitepaper focuses on customers at the ‘Active’ maturity level. Organizations at this leveltypically focus on today and not tomorrow. Companies at this level are more reactive thanproactive. They rely mainly on discovery tools for their IT Asset Management needs, commonlyrequiring physical inventories and have disparate, little or no information on the status, cost,location, warranty and maintenance. Spreadsheets or databases may be used, but due to thelack of repeatable processes these data sources do not provide a confident source of information.

CA ITAM MATURITY MODELFIGURE B

Maturity models can be used as aframework to assess and guide nextsteps in an ITAM program.

6 WHITE PAPER: IT ASSET MANAGEMENT

According to CMP Research (May 2006)1, more than 40% of companies surveyed either don’thave any concrete knowledge of their asset base or use spreadsheets and discovery tools totrack, locate and identify assets. This highlights the fact that a large number of organizationshave the opportunity to significantly improve their IT Asset Management programs and moveto a more proactive and efficient IT Asset Management program.

The remainder of this whitepaper highlights the benefits and capabilities of moving from theLevel 1 (Active) to the Level 2 (Efficient) maturity level. As previously mentioned, processimprovement is essential to improved maturity but we will now focus on the key concept of‘reconciliation’ as the technology enabler to move to the next level.

RULES-BASED RECONCILATION Essential to making the move to Level 2 (Efficient) in thematurity model is the requirement to reconcile discovery data with ownership data. UnicenterAsset Portfolio Management provides a rules-based hardware reconciliation engine forUnicenter Asset Management and any third-party discovery tool customers with the ability tocompare data, create assets and manage changes between what has been discovered versuswhat is owned.

Many organizations are in a reactive state and might not have much, if any, asset informationoutside of their discovery solution(s). The rules-based engine allows those less matureorganizations to begin to build their asset data based upon discovery data. As time goes by andthe organization matures it relies less on discovery data to populate their asset managementdatabase. For those organizations who struggle to improve and mature their processes, thisengine provides a means to create and maintain core asset information. Several of the built infeatures of Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management allow you to add additional critical assetinformation; including status, cost, maintenance, warranty, owner/contact and location.

Figure C highlights the hardware reconciliation concept and overlays the integrated CA solution.In addition to Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management and Unicenter Asset Management,Unicenter Asset Intelligence provides users with an interactive way of viewing, summarizingand analyzing the wealth of asset information. This business intelligence solution allows you toview critical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which slice and dice the data; drill down toview specific asset details and launch into the other CA solutions for even more information.This interactive solution consolidates and translates the overwhelming amount of data intousable information.

WHITE PAPER: IT ASSET MANAGEMENT 7

ITAM ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS — OWNERSHIP AND DISCOVERY

CONFIGURABLE RECONCILIATION RULES Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management’s rules-basedhardware reconciliation engine provides a set of easy to configure rules for matching, viewingexceptions and updating asset information. These rules include:

• Configurable Matching Rules allowing each customer to define the rules to match assets,whether it is based up serial number, machine name, MAC address (just to name a few) or acombination of these fields.

• Translation Lists help overcome one of the most difficult issues when trying tocompare/match ownership asset records to discovered asset records -- terminology. What isbeing discovered often does not reconcile to what was purchased. Use translations lists tobuild common terminology and help normalize the data.

• Monitor Field Changes to identify changes in your environment with the option to view andaccept those exceptions or automatically update the asset record.

• Rules to Add Assets allows users to define several characteristics when adding an assetbased upon discovery data including the status. This feature allows an organization to seeassets created from discovery data, which in many cases represents unauthorized assets orassets which did not go through the proper procurement process. The status can be used toidentify those newly created assets. For example, you could use the status value of ‘Discovered’to search and review all assets created through this process and update the assets accordingly.

FIGURE C

CA's ITAM solution provides apowerful rules-based hardwarereconciliation engine to compare data,create assets and manage changesbetween what has been discoveredversus what is owned.

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HARDWARE RECONCILIATION RULES DEFINITION

MANAGE BY EXCEPTION As a result of the rules defined, each organization can control whenthey want to view exceptions and when they want to automatically update an asset with anychanges or create a new asset. A number of exception screens are provided to view the numeroustypes of exceptions identified during the hardware reconciliation process, they include:

• Approve Proposed Matches allows you to see which assets have been newly matchedbetween discovery and ownership (Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management) based upon thedefined matching rules.

• Reconcile Owned and Discovered Assets enables you to view and manually reconcileassets. Ideally, using this feature is more the exception than the rule. The reconciliation rulesyou define should minimize this list of assets. This is commonly used in the rare case whereno match is established and you need to manually establish the link.

• Add Assets to Ownership Repository allows you to view and approve any assets discoveredbut not matched in Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management (see Figure E below).

• Apply Field Changes to Owned Assets allows you to monitor and control field changesdriven by discovery once the link has been established. The fields include memory, processorspeed, processor count, disk space, machine name and operating system.

• Undo Matching allows you to handle several different scenarios where you may want tounlink or un-match assets. For example, if an asset is removed/deleted from discovery orownership, you can see those assets and remove the link. The benefit is not the ability toremove the link but to see the exception of those assets deleted.

FIGURE D

Unicenter Asset PortfolioManagement’s rules-based hardwarereconciliation engine provides a set ofeasy to configure rules for matchingdata, viewing exceptions and updatingasset information.

Define task,run frequencyand manual orautomatic options

Define assetcreation rules

Define fields tomonitor and rules toupdate (i.e. manualor automatic)

WHITE PAPER: IT ASSET MANAGEMENT 9

VIEW AND APPROVE MATCHES

IDENTIFY AND CREATE NEW ASSETS

FIGURE E

View and approve matches betweenownership and discovery data.

Identifiesproposed matchesfor approval

FIGURE F

Identify discovered assets not in theownership repository then determineif you want to create and manage thelife cycle of those assets includingcosts, contracts, location and otherownership information.

Identifies proposeddiscovered assetsto add

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EASILY IMPORT DATA To avoid the effort and complexities of writing the code that is commonlyrequired to import data; Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management provides a simplified importtool to easily import data from any flat file source. This intuitive wizard interface empowers anon-technical user to import and expand discovery data by walking them through the steps toperform the import which includes:

• Easily identify your flat file data source, delimiter, and object (e.g. asset, contract, company,cost center, etc…)

• Save import mappings for recurring use

• Intuitively map data source columns to Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management fields

• Define global values to assign to the assets. For example, if your data source does notinclude the cost center, status or location, you can easily define global values (e.g. 1111,Received, Chicago Data Center) to assign to your assets.

• Define the rules to perform insert or updates (i.e. define the rules to determine when toupdate or create a new record)

• Create exclusion filters to identify a subset of records to import or exclude

• View summary statistics

• Review the easy-to-understand log messages to identify mapping and/or data issues

• Utilize the command line interface to schedule and run imports unattended

INTUITIVE TOOL TO IMPORT AND EXPAND YOUR DISCOVERY DATAFIGURE G

CA's ITAM Solution includes anintuitive import tool reducing the effortby eliminating the need to write codein order to import data and expandingyour discovery data.

View a summary of yourimport including number ofrecords, progress, errorsand warnings

Map your fields to Unicenter AssetPortfolio Management fields

Identify yourdata source,delimiter andobject

WHITE PAPER: IT ASSET MANAGEMENT 11

With the ability to easily import data in combination with creation of core asset information viahardware reconciliation, CA provides a straightforward way of expanding discovery data toempower the technicians in the field to ultimately improve service levels and decision making.

INTERACTIVE REPORTING WITH UNICENTER ASSET INTELLIGENCE CA further enhances yourIT Asset Management experience by providing Unicenter Asset Intelligence for multipleCA solutions including both Unicenter Asset Management and Unicenter Asset PortfolioManagement along with third party discovery tools. Unicenter Asset Intelligence allows youto intuitively analyze this information by:

• Viewing summary information across multiple CA solutions and business units

• Providing drill down capabilities

• Launching into other CA solutions to view additional asset and contract detail

• Grouping and filtering data

The integration with Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management includes several key performanceindicators around contracts, assets, and hardware reconciliation. These links allow you to seecontracts about to expire, assets not reconciled and additional asset information. You canquickly filter and group data. For example, you can filter to only show ‘available’ laptops bylocation to determine if you need to order or ship the laptop to the necessary location.

UNICENTER ASSET INTELLIGENCEFIGURE H

Unicenter Asset Intelligence allowsyou to view critical Key PerformanceIndicators (KPIs) which slice and dicethe data; drill down to view specificasset details and launch into theother CA solutions for even moreinformation. This interactive solutionconsolidates and translates theoverwhelming amount of data intousable information.

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SECTION 3

Efficient, Effective IT Asset ManagementImprove Decision MakingDiscovery data is only a starting point. Adding additional information from other sources,including non-discoverable data, is essential to providing a cost effective and efficient ITdepartment. This additional information typically consists of warranty and maintenanceinformation, location and contact information, and ownership information.

Reduce Costs and RiskHardware reconciliation between Unicenter Asset Management and/or third-party discoverytools and Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management helps organizations quickly identify available,underutilized, unauthorized and missing equipment. The adage ‘you don’t know what you don’tknow’ no longer applies. Organizations now have the tools to track what they should have andcompare that with what they really have to reduce costs and risk.

Manage by ExceptionThe challenge with most organizations is not to generate more information but to digest andunderstand the overwhelming volumes of disparate data. The rules-based reconciliation enginein Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management enables organizations to define the rules for viewingexceptions and performing automatic updates minimizing the amount of information to viewand manage.

Increase Accuracy and ConfidenceFor those organizations with disparate information and not so perfect processes, most struggleto provide accurate information. In turn, this lack of accuracy leads to a lack of confidencefrom the user base resulting in a lack of ITAM program success. Break the chain of resistanceand inaccuracy with more automated mechanisms to provide more up-to-date and accurateinformation.

• Easily identify unauthorized, missing and under-utilized assets and optimize your hardwareasset base

• Track discovered asset configuration changes for memory and disk space

• Add owned hardware assets from discovery under a controlled process

• Link assets to financial and contractual information

WHITE PAPER: IT ASSET MANAGEMENT 13

SECTION 4

ConclusionsIT is being forced to do more with less as new challenges emerge around every corner.Governance, cost reduction, risk mitigation and government regulations are drivingorganizations to mature their IT Asset Management programs while trends like virtualizationand increased service demands are adding to the complexities of IT. Organizations mustconsolidate and expand their discovery data to meet these increasing demands.

Discovery data no longer answers all the questions necessary to effectively manage acompany’s assets. Organizations must mature their IT Asset Management programs beyondasset tracking (i.e. discovery) to achieve proactive asset management. Expanding data beyonddiscovery helps organizations make the step to a more proactive and mature discipline. CA’s ITAsset Management solution provides an integrated solution to help organizations acceleratetheir ITAM maturity through technology enablers including:

• Discovery Data Consolidation to pull your discovery data which may include multiplediscovery tools into CA’s comprehensive enterprise ITAM solution to leverage the wide rangeof management capabilities and tools

• Rules-based Reconciliation to reduce the volumes of data and manage by exception

• Simplified Import Tool for non-technical users to easily import data from disparate sourcesinto a centralized database, expanding discovery data

• Business Intelligence with Unicenter Asset Intelligence to view summary information acrossmultiple solutions providing a very interactive and intuitive interface for analysis

• Lifecycle Management provided by Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management enablesorganizations to expand their discovery data and manage the entire lifecycle of assetsincluding costs, maintenance and warranty information and ownership information, as anextensible solution, organizations can add an unlimited number of fields to meet their needs

Many organizations struggle to mature their IT Asset Management program. As statedpreviously, technology is not, unfortunately, the sole answer. For those organizations looking forassistance, CA provides an ITAM Readiness Assessment which measures your current ITAMmaturity level evaluating your processes, organizational structure, business policies andoperational standards and delivers recommendations and a roadmap to increase maturity. Theservice provides the following:

• An executive summary of the results

• A detailed analysis of performance gaps

• Recommendations for improving people, processes and technology

• Summary of financial savings opportunities

• An implementation roadmap

For more information on Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management and our integrated IT AssetManagement solutions go to www.ca.com. For more information on our Services visitwww.ca.com/us/services.

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SECTION 5

References1. CMP Research, “The State of IT Asset Management,” August 2006.

SECTION 6

About the AuthorJohn Fulton is Director of Product Management of the CA Unicenter Asset PortfolioManagement product. He is an established industry veteran with over 15 years of experiencein the information technology sector. He has served in numerous roles in the industry, includingprincipal Senior Consultant and Architect for CA’s National IT Asset Management Practice. Inthis role, John was responsible for formulating and implementing ITAM solutions aroundtechnology, best practices and process.

John holds a B.S. in Economics from Pennsylvania State University. His certifications includeITIL Foundation, IAITAM Certified Software Asset Manager (CSAM), and PragmaticMarketing® certification in Product Management.

John FultonDirector of Product Management

CA, one of the world’s largest information technology (IT)management software companies, unifies and simplifiescomplex IT management across the enterprise for greaterbusiness results. With our Enterprise IT Management vision,solutions and expertise, we help customers effectivelygovern, manage and secure IT.

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