Software suggestions needed

Hardware Asset Management
1

Hi all,

I’m somewhat new here and in my first professional ITAM position. I have some formal training, but neither prior experience nor a mentor in the field. I have many years of experience in IT support and management.

I’m now with a fast-growing, 5 year old company that is now operating in a “chaotic” environment, meaning there is neither an owned network nor a directory service tying its employees and assets together. We’re leasing and deploying batches of new computers to standardize and replace the units in employee hands right now, but there will continue to be a significant population of random hardware for awhile to come.

I need suggestions for three functional HAM tools. A repository, a collection tool, and (not really hardware) a remote deployment tool. These can be separate or combined, but must be interfaceable if separate (preferably tried and true combinations).

To give some context, ServiceNow and SNOW are out of our reach, and have way more SAM capability than we can make use of at this point. We recently received a bid from a reseller of “multi-tenant” or shared ServiceNow licensing that was about 4x what we’re considering.

I am looking seriously at AssetPanda for 4000 assets and Lansweeper for its agent collection capabilities, although we’re unable to utilize many of its features in our situation. This is an affordable combination that I can fund if they can be interfaced with each other.

I’ve only today discovered TANIUM, which appears to be an integration of the above and maybe a great find. I also don’t have pricing yet, and it could be the next ServiceNow of unobtainability. But it looks like it has the correct feature set for our widely distributed, chaotic environment.

I have spent a lot of time trialing dead-end candidates, mostly helpdesk-like products that claim to have inventorying capabilities. Most of these cater to a snapshot rather than a history and don’t define strong relationships with the actual human employees we’re trying to assign to.

I’m hoping to find as-yet-unknown options that are actually full-featured ITAM products worth acquiring and populating.

Thanks for your insights.

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Hi Mark,

Glad to meet you virtually. It really depends on what you are looking for. Most ITIL tools have repository capabilities but it sounds like your company is a small shop and you won’t need the larger enterprise tools (just yet).

Eracent, Lansweeper, AssetPanda, XenSam, ManageEngine, Spiceworks (free) are decent tools starting out. Tanium is over-priced like the other tools that are currently out of your reach. The key is differentiating between agent-based discovery tools vs. agentless discovery.

For a deployment tool, you will have to look to other tools, separate from discovery and SAM-like tools. Microsoft SCCM, Symantec Altiris can package and deploy. Both have discovery capabilities.

There are many answers to your question. Need to understand what you are trying to solve since the environment has a myriad of opportunities and challenges.

One suggestion is to settle on standards for your hardware, that will assist in some normalization. Centralize your procurement with a limited amount of vendor(s).

I’m sure you will have additional questions, just drop us a line.

James

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Thanks, James. These are a number of great recommendations, although it’s a toss-up to choose from the list without a sense of how each works. For example, I’ve spent some time with Lansweeper and while it has some great capabilities, it falls short as a repository because it can’t track history, only snapshots.

I also heard this week about a product called Ivanti that is tossing around ITAM in early conversation, but I haven’t seen it yet. Is anyone here familiar with them and their intended audience?

Thanks.

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I would also suggest to look into Eracent. They were always well priced for the capabilities they offered. You’ll still need a deployment tool such as SCCM/Software Center, but Eracent will provide tracking and history of hardware/software, and can track purchases as well.

4,000 assets shouldn’t be considered small. If you’re having trouble getting budget for a tool, considering doing an analysis of the risks you want to prevent and the ROI a more capable tool can provide you.

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Ivanti is enterprise scale, they go up against ServiceNow so probably overkill for your use case.
Take a look at Matrix42, they approach inventory from the perspective you need.
It’s a little out of date but I wrote a comprehensive guide to free inventory tools here - Free Inventory Tools - Market Guide - The ITAM Review | The ITAM Review
Many of these are somewhat technical to implement but are powerful. SnipeIT & ManageEngine might fit what you need.

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Thanks! I’ll give it a good look.

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