What are the licensing rules for platforms provided by external cloud services providers? How to ensure your license compliance in the Hybrid IT world? Find in this post simple and practical answers to a question that seems complex in a first look.

Asset Manager and DDMI offer a simple and efficient solution.

A new video introducing Asset Manager has just been updated in the Asset Manager Public web site.

It covers the value of all modules and drills down on SAM and Management of Cloud services (Service costing, subscriptions management, cloud billing). This is a live demo. This video is public, posted on the HP Asset Manager Public web site: / in the  section demo / trial section: view the video

Discover the content of this new maintenance release the brings a scalable and unicode version the web client on Linux platforms...

10 screen shots with comments give a better understanding than a 40 slides presentation on the value that HP Asset Manager brings to its customers in Software Asset Management... have a look and enjoy!

The last SAM Best Practice Package brings enhancements that allow to take advantage of all the value of Asset Manager in SAM... with a quicker implementation.

Here is the age of Hybrid IT. The IT organization delivers services to its end users... using an infrastructure that can be owned by the IT, or fulfilled over the cloud. Managing IT as a P&L is the best way to prove its value to the other businesses while optimizing the costs for delivering the services.

Discover the New Cloud Billing Package that extends Asset Manager capabilities to support the IT providing internal and external services and manage users' subscriptions and related billing.

Asset Manager Windows client offers a flexible way to define filters that will pop up when you want to access any screen (QBE filters, Query By Example). Just listing the fields in the screen definition, Asset Manager will generate the multi criteria filter.

The Web client exposes the QBE filter in the "filters" drop down list when you are on a screen. Note that a "simplified filters" option introduced in 9.30 now allows screen by screen, a better control of what will be displayed.

This very short technical document shows how ta create very easily the same user experience in the Web client and in the Windows client:

The user clickes on the screen name he wants to access, a list of filters pops up, the user fills the criteria and the filtered screen is launched.

Advantages:

- No need to load all the records before filtering (performance)

- Less clicks, better user experience.  

Asset Manager provides for free to its SAM customers every other month updated SAM Best Practice content package that contains software compliance counters, dashboards and reports and allows a straight forward implementation of Software Asset Management on a list of publishers and titles that is constantly expending. More than 130 titles and versions, Microsoft, Adobe,Oracle (core factors), IBM (PVU), VMWare and now Symantec, Autocad and... HP Asset Manager and HP DDMI. Here are the details of this new package. 

Do you want to see a unique history view for all the fields related to a computer without browsing several "history" tabs (on the computer, asset or portfolio screens)? The solution is very simple; Copy and past 1 line of code and you are done!

Recently, I was in Berlin, Germany, attending regional HP customer forums.  I was asked to deliver a keynote on the role of IT asset management in cloud computing environments.

I did a lot of research and talked to a number of people about cloud computing, different models of cloud computing and the role asset management should play in this environment.  I say should, because when you are thinking about transitioning to cloud computing, asset management is not exactly the first thing you think about.

But, don’t be mistaken – asset management is important in the cloud. 

Managing IT as a P&L is a constant goal for mature IT organizations. This approach makes the business units accountable for their use of the IT infrastructure and forces IT to be more efficient through

• The definition of IT services that will address internal customers needs with levels of service, SLAs etc.
• The optimization of the underlying IT infrastructure: the internal users will negotiate the best prices for services, the IT will need to optimize its infrastructure to make sure its revenues (bills to internal users) cover their expenses and investments.

As a consequence, an internal provider / customer relationship starts and the the businesses, that now pay for their IT, tend to balance internalized services versus outsourced services costs. This is the second and subsequent strategic trend today.

This post aims to establish how Asset Manager and the HP Software Products give to the IT organizations the tools to efficiently manage their IT services, understand their costs, define their prices and manage the contractual relationship with their internal customers: the other businesses of the organization.

Because this is in the end the current shift we are seeing: IT becoming not only a costs center, but another business of the enterprise organizations.

This technical post gives hints to make sure the software counters are optimized to be calculated quickly and provide the best performance.

HP Asset Manager is regularly ranked leader for its value to customers and wide and deep functional coverage in IT Asset Management. Learn more on how Gartner, EMA and Info-Tech Research Group evaluated recently Asset Manager and its competitors

Oracle is one of the top 3 publishers where enterprise companies invest their money today. The official price list for one Oracle Enterprise Edition processor license is today $47 500 (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf)!

… and Oracle license compliance is one of the most challenging to maintain

An Oracle compliance audit can quickly turn into a very expensive exercise. HP Asset Manager, with the Oracle SAM Best Practice package, gives you the tools and best practices to help avoid cold sweat.

This white paper gives you a practical understanding of Oracle Licensing, as well as HP Asset Manager’s answers and ready to use solutions for being successful in Oracle compliance management.  It finishes with an Oracle SAM tour in Asset Manager across the interface. With Asset Manager, you can achieve huge savings savings through license use optimization and decreased legal risk through crystal clear visibility on compliance.

Some KPIs can be very helpful, some are less helpful, and some are just dumb.  Last month I mentioned I would write about one of my favorite KPIs, but to do that let me set the ground work by talking about one of my least favorite ones...

Second post of the series of 3,  this article explains in details how Asset Manager provides quick and easy solution to the tricky challenges of managing Oracle database compliance.

Oracle is one of the top 3 publishers where enterprise companies invest their money today. The official price list for one Oracle Enterprise Edition processor license is today $47 500 (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf)!

… and Oracle license compliance is one of the most challenging to maintain

An Oracle compliance audit can quickly turn into a very expensive exercise. HP Asset Manager, with the Oracle SAM Best Practice package, gives you the tools and best practices to help avoid cold sweat.

This series of 3 weekly posts will give you a practical understanding of Oracle Licensing, as well as HP Asset Manager’s answers and ready to use solutions for being successful in Oracle compliance management.  The series will finish with an Oracle SAM tour in Asset Manager across the interface. With Asset Manager, you can achieve huge savings savings through license use optimization and decreased legal risk through crystal clear visibility on compliance.

Finally IT will take a quantum step forward in having metrics that can demonstrate that your talent and energy. You can share key metrics with crucial stakeholders in your business and get the credit you deserve for the time, energy and talent you’ve contributed to the mission to the organization. 

Is ISO 19770-2 standard important - I think so.  So much that I ensured support for this standard is added to the DDMI product.  But since not everyone has adopted the tags yet - we did do some other work (to make Oracle software inventory easier).

Managing IT is more than physical hardware and software; service oriented assets and cloud computing mean greater responsibility for next-generation IT asset managers!

Tired of having a home in chaos? IT Asset Management processes and technology are now available to bring discipline and transparency to the household management market.

I was talking with a sales rep the other day about a couple HP Asset Manager sales.  It made me think, “What took his customers, or more precisely, his customer’s auditors so long to raise a concern about how IT was managing their assets?”  “Why was the way IT had done it in the past, no longer good enough?” ...and "Is he seeing a trend or is it just a coincidence that several of his accounts are issuing RFPs for ITAM compliance support?"

It made me think: "Are seeing a “material” increase in IT Asset Management investments under the rubric of compliance?"  This led me to five ideas about what might be driving this...

Making sense of Service Asset & Configuration Management (SACM)

Asset or CI; ITAM or ITIL; Asset Repository or CMDB... Where do I start?

Fortunately, you can start from either context: IT Asset Management (ITAM) or a Configuration Management System (CMS).  The key is unlocking the benefits each of these distinct management disciplines provides to your organization, and understanding the greater value gained when they work together!

Learn more about the HP SAM Best Practice Package that bring the content for a press button Software Asset Management on Microsoft, Adobe and Oracle.

In launching the new ITAM blog, lets get some definitions in early.  What, after all, is IT Asset Management? 

You will learn in this post the stakes of a successful Software Asset Management (SAM) implementation and how HP Asset Manager addresses the needs of organizations that want to get a better control over their license assets and optimize their software investments while minimizing their legal risk.