For the past five years, the company has operated mostly under the radar building lightweight technology probes that discover hardware, software, and network assets, and has amassed a blue chip customer base of roughly a dozen clients.
The software works like anti-viral tools, detecting assets by their fingerprints, or through fuzzy logic that categorize hard-to-identify assets. In addition to the discovery functions, the solution has a reporting and analytics function to help customers weed out extraneous assets, take nonperforming IT assets off their books, while providing more reliable data that customers can use when it comes to negotiating license renewals with their vendors.
Some clients, such as Motorola, say they have realized substantial savings discovering assets that are either redundant or past their service life, which they are able to get off their books.
Although hardly a new software market, the hassle with asset management is that the solutions can be expensive, time-consuming, and disruptive.
Furthermore, they are not always that accurate because many lack real-time update capabilities or fail to cover all of an organization’s IT assets. And, in cases where IT organizations get serious, many of the functions of asset tracking can be covered under the fixed asset modules that are part of many ERP systems.
According to BDNA marketing vice president Ed Chopskie, another serious shortcoming is that, while IT organizations may be proficient at recording the addition of new assets, they don’t always have accurate records as to when those assets reach their end of life. Consequently, many organizations are carrying IT assets on their books that are well past retirement.
BDNA will also be announcing a new service aimed at seeding the market for its product this week. The service, lead by one or two BDNA consultants, would be limited eight 14-week engagements for $250,000, that would take snapshots of client IT assets.
And it is also unveiling Version 3.5 of iGovern, adding capability go beyond basic discovery, tracking utilization levels so IT organizations can eliminate or consolidate underutilized assets.
