How eQuip!™ for IT asset management is compared to …equip.e-isg.com/equip/doclibrary/eQuipforITAM_CompetitiveAnalysis...compared to other IT Asset Management Software Solutions

Comparing eQuip!™ for IT Asset Management to other solutions, www.e-isg.com

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How eQuip!™ for IT asset management is compared to other IT Asset Management Software Solutions

Table of Contents The context for comparing eQuip!™ for IT asset management to other solutions ................................ 2

What is IT asset management? ................................................................................................................. 2

Major providers of IT asset management solutions ................................................................................. 3

Integration capability is a strength for eQuip!™ -- how eQuip!™ integrates with other applications .... 8


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The context for comparing eQuip!™ for IT asset management to other

solutions

IT asset management solutions are seeing increasing demands across the board, including private

businesses, large non profit associations, and government agencies. The demands are driven by multiple

factors, including the pressure for software license management compliance, increasing number of Bring

Your Own Devices (BYOD), scrutiny on IT hardware audit to secure data, and simply the need to manage

a tight budget by preventing over spent or loss of equipment.

Many vendors claim they provide IT asset management solutions. These solutions range from simple

RFID asset tracking, inventory management, network auto discovery, configuration management, IT

support desk, IT service management, to full blown asset management that supports the life cycle

management of physical and fiscal information of IT assets. For buyers who are researching for IT asset

management solutions, this can be confusing. What is an IT asset management solution? What is the

scope of the “must-have” functionality in an IT asset management solution? What are optional “nice-to-

have” features and functionality?

This article attempts not only to bring clarity to these questions, but also present a summary view of the

competitive landscape of the providers of IT asset management solutions for different sizes of

businesses. In that context, we present eQuip!™, our IT asset management solution, as a competitive

solution to small to medium sized businesses and government agencies.

What is IT asset management?

According to the International Association of IT Asset Management, “IT Asset Management joins the

financial, inventory and contractual responsibilities to manage the overall life cycle including tactical and

strategic decision making.” Essentially, an IT asset management solution needs to keep track of the IT

asset information in three broad categories, from the time the asset is acquired to the time it is

disposed.

1. Financial information of assets: acquisition costs, depreciation, residual value, revenue from

recycling or reuse, life time maintenance costs

2. Contractual information: terms and conditions, service contracts, purchased licenses and

entitlements

3. Physical inventory information: quantity, where they are located, who have custody of them,

maintenance condition


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The Core of IT Asset Management Functionality

An IT asset management solution is not to be confused with many point solutions. The following table

lists some examples of point solutions and why they are not IT asset management solutions:

Example of IT point solutions Why it doesn’t meet the needs of IT asset management

Software License Management Doesn’t track and manage the physical inventory, financial or contractual information of hardware

IT service desk support Doesn’t track and manage the physical inventory, financial or contractual information of hardware and software

Auto discovery Doesn’t support the business process of receiving, managing, and retiring of assets

Doesn’t track the financial or contractual information

Fixed asset management Doesn’t manage assets that are not capitalized by the Accounting Department

Doesn’t support the business process of receiving, managing, and retiring of assets

Configuration management Doesn’t track and manage the physical inventory or financial information of hardware

Major providers of IT asset management solutions

For this article, we leverage Gartner’s research “Marketscope for the IT Asset Management Repository”,

authored by Patricia Adams in April of 2013, and our own expertise in designing an IT asset management

solution that supports the ITIL processes. The Chief Technology Officer of E-ISG Asset Intelligence Eric


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Beser is certified in ITIL, and he designed E-ISG’s IT Asset Management SaaS application eQuip!™ to

support ITIL v3 best practices and processes.

We have selected the providers rated as “promising” and “positive” by Gartner, and assessed eQuip! in

the same criteria used by Gartner in this marketscope research.

Gartner used 8 requirements as criteria for including these providers in the list. These requirements are

what Gartner has observed in the market place as requirements from mid to large enterprises. To be

included in the list, providers’ ITAM solutions must have at least four of these requirements in

production. These 8 requirements are:

1. Software entitlement controls 2. Asset catalog/service request 3. Software license and hardware asset management 4. Integration capability 5. Financial management 6. Workflow automation 7. Decision modeling 8. Relationship mapping

The following 2 tables are a summary of Gartner’s analysis on these providers. In Table 3, we have

presented eQuip!™ in similar context to compare it to these IT asset management solutions.


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Table 1: Providers of IT Asset Management Solutions to Large Enterprises

Vendor/ITAM product

Product notes Strengths Weaknesses

BMC Software/ Remedy Asset Management

Customers typically buy Remedy in addition to BMC’s other suites like Atrium CMDB, Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping

Highly integrated Remedy ITSSM solution reduces concerns about data sharing

Inventory data stored centrally in Atrium CMDB and shared with Remedy Asset Management

Largest market share among Gartner clients

Slow adoption of SaaS-based ITAM

Software license entitlement functionality needs expansion

Lacks robust, scalable agent-based discovery

CA Technologies/IT Asset Management

Three components under a single license: Software Asset Manager, Asset Portfolio Management and CA Business Intelligence dashboard reporting

Enhanced software license entitlement management is available through a partnership

CA Clarity PPM provides high-level project costing

Low-cost provider, compared with other enterprise vendors

No OOTB (out of the box) predefined roles

Customers report difficultly with defining a software relationship on the fly that requires manual correlation

Lack of robust agent-based discovery

HP/ HP Asset Manager

The four modules that comprise Asset Manager are Contracts, Financial, Procurement and Software Asset Management. ConnectIT is an integration engine that imports data from third-party tools, such as ERP and HR systems

Software counters that track virtual, physical and subcapacity, and convert based on software OEM license terms

Integration with HP Cloud Service Automation

HP Universal Discovery, a combination of Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced (DDMA) and Discovery and Dependency Mapping Inventory (DDMI)

Customers report that this is typically, the highest-cost provider to buy, implement and maintain

Long deployment cycles for many customers

Market share decline

IBM/ IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Part of a SmartCloud suite solution that includes Tivoli Service Request Manager (TSRM) and Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB)

Suite-based reduced price point

Integrated ITSSM toolset and integration with operational technology assets, such as power plants

IBM Global Services sells effectively into its installed base

The IT asset management module can’t be purchased alone

Limited product innovation since acquisition in 2006

Confusing array of discovery tools

Minimal support for non IBM software licenses


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Vendor/ITAM product


USU/Valuemation ITAM functionality is located in the Service Asset Lifecycle Management suite, which includes service request management, procurement, contract management and software license management

ITAM is part of a complete suite targeted at midsize and large enterprises

Improved process automation

Tool supports multitenancy, which enables location-specific data that can be rolled up centrally

Limited presence in North America and modest, but growing, presence outside of Germany

With customers preferring full-service suites, there isn't native client configuration management, although there are partnerships and integrations

Lacks a native autodiscovery/inventory tool

Table 2: Providers of IT Asset Management Solutions to SMB

Vendor/ITAM product Product notes Strengths Weaknesses

BMC Software/Numara Numara, a mid market provider of IT service and support, is acquired by BMC

Its agent-based PC discovery tool will become BMC Footprints Asset Core

Limited ITAM functionality

ASG/ ASG IT Asset and Service Management

Supports more of a CMDB approach to asset management, where the inventory data is visualized in a hierarchical relationship map.

Applied the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC) for defining an asset taxonomy to the product

Integrated ITSM suite (with CMDB)

A cost-effective solution for price-sensitive organizations

Lacks support for complex license models

Has a small customer base outside of Europe

Has limited financial management capabilities

Axios System/ assyst10 ITAM functionality is no longer a module, but is included in other areas, such as CMDB and service catalog

Fully integrated suite that is also available on SaaS platform

Strong presence in EMEA

Ability to track a wide range of assets, including facility assets (e.g., fire extinguishers)

Lacks support for complex license entitlement tracking

Lacks strong decision support and analytics

Discovery strategy is not clearly articulated or robust


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Vendor/ITAM product Product notes Strengths Weaknesses

EasyVista/ EasyVista 2012 Including CMDB, discovery, and software asset management

Available via SaaS for midmarket companies

Part of an ITSSM suite with ITAM, CMDB and discovery sold together

Low cost

Limited support for complex license entitlement tracking

Lacks an agent-based discovery tool for mobile devices

Lacks a standard asset catalog for purchasing

Eracent/ Enterprise Entitlements Management (EnterpriseEM) and Enterprise Lifecycle Management (EnterpriseLM)

With a larger installed base with its Enterprise Asset Management (EnterpriseAM) autodiscovery/inventory tool, which tends to pull its other products into deals for evaluation

Functionality and ease of use make the vendor's products attractive to midsize and smaller large enterprises

Easy-to-generate dashboards and reports

Tool requires above-average administrative overhead

Customers report problems with discovery of Linux and Mac OS

Lacks support for virtual machine clustering in EnterpriseEM

Provance Technologies

Built for Microsoft's System Center Service Manager (SCSM) 2012 platform

Tight Microsoft SCCM integration

Available in English, German, French and Russian

Can ship updates out of band with Microsoft's SCSM release schedule

Windows 8 support released in January 2013, but unproven

Customers report manual reconciliation across various inventory sources

No capability to provide multitenancy for large organizations

ServiceNow/ IT Service Automation Application Suite

Having built the entire solution organically, the combination of an agentless inventory (which requires a Java on-site server that runs within the customer's network environment) and a CMDB, both on the same architecture as the ITAM module, reduces integration issues and improves ease of use.

Ease of use

Cost-effective if organization has purchased other modules

Separate physical data segregation by customer (multitenant SaaS)

Needs an agent-based discovery solution

Limited IT cost and billing capability

Basic contract management functionality


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Table 3. Strengths and Weaknesses of eQuip!™ IT Asset Management

Vendor/ITAM product


E-ISG Asset Intelligence/eQuip!™

OOTB (Out of the Box) features include all the core functions in IT asset management as defined by the International Association of IT Asset Management. Workflows and processes support ITIL v3

All core functions for IT asset management in one application

CMDB is an integrated within the application

Mobile device management is available through partnership with SOTI

Available in both SaaS and On Premise

Easy integration with other applications via

Cloud Based data collection and integration service, eQuip!™ Anywhere

Low cost to integrate with RFID readers

Quick to deploy, easy to import and export data and customize reports

Low cost

Doesn’t offer other IT service management tools (e.g. support desk, discovery)

Lacks support for complex license entitlement tracking

Lacks a native auto discovery tool

Integration capability is a strength for eQuip!™ -- how eQuip!™ integrates with

other applications

eQuip!™ takes a unique approach to collecting and integrating data. E-ISG Asset Intelligence has

developed the cloud based data collection and integration service, eQuip!™ Anywhere, which

aggregates vast types of data into one storehouse of information that is available in real time, scalable

and accessible using simple API services.

eQuip!™ Anywhere has four distinguished features.

1. eQuip!™ Anywhere supports a document oriented approach to collecting data. This approach

eliminates the need to create and maintain tables for a variety of data needs, handles data

changes without the need to recode or reorganize, and makes this data searchable and

actionable in a variety of settings. This is a much more efficient way of collecting and integrating

data than the traditional database method.

To illustrate, the traditional database method uses tables to store data, creating joins and views to show

data at the application:


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Using the database method for interoperable data storage poses challenges in availability, performance

and configuration control. For example, a document is composed of a variety of tables. Changing this

document to reflect changes in some tables requires new coding. Moreover, storing geographic data

and images of equipment requires additional knowledge of how this data is structured and stored. So

the traditional database method poses significant challenges for quickly collecting and integrating data.

Using a document oriented approach makes the data easy to collect, distribute and search. Using this

approach, data can be stored without altering tables, without altering indexes, and be retrieved quickly

and safely:


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2. eQuip!™ Anywhere is API driven. Almost any action can be performed using a simple RESTful

API using JSON over simple web protocol.

3. eQuip!™ Anywhere manages data in low cost Linux based servers so that clusters of servers can

be used to create safety and redundancy. eQuip! Anywhere clusters are resilient and will detect

failed nodes immediately and remove them to preserve the safety of data.

4. eQuip!™ Anywhere is powered by Lucene to provide the most powerful full text search

capabilities available in any open source product. Search comes with multi-language support, a

powerful query language, support for geo location, context aware “did-you-mean” suggestions,

auto complete and search snippets.

As a result, as a service to collect and integrate data, eQuip!™ Anywhere is reliable, scalable, flexible,

with high performance standards. This allows customers of eQuip!™ for IT Asset Management to easily

integrate the application with its ERP, procurement, and HR systems.

About E-ISG Asset Intelligence

E-ISG Asset Intelligence provides cost effective software solutions to manage enterprise assets. Our

software eQuip!™ is delivered as Software as a Service. It can also be installed on-premise. Our

solutions help customers to streamline their business processes and manage the assets throughout

their lifecycle, including acquisition, assignment, maintenance, and disposal. We have out-of-box IT

Asset Management solution, which supports the life cycle management of IT assets, including

financial, contractual, and physical inventory information. It supports open source network discovery

tools, mobile device management, RFID asset tracking. It is easy to deploy and easy to integrate with

other applications.

If you would like to learn more about eQuip!™ for IT Asset Management, please call 1-866-845-2416,

you can also send an email to [email protected], or visit our website at www.e-isg.com

mailto:[email protected]

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How eQuip!™ for IT asset management is compared to …equip.e-isg.com/equip/doclibrary/eQuipforITAM_CompetitiveAnalysis...compared to other IT Asset Management Software Solutions