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Use Case Overview
BDNA Solutions For IT Asset
Management
Better Data for IT Asset Management
IT Asset Management (ITAM) solutions give enterprises a holistic overview
of what hardware and software assets they own, when the assets were
purchased, how they are used, and by whom. ITAM is key to the success
of initiatives like license consolidation and optimization, vendor contract
negotiations, enterprise architecture planning, audits, and more. But
ITAM’s ability to control costs and improve efficiency is only as good as
the data that drives it.
BDNA gathers detailed information about IT assets from a wide range
of data sources. It then makes the data clean, complete, and consistent
before delivering it to ITAM solutions for reporting and analysis.
BDNA provides end-to-end alignment of data for IT Asset Management
Key Benefits
Streamline and resolve data
quality issues in IT data to
make it valuable for Asset
Management
Reduce costs by avoiding overand under-buys, maximizing
upgrade entitlements, and
optimizing licensing
Decrease risks of vendor
audits, noncompliance, poor
governance, and security
threats
Improve vendor contract
management and negotiations
Protect technology and
business initiatives
BDNA aggregates and cleans data from Discovery as well as Procurement sources. Data
is aligned using BDNA Technopedia, providing end-to-end alignment for better IT Asset
Management.
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Challenge
Solutions
Challenges in Asset Inventory/Deployment
Data
BDNA solves the data problem for IT Asset Management
by providing clean, aggregate data from multiple sources
including discovery solutions, client management solutions
and procurement systems. Using TechnopediaTM, the world’s
largest catalog of hardware and software assets, BDNA
normalizes data from multiple sources and enriches it to provide
consistent, accurate and valuable data for more efficient IT Asset
Management.
Merging IT asset inventory data from multiple sources, such as
discovery solutions, and client management solutions, often
creates inconsistencies that prevent the ITAM solution from
building an accurate, complete inventory of deployed software:
•
Inconsistent data - Multiple names for a single vendor,
product, or product version leads to conflicts and duplicates.
•
Outdated data - Reconciliation manually or using other
catalogs is not effective since data gets outdated and
catalogs are not updated often enough to keep up with
vendor mergers, acquisitions, and new releases.
•
Incomplete data - Discovery solutions do not provide endof-life dates, open source data, hardware specifications, and
other market intelligence to contextualize IT system data.
Challenges in Asset Entitlement/
Procurement Data
Maintaining an accurate entitlement profile for Software
Asset Management (SAM) and vendor audits is difficult when
heterogeneous purchase orders are the only business records
with the necessary information about procurements:
BDNA Technopedia™
BDNA Technopedia is the world’s largest and most
comprehensive catalog of IT product information, with
constantly updated information on more than 1.2 million
hardware and software assets. It provides a common language
for IT, enabling data from multiple sources to be mapped to a
single identity.
BDNA Normalize™
BDNA Normalize provides organizations with clean, curated and
complete data to create an accurate picture of their environment:
•
It extracts inventory data from more than 40 different data
sources, including discovery and procurement systems
•
It leverages Technopedia to normalize data to a common
identity to resolve conflicts and remove duplicates
•
Inconsistent and missing part numbers - Vendors and
resellers often use differing or made-up part numbers, if
they use SKUs at all.
•
It enriches the data with non-discoverable market
intelligence information, including end-of-life dates, license
options, temperature ratings, and more
•
Unstructured part descriptions - Purchase orders have no
standardized conventions for part descriptions and often
bundle quantities, license packs, and/or maintenance and
support into a single line item.
•
It keeps data current via daily updates.
Lack of end-to-end data alignment
•
Inability to reconcile purchases against deployments - Poor
data quality makes it impossible for IT managers to respond
to vendor audits with an accurate record of entitlements.
BDNA Technopedia Content Packs
BDNA also provides content packs containing additional market
intelligence tailored to specific IT initiatives. The Pricing content
pack includes pricing data for hardware and software. The
Procurement content pack automatically translates information
from procurement systems to structured fields including SKU,
vendor, manufacturer, term/perpetual, quantity, bundle, and
others.
Consequences of Poor Data Quality
Inaccurate counting and reporting lead to significant trueups from vendor audits, inability to realize cost benefits from
consolidation and optimization initiatives, waste on unused
assets, poor leverage in vendor contract negotiations, and costly,
time-consuming manual reconciliation.
Outdated and incomplete data increases the risk of regulatory
noncompliance, exposes the organization to known security
vulnerabilities, interferes with data governance, and hinders the
planning and implementation of IT initiatives like cloud migration
and data center transformation.
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Your BDNA Results with BDNA Solutions For IT Asset Management
Using better data from BDNA, IT organizations can run more impactful IT Asset Management:
•
Asset Inventory: Get complete visibility into the hardware and software assets that you use, including license counts and usage
information, by normalizing deployment data from multiple sources.
•
Asset Utilization: Optimize asset utilization by reclaiming and redeploying underutilized and unused assets.
•
Renewal/Upgrade Decisions: Make informed decisions regarding asset renewal, upgrade, and distribution with accurate utilization
data.
•
Software Audits: Prepare better for vendor audits and implement software license compliance with accurate usage, deployment,
and entitlement data.
•
Vendor Management: Negotiate the most effective licensing terms with accurate usage information.
•
Risk & Compliance: Support security, governance, and compliance initiatives with comprehensive product data including product
lifecycle, EOL, CPE, and more.
How to Purchase
Support and Professional Services
BDNA creates better data about their IT estate that
organizations use to make better decisions, lower costs
and accelerate the pace of their businesses. To start using
BDNA please visit bdna.com, fill out our contact form
and request a demo of our products so you can begin to
promote business agility and efficiency in your enterprise
immediately.
BDNA understands how important it is to respond
quickly, drive better results and ask the right questions
to its customers. Our customer support and professional
services is committed to keeping customers happy and
up-to-date so their needs are met each and every day.
Communication is a key element when partnering with
our customers and helps in building stronger and longlasting relationships. We want our customers to know we
are here to help them in the short and long-term, as well
as understand the value our products bring to their data
when making business decisions.
Find out more
For more information call 650-625-9530 or visit www.bdna.com to learn more about how BDNA can
transform your enterprise IT data.
Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. BDNA, trademarks, registered trademarks or service
marks are property of their respective owners. 04/01/2015
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