Inventory and Discovery: How to Take Charge of “What’s Out There”

IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,
INDUSTRYANALYSIS & CONSULTING
Navigating IT Chaos:
Why the Challenges of
Inventory and Discovery Are
More Relevant than Ever
Dennis Nils Drogseth
Vice President
Enterprise Management Associates
Will Degener
Senior Product Manager
Scalable Software, Ltd

INDUSTRYANALYSIS & CONSULTING© 2018 Enterprise ManagementAssociates,Inc.
Watch the On-Demand Webinar
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• Inventory and Discovery: How to Take Charge of
“What’s Out There” On-Demand webinar is
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• Check out upcoming webinars from EMA here:
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INDUSTRYANALYSIS & CONSULTING© 2018 Enterprise ManagementAssociates,Inc.3
Featured Speakers
Dennis Nils Drogseth, Vice President, EMA
Dennis joined Enterprise Management Associates in 1998 and currently manages the New
Hampshire office.Dennis brings several years of experience in various aspects of
marketing and business planning for service management solutions. He supports EMA
through leadership in IT Service Management (ITSM), CMDB systems,as well as
megatrends like advanced operations analytics, cross-domainautomation systems,IT-to-
business alignment, and service-centric financial optimization. Dennis also works over
several practice areas to promote dialogue across critical areas of technologyand market
interdependencies.
Will Degener, Senior Product Manager, Scalable Software, Ltd
Will joined Scalable Software in January 2014 as a Senior Solutions Consultant and it
quickly became apparent that his background and experience was very suited to assisting
with productdirection alongside his normal activities. 2018 broughtan opportunity to spend
more time in the product managementrole. Will brings decadesof experience across
various aspects of enterprise software solution delivery specificallyin the ITSM and ITAM
space.His roles have included consultancy, productmanagement and even a little
developmenttoo. Oftenacting as the bridge betweenthe business need and the software
developers his skills lie in understanding need and translating into a provisioned solution.

Logistics
4
An archived version of the event recording
will be available at
www.enterprisemanagement.com
• Log questions in the chat panel located on
the lower left-hand corner of your screen
• Questions will be addressed during the
Q&A session of the event
QUESTIONS
EVENT RECORDING
A PDF of the speaker slides will be
distributed to all attendees
PDF SLIDES

Navigating IT Chaos:
Why the Challenges of
Inventory and Discovery Are
More Relevant than Ever
Dennis Nils Drogseth
Vice President
Enterprise Management Associates

Agenda
• Unifying diverse roles in IT requires comprehensive
and consistent data
• Today’s realities for inventory and discovery
• Unique areas of impact:
– Audits
– Strategic IT asset management (ITAM)
– CMDB/CMS effectiveness
– Security/compliance
– Cloud
• Guidelines for going forward
6 © 2018 Enterprise ManagementAssociates,Inc.

Market Based Intelligence:
• “EMA Research Report: Optimizing IT for Financial
Performance 2016.”
• “EMA Research Report: Next-Generation IT Service
Management--: Changing the Future of IT,” June, 2017.
• “EMA Research Report: Integrating SecOps with Operations,
Development and ITSM in the Age of Cloud and Agile,” 2017.
• “EMA Research Report: “What is the Future of IT Service
Management?” 2015.
• Best Practices for Optimizing IT with ITAM Big Data,”
EMA, July 2015
• EMA IT consulting
7 © 2018 Enterprise Management Associates,Inc.

Unifying Diverse Roles in IT
Requires Comprehensive and
Consistent Data

For ITSM Initiatives: Respondents Averaged 4 Different
Areas of Involvement –All Needing Cohesive Insights from
Inventory and Discovery
14%
10%
10%
10%
9%
9%
9%
8%
7%
6%
6%
1%
Integrated cross-silo support for IT asset management
Core service desk/help desk operations (incident and request management)
Integrated cross-silo support for problem, incident or availability/performance management
Integrated cross-silo support for IT governance analytics for OpEx efficiencies
Integrated cross-silo support for change management
Integrated cross-silo support for portfolio planning and optimization
Integrated cross-silo support for the Internet of Things
Integrated support for business process workflow creation (HR, facilities, etc.)
Integrated cross-silo-support for security/fraud/risk management
Integrated cross-silo support for endpoint management (including mobile)
Integrated cross-silo support for DevOps
Other
Which of the followingareyou primarily responsible for?
Sample Size = 264

Top 10 Challenges for Optimizing IT for Financial
Performance Highlight The Need for More Holistic
Inventory and Discovery Data
1. Operational inefficiencies
2. Incomplete data
3. Fragmented technologies
4. Lack of analytics in optimizing data from IT assets
5. Poor data quality
6. Sharing data effectively across IT silos
7. Low or inadequate levels of automation
8. Fragmented/siloed technologies
9. Unable to measure op efficiencies
10. Communication/process issues
10

Bad Data About “What’s Out There” and IT Finance
• IT billing is endlessly controversial
• The business unit leadership is simply refusing to sign
off on the charges
• Their analysts cannot reconcile the charges with the
records of the assets being managed for them
• It turns out that the hosting organization was charging
for assets that had already been retired
• Process failure root cause:
IT Finance does not have
accurate IT asset data.
© 2018 Enterprise ManagementAssociates,Inc.11

Most Spend more than 10 Hours a Week Resolving
Data Accuracy Issues
17%
44%
26%
12%
Less than 5 hours per week
Between 5-15 hours per week
More than 25 hours per week
How much time does your organization spend per week on resolving data accuracy
issues for your company's service, financial, and asset management data?
Less than 5 hours per week Between 5-15 hours per week
Between 16-25 hours per week More than 25 hours per week

“As a service provider, we use IT data managementinternally to keep
track and account for devices in our hosting data centers for incident,
problem managementand change management – especially for our
more mature customers. We also keep track of all devices, purchase
dates, extended warrantees – so that, for instance, we’re not hosting a
device if it’s not under warrantee.We run reports on a customer basis,
which can help with everything from billing to infrastructure planning.”
Voices – Translating IT Data into Value: A U.S. Based
Services Provider

Customer Experiences with Scalable’s Asset Vision®:
A Full Inventory and Discovery Data Perspective
• Asset Vision unifies data with a "holistic” view and inherent
normalization for dramatic improvements in accuracy.
• Our enterprise customers augment their discovered IT Asset data.
– Business information is added.
– Location, organizational or financial data from many sources.
– This allows for overall analysis and focus on specific areas of interest.
• By introducing cost / expense data the ability to analyze the estate
with a dollar value attached is possible.
• Asset Vision is used to validate billings from service providers.
– Provides confidence and control of serviced estate.
– Allows for independent analysis of true usage.
– Identifies retirement candidacy.

Today’s Realities for Inventory
and Discovery

Effective Inventory and Discovery Is Key for Just About
Everything
• Asset management and audits
• CMDB/CMS
• Effective analytics
• Change management
• Release management/DevOps
• Capacity planning
• Assimilating cloud resources
• Security and compliance concerns
• Managing application/infrastructure performance in context
• Minimizing redundancies
• IT governance and ownership
• Optimizing end user experience
• IT financial planning

How Many Tools Does It Take to Get the Job Done?
• 78% had automated asset discovery and/or inventory
systems in place
– But 22% still had nothing!
• The average respondent had 11 different tools for
inventory or asset discovery
– But 22% had more than 20
– And 7% had more than 40!

How Many Tools Does It Take to Get the Job Done?
• 78% had automated asset discovery and/or inventory
systems in place
– But 22% still had nothing!
• The average respondent had 11 different tools for inventory
or asset discovery
– But 22% had more than 20
• And on average, respondents spent 15
hours a week reconciling different data sets
• Most frequent interval for updates?
– 21% in real time
– 24% multiple times a day, 21% daily
– 17% multiple times a week (11% weekly and
4% monthly)

Average Respondent Was Using 11 or More Different
Inventory/Discovery Tools
10%
16%
24%
27%
11%
4%
7%
1 - 3
4 - 7
8 - 11
12 - 19
20 - 30
31 - 40
More than 40
How many different discovery and/or inventory capabilities/tools are you aware of
across your organization that impact the management of your IT infrastructure and
service-related assets (HW, SW/cloud, and services)?
1 - 3 4 - 7 8 - 11 12 - 19 20 - 30 31 - 40 More than 40

The Average Respondent Spends Roughly 15 Hours A
Week Resolving Discovery/Inventory Discrepancies
11%
41%
29%
16%
3%
Less than 5 hours per week
More than 25 hours per week
We don't spend any time on resolving discovery/inventory
discrepancies
How much time does your organization spend per week on resolving
discovery/inventory discrepancies?

Inventory, Discovery and LOB Confidence at a Large
Financial Services Firm
”LOB confidence in IT inventories is low. IT provided an
estimate to Internet Banking with an increased cost for
servers of $21 million. Central IT determined the number
of servers used to be 1600. Investigation by Internet
Banking found the number of servers closer to 400,
noting that a number of servers on IT’s list had already
been retired or re-provisioned. After six months of
auditing, the bill was reduced to $10 million.”

Customer Experiences with Scalable’s Asset Vision:
Increasing Agility and Reducing Costs
• A reduced reliance on multiple tools.
– With extensive agentless probe technology and an agile
development approach, our customers have less reliance on
multiple tools.
• A unified data repository.
– With our integration and import / export facilities can ensure
that for most cases Asset Vision becomes the aggregation
point for multiple data sources.
• These daily feeds from central systems incorporate IP
to location information, asset ownership,
organizational structure and even critical patch
information.
• Including service provider billing data into Asset Vision
allows for quick identification of errors or omissions.

Unique Areas of Impact:
- Audits
- Strategic ITAM
- CMDB/CMS Effectiveness
- Security/Compliance
- Cloud

“Keeping Track” for Audits Is a Major Investment
in Time and Energy!
• The average respondent had circa 20 different
software vendors to keep track of.
– But 33% had more than 30 software vendors to keep track of.
• The average respondent spent more than 10 hours a
week struggling with data accuracy
– 43% spent more than 16 hours a week, and 13% more than
25 hours
• Compliance or SW license audits typically
demanded more than 30 hours for inventory-
related data (with 7% spending more than 75 hours)
– And (another) 30 hours struggling with asset entitlement
data
24

INDUSTRYANALYSIS & CONSULTING25 © 2018 Enterprise ManagementAssociates,Inc.
Most Spend Nearly 30 Hours Assimilating Inventory
Data for a Major SW License or Compliance Audit
On average, how much time does your organization spend collecting asset
inventory data for a major SW license or compliance audit (including
public/private cloud assets as relevant)?
12%
18%
24%
23%
13%
4%
3%
4%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Less than 10 hours
Between 11-20 hours
Between 21-30 hours
Between 31-40 hours
Between 41-50 hours
Between 51-75 hours
Between 76-100 hours
More than 100 hours
Less than 10 hours Between 11-20 hours Between 21-30 hours Between 31-40 hours
Between 41-50 hours Between 51-75 hours Between 76-100 hours More than 100 hours

Top Eight Priorities for Integrating ITAM Data with
Broader Strategic Initiatives Are…
1. Keeping up with security when new vulnerabilities are
discovered
2. Reducing the cost of the IT infrastructure
3. Managing, tracking and optimizing IT HW and SW
assets across their full lifecycles
4. Improved SLAs for IT services and faster application
delivery to business consumers
5. Ensuring compliance (e.g. license compliance) and
accountability
6. Alignment of IT asset purchase with
deployment information
7. Lifecycle planning of application
services for cost and value

Some CMDB/CMS Perspectives
• “Among the most pervasive example of data-related
issues are incomplete inventory and discovery
capabilities—so many phase one [CMDB] deployments
achieve real value simply by defining those problems and
at least creating a plan to round out what’s there.”
CMDB Systems: Making Change Work in the Age of Cloud and Agile
• A CMDB/CMS affiliates with success in:
– Optimizing IT for financial performance
– Next-generation ITSM
– SecOps initiatives
– Analytics deployments
– And the list goes on
• Surveys indicate an
average of 12 Hours a week
for resolving CMDB/CMS
related data accuracy
issues.
“Process-Centric” CMDB
Change Impact Management
Real-Time CMDB
Service Impact Management
IT & Customer
Owners
Application
Development
Infra.
Topology
QoE
Systems
P erformance
E vents
Configuration Inventory
DSL
CAB

SecOps Success and Discovery/Inventory and Service
Modeling
• 73% are proactively coordinating inventory and
security/compliance requirements with ITAM/SAM
processes or audits
– Which strongly correlates with overall SecOps success
• 61% currently leveraged service modeling:
– CMDB/CMS or application discovery and dependency
mapping (ADDM)
– 88% of these are sharing CIs with security
– Having a CMDB/CMS or ADDM solution
deployed strongly correlated with success

Effective Discovery is a Critical Ingredient for Optimizing
Cloud
How is cloud impacting ITAM requirements and strategies?
1. Is changing how we discover and measure costs and
asset investments
2. Requires more real-time awareness
3. Changes organizational ownership in some ITAM areas
4. Makes some aspects of asset management simpler
5. Requires higher levels of automation
6. Ups the bar on accounting for infrastructure usage
7. Adds new wrinkles, makes ITAM more complex
8. Adds political complications—
who owns what?

Customer Experiences with Scalable’s Asset Vision:
Helping To Achieve Cross Functional Success
• Physical and virtual estate comparisons and analysis are
achieved with side-by-side comparisons.
• For customers who augment asset data with business content,
they are able to identify and manage “who owns what”.
– Important for audits, refreshinitiatives and compliance.
• Dependency mapping of virtual servers to identify true candidates
for retirement.
– Provides a near real time source of truth against a manually managed
spreadsheet depicting what servers “should” be doing.
• AWS and Azure probes directly read API’s allowing an overlay of
inventory and configured data for further analysis of paid and in
use resources.
– For example in a development environment where machines are online
24/7 and billed on demand. Simply turn them off when not in use!
30

Guidelines for Going Forward

Top Seven Roadblocks in Leveraging Inventory and
Other Data to Optimize IT Financial Performance Are…
1. Sharing data effectively across IT silos
2. Operational time lost in reconciling relevant HW/SW
data
3. Communication and process issues
4. Lack of analytics to optimize data insights
5. Incomplete data
6. Inaccurate data
7. Lack of executive sponsorship

Commonly Found Complaints from EMA Consulting–
Manual versus Automated Data Collection
“We do 120 asset
extracts each month.
We have lots of data,
but the processes we
currently have for
collecting and
managing that data
are insufficient.”
“There are 13 initiatives currently
underway to gather information on assets
in the enterprise. This is a continuous
process and provides little to negative
value because there is no underlying
process/tool for keeping our information
current. Manual processes have been
shown to be only 80% effective at best. As
a result, we don’t trust the asset data.”

How to Go Forward with a Unified Approach to Inventory
and Discovery
• Ask:
• What discovery/inventory/ license
management tools are already in place?
– Who’s using them?
– How effective are they?
– Identify redundancies and gaps
– Don’t forget administrative overhead
• What processes are in place for sharing data?
– Informal vs. formal (ITIL, etc.)
– Do current stakeholders even talk to each other?
– How well do current processes work in real-life?
– Are there any organizational issues in your way?
PEOPLE

EMA’s 8-Step Methodology
• Based on years of practical
experience by EMA staff
• Proven successful at large
companies with challenging
infrastructures
• Can’t skip any steps – each
buildson previous efforts
• Focuses on tools, process,
and people

The Asset Vision Approach to Removing Roadblocks to
Optimization of Financial Performance in a Single Solution
Discovery
Inventory
Reconciliation
Normalization
Usage Tracking
Sharing

Question and Answer: Log Questions in the chat
panel located on the lower left-hand corner
Request a demo of Asset Visionat:
https://www2.scalable.com/lp_demo_request_ws

Inventory and Discovery: How to Take Charge of “What’s Out There”

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