Unified asset and service management software provides a common control center for managing business processes for both digital and physical assets. This Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®)-compliant software is accessible through mobile devices and integrates with social media and development tools. Now you can choose the delivery model you need such as on-premise, software as a service (SaaS), or VM image and seamlessly change it to suit your business needs.
SmartCloud Control Desk is used regularly to retrieve the details of the software installed on the managed PCs. This helps us to keep track of the licenses of the commercial software and to be compliant.
SmartCloud Control Desk automates IT infrastructure management routines for enterprises to standardize and secure their networks.
With SmartCloud Control Desk:
Provides complete details about the hardware used in the network. The hardware inventory reports help administrators get details immediately. Some of the reports include:
Capacity units are the quantity measured to determine whether a software product is used in compliance with its license.
The following capacity units are supported by the Licenses application:
Desktop Central periodically scans the Windows desktops/servers in the network to collect the hardware and software details and stores them in the database. The inventory scanning interval is flexible and can be configured to meet real-time needs. This enables administrators to get up-to-date asset / inventory information at any time without manual intervention.
Desktop Central enables administrators to get notified through email in any of the following events:
Desktop Central provides out-of-the-box reports to view the software and hardware details of the network. These reports provide a quicker view of the network inventory details. The ability to export the reports into printable PDF or CSV formats helps to integrate with third-party reporting engines.
The integration framework is a set of applications in the Integration module in SmartCloud Control Desk. These applications facilitate two-way data exchange between SmartCloud Control Desk and external applications in real time or batch mode. Through the integration framework, you can exchange data synchronously and asynchronously using a variety of communication protocols.
Integration Composer is an integration tool that imports hardware and software inventory data from external databases into the SmartCloud Control Desk database tables for deployed assets and configuration items. There are some tools scan computers, network devices, and network printers deployed in an enterprise and record information about the hardware and software installed on those assets. Integration Composer transforms the collected data and imports it into SmartCloud Control Desk.
SmartCloud Control Desk provides integration adapters that facilitate data imports for commonly used discovery tools. Each integration adapter provided with Integration Composer specifies how to transform and import data for a specific discovery tool. You also can create and customize integration adapter mappings to meet specific migration requirements. To keep data current, you can schedule regular imports using the scheduling applications in SmartCloud Control Desk or another scheduler such as Windows Scheduler.
SmartCloud Control Desk supports many deployment options. Before you define and implement import schedules, review your product configuration to determine the kinds of imports required and plan schedules for importing data.
SmartCloud Control Desk can receive different types of IT asset management data. The IT data can be imported from IBM Tivoli Software Knowledge Base Toolkit, IBM Tivoli Asset Discovery for Distributed, IBM Tivoli Asset Discovery for z/OS, and additional discovery and system management tool databases.
Launch-in-context integrations:
SmartCloud Control Desk allows you to launch in context directly to the user interfaces of other products.
SmartCloud Control Desk includes a Software Catalog application into which you can import data from external software catalog repositories.
Importing IT asset disposal data:
Asset disposal is one of the life cycle processes supported by SmartCloud Control Desk. To facilitate management of asset disposal data, SmartCloud Control Desk enables you to import data from external sources about how you dispose of your IT assets.
Integrating IT assets with configuration items:
In SmartCloud Control Desk, if you determine that IT asset data and configuration item data provide information about the same asset, you can link the records.
Integrating license data from external sources:
To integrate software license data with external data sources, use the Integration module applications, also known as the integration framework, in SmartCloud Control Desk.
Using Integration Composer to import deployed asset data from discovery tools:
You can import deployed asset data using Integration Composer together with an integration adapter.
Creating a baseline set of IT assets:
When you first implement SmartCloud Control Desk, you can create an initial set of IT asset records in the database. This is done by using the data that an asset discovery tool collected and that you imported into the deployed assets tables.
When you are procuring the software or hardware from the vendor the following is required:
Like server virtualization, desktop virtualization helps IT managers easily manage, secure, and deploy technology and reduce costs. Today's mobile users require more consistent, security-rich access to files and applications from a variety of user devices—tablets, laptops, smartphones, and more. Desktop virtualization can help you meet these demands with flexibility, choice, and self-service for your employees.
Choice of robust virtual desktop solutions designed in close cooperation with Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware. Software, hardware, and services that helps:
Pros and cons of traditional software licensing and compliance management approaches:
Smart clouding is the best process to track the usage of the assets and find the performance of the software or hardware. Cloud computing helps track and assess shared computing resource usage accurately, and better manage the cost of your cloud and IT services.
SmartCloud Control Desk:
Venkat Avirneni is a specialist in IBM Tivoli technologies. He has experience in IT industry with strong knowledge in analysis, design, development, and administration of IBM Tivoli product group and business intelligence applications with Java and J2EE technologies.
He has extensive experience with development, management, and operation of implementation support services including standardized implementation methodologies, standardized training programs, and standard operating procedure development. He is experienced in implementation of SmartCloud applications (SCCD, SCCM/ TUAM ), IBM Maximo Asset Management (EAM), Tivoli Asset Management for IT (TAMIT), Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB), Tivoli Service Request Manager (TSRM), BIRT Reporting and Actuate Reporting with Maximo, as well as RDBMS like MS SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, Teradata, and MS Access.