Organisations today often have geographically distributed office locations, some of which have restricted network access due to security or plain logistics. Work councils and data protection rules can also hinder the collection of data in large enterprises. Seasoned ITAM professionals see the 100% inventory as an impossible task however new technologies and process controls are making this possible. The advent of GDPR means you need to know what IT you have and what data it handles. In addition, ensuring you know what software versions is important for ensuring you have the correct versions running for security and compatibilities of your systems. Excuses are no longer acceptable; 100% inventories are the next big problem to solve.
Key drivers in closing the gap are:
- A wide range discovery methods. If you can find it, you can’t tell what is installed. Finding the technology is possible with a variety of agentless means.
- Agentless inventories. Using agents for inventory is a thing of the past. Your data will never be 100% if you rely on agents. Instead move over to agentless which can create detailed inventories of everything even if the devices do not have an agent installed.
- Remote locations. Just because they are small satellite offices doesn’t mean you can ignore them. Remote scanning technologies can now provide accurate inventories from the smallest sites.
- Security clearance. If you have blocks you won’t find it so ensure that you have the credentials for access. New technologies reduce the need for high level security clearance
- An effective process. You won’t get to 100% inventory in day one. This is a “Kaizen” or continuous improvement process run over a period of weeks or months. However, you will get to 100% by tackling the issues one by one and gradually achieving your goal. Tried and tested methods exist, you just need to know how to use them.
TBSC offers comprehensive hardware and software scans either with an agent or through zero-touch agentless technology. It provides a smart scan and data gathering of physical and virtual devices at low costs, as well as providing comprehensive reports about hardware, software, VMware, Hyper-V, and Oracle database servers.
Agentless scanning and discovery of IT assets on your network
- Inventories of devices, operating systems and hardware
- Records both physical hosts and virtual servers
- Details of peripheral devices and printers capable of holding documents
- Compatible with Windows, Macs, Unix, Linux, VMware, mobile devices
- Rapid scanning to complete an inventory in a few days
- Options for continuous scanning to report changes and updates
- Highlighting of unknown devices not categorised in “known” operating systems
- Links to a managed encryption service for device and data protection
For further details on gaining a 100% inventory contact us at [email protected].
Is it impossible to get 100% IT and SAM Inventory?