Products purchased 

• Certero for Enterprise SAM

The Challenge – Growth & Lack of Visibility

The merger resulted in a significantly expanded estate of 100,000 devices, which needed to be managed on behalf of customers across England.

The newly formed organization – had more than 50 active network domains, which consisted of a complex network, firewalls and NAT’d IPs. In addition, there was a series of legacy products and processes in place covering IT hardware and software asset management across various parts of the infrastructure.

There was no single repository of accurate data and no means of easily accessing the information needed to develop an integrated strategy. From a cost and reporting perspective, it was also essential to be able to easily identify and understand the particular IT infrastructure and usage aligned to each individual customer organization.

To overcome this, the decision was taken to implement a single, centralized, highly automated solution able to deliver end-to-end coverage of the entire estate, across hardware, software and licensing

The Solution – A Centralized Approach

Following the evaluation and comparison of several non-Certero solutions, Certero for Enterprise SAM was selected on the basis of some key capabilities, including: speed of deployment, comprehensive discovery & inventory, licensing management, powerful reporting and generally better user experience. Implementation was straight forward and quick, with deployment rules and credential sets within Certero for Enterprise SAM ensuring high coverage and capture of accurate, highly-granular inventory data, across each location.

Licensing entitlement was captured within the tool and separated by actual ownership, enabling the generation of an Effective License Position (ELP) per customer. This ensured that individual customers could be advised of any specific shortfalls and associated investment/cost implications. In contrast to the previous reliance on SCCM, which tended to indicate more licenses were required than was actually the case, automation within Certero for Enterprise SAM accounted for instances of bundled products or suites, such as Microsoft Office, ensuring correct licensing rules were applied.

Certero for Enterprise SAM suitably met the desired objective of providing an accurate, dynamic picture of both the overall licensing estate and by individual customer. In conjunction, the advanced metering feature provided visibility and an understanding of actual usage, thereby helping to identify re-harvesting opportunities and eliminate unnecessary new purchasing. This information was also very useful in helping mitigate the impact of any instances of under-licensing.

As well as helping to populate the CMDB, in turn supporting service management teams, Certero for Enterprise SAM’s powerful, easy-to-use reporting and business intelligence engine enabled users to cut and dice data as they wished, tailoring their reports or dashboards based on their individual requirements. By only seeing what they specifically needed, users could focus on that information necessary to support better decision making or planning in their particular area of responsibility or operational unit.

Key benefits of the solution

• Full visibility of the IT estate and assets across complex environment and multiple locations
• Ability to manage assets and licensing by sub-organization or business unit
• Helps ensure compliance, enhance control and optimize licensing
• Supports the organization’s continued growth