Leading Healthcare Organization

Company Profile

Product:      Certero for Enterprise SAM

Product:      Certero for Enterprise ITAM

Industry:      Healthcare

Estate size:    5500+ devices

Locations:     USA

The Challenge

From patients to nurses and administration staff to doctors, the healthcare organization has a wide range of user types and each has different hardware and software licensing needs. All of this creates challenges for vendor compliance and license optimization. To manage the process, the organizations Project Management Office Lead, developed a new strategy and tactical plan to improve the governance of the organization’s IT assets and drive optimization. However, for the strategy to be successful, they needed a next generation software asset management solution to support their internal teams.

To begin their search, the healthcare organization published a formal request for proposal (RFP). They were looking for a solution to help them manage their software assets, support their cloud transformation projects and provide visibility and automation of patch distribution for enhanced cyber security.

Objectives

• Automate real-time inventory data for all software and hardware
• Provide visibility of patch levels and update statuses to improve the organizations security
• Produce and maintain an Effective License Position (ELP) for key vendors
• Deliver comprehensive on-site training for all of the healthcare’s IT staff.

Solution and Approach

After a period of competitive bidding, the healthcare organization chose to implement Certero for Enterprise ITAM and Certero for Enterprise SAM, an end-to-end solution to manage all operating systems and software applications across Windows, Mac, Unix and Linux. Built with advanced levels of automation, the solution allows licensing experts to carry out the work of several teams in just a few mouse clicks by eliminating the unnecessary manual processes and data entry tasks commonly associated with market leading products. By producing outputs faster and with fewer people, users can deliver greater value for their businesses. Combined with full provisioning in the cloud, with no compromise or loss of functionality, Certero can be deployed in minutes, not months. This means the added value it delivers can be achieved faster than rival solutions can be implemented.

With rapid deployment and easy operation, Certero were able to deliver a full ELP for the healthcare organization in a matter of months. Certero also provided a series of on-site training sessions to enable the team to continue building on their baseline and drive future optimization themselves. These training sessions revealed additional functionality within the tool that the team had not previously been aware of or included in its RFP. By learning how to perform these new functions, the team developed the skills and knowledge needed to automate a full, real-time inventory of all IT hardware assets across their estate. With greater visibility and governance of all IT assets, the team had all the tools, skills and knowledge required to manage and optimize their IT estate. For example, they were able to identify all IT hardware assets and the operating systems and software applications that run on them. This allowed the team to monitor the status of individual updates and patches, helping to monitor and manage system security vulnerabilities. In addition, by obtaining granular level data on all IT assets, the team could extract valuable information to help manage their transformation to the Cloud.

The Outcome

Certero provided both rapid time to solution and rapid time to value for the organization, who were able to use the solution’s granular level data to identify and optimize all their licenses. At present, the healthcare team are implementing a series of recommendations to achieve multi-million dollar license optimization savings. By optimizing their licenses this way they are confident of achieving total compliance with future vendor license audits. All-in-all the solution has helped increase the efficiency of their SAM processes and practices and, provide greater visibility of the IT estate to support their security objectives. To this day they continue to use the solution to manage and optimize all their IT hardware and software assets, monitor security risks and manage their transformation to the Cloud.