SMS 2003 Asset Management Datasheet
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On This Page
 | Understanding Software Assets |
| Standards-Based Hardware Inventory |
| Flexible Granular Inventory Discovery |
| Usage Tracking |
| Integrated Customizable Web Reporting |
Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 provides a comprehensive solution for addressing and resolving your change and configuration needs, enabling you to reduce software costs and stay compliant by understanding the installed application base and its usage.
As hardware and software assets comprise an increasing portion of the IT budget, corporations are becoming more focused on finding ways to reduce these costs while continuing to stay compliant with their vendors' licensing policies.
SMS 2003 delivers the necessary tools to reduce hardware and software costs while enabling IT organizations to make informed and cost effective business decisions related to the infrastructure.
Understanding Software Assets
As corporations are becoming more focused on reducing costs, the ability to accurately track corporate software throughout the lifecycle and stay compliant with vendors' licensing policies has become a necessity. SMS 2003 enables corporations to effectively track which applications are installed and how they are actually used, resulting in using what is paid for and paying only for what is used.
Standards-Based Hardware Inventory
By utilizing Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), SMS 2003 provides improved client-side performance during inventory scans and a richer set of inventory data, including BIOS and chassis enclosure data.
Flexible Granular Inventory Discovery
Although SMS 2003 allows enterprises to track almost all the software assets on their systems, typically there are a core set of applications and files that are of particular importance and interest. SMS 2003 enables enterprises to focus on the information they need by providing the capability to implement intelligent inventory searches through the use of functionality such as wildcards, environment variables and file properties. Systems resource overhead can also be reduced by enabling the skipping of compressed and encrypted files.
Usage Tracking
Inventory is only the first step in understanding the software assets within an enterprise. To fully comprehend and support business requirements, SMS 2003 integrates inventory with rich and robust software metering, enabling enterprises to not only know what is installed, but more importantly, what is used. By understanding application usage, enterprises can save money on potential new application purchases, stay compliant, and effectively phase out unused applications.
Reduce Purchasing Needs
With the wide range of applications in the enterprise, staying compliant with licensing requirements is a complicated task. SMS 2003 enables simplified license compliance tracking by monitoring concurrent application usage, arming enterprises with the information they need to make licensing decisions.
Stay Compliant
As new applications are deployed, legacy applications are often left installed but unused. Usage tracking allows enterprises to reduce cost by identifying and discontinuing support for these unused applications.
Reduce Support Costs
As new applications are deployed, legacy applications are often left installed but unused. Usage tracking allows enterprises to reduce cost by identifying and discontinuing support for these unused applications.
Integrated Customizable Web Reporting
To ensure that the rich inventory and usage tracking information is easily accessible and relevant to the business, SMS 2003 includes a robust, highly flexible and fully extensible Web reporting engine, with more than 120 pre-built reports available out of the box. Reports can be customized or created, and an import/export capability is available for porting these to other SMS 2003 environments.