Jay Letendre, Vice President of Business Development at AlphaPoint Technology
January 31, 2012

In the first post we gave a high-level overview and example of the IT Asset Life Cycle. Using a simple diagram showing the various stages that are involved in this process, we discussed that before deploying an ITAM solution, it benefits an organization to discuss and define the various stages its hardware assets go through. By answering some simple questions such as:

• How are they purchased?
• How are they used?
• How to we decommission and dispose of them?

Once an organization has answered and identified the various stages and processes associated with their own Life Cycle they can start to implement solutions such as AssetCentral^TM to simplify and manage their IT Asset Life Cycle.

In Part II, using the examples from the previous blog post, we will demonstrate that by incorporating AssetCentral^TM or any ITAM Software into the various stages, management can simplify processes and provide organizational awareness that will ensure asset information is up-to-date throughout the Life Cycle.

Stages of the IT Asset Life Cycle

Purchasing

Typically, a hardware refresh cycle occurs every 18 months. Depending on the size of a data center the amount of assets that may be swapped or purchased can be enormous and keeping an accurate inventory of the newly procured hardware assets and disposed assets can be a challenge.  AssetCentral^TM gives Management and Administrators the ability to easily search and obtain financial and purchasing information about a particular make and model of a device or groups of equipment manufacturers. Retrieving this information can be useful when planning any hardware purchases for your organization.

Once hardware has been purchased from the manufacturer, AssetCentral^TM can be implemented immediately to start tracking and managing the equipment.

Shipping

Once an asset is in transit from the vendor to your company the process of recording that equipment in AssetCentral^TM can begin. A manufacturer, in some cases, will provide documentation as the assets are shipped. This can be sent to your company via e-mail, and recorded into AssetCentral^TM ahead of receiving the equipment.

The new equipment is now recorded into AssetCentral’s^TM Repository.  This enables the receiving team the ability to access the device’s Record Page from which they can then access information about the device that is being shipped such as:

• What devices and how many are we expecting?
• When should we expect it?
• What is its purpose?

Receiving

Once your receiving facilities take possession of the asset you can easily login to AssetCentral^TM and “Check In” the asset. Management at that point will, when they login, see that that the hardware was received.  After “Check In” it will be determined whether this asset is to be stored in inventory or sent to the Staging/Configuration department for installation.

Inventory

AssetCentral^TM not only tracks and manages assets that are in use and plugged in but those that are off-network. These assets are usable assets in a stock location or in inventory.  Before purchasing, the Fulfillment coordinators can check AssetCentral^TM for assets in inventory to determine what assets are available to fulfill new equipment requests before purchasing new hardware. The ability to track assets that are in inventory ensures that equipment purchases are necessary.

Installed Assets

Managing deployed assets is at the core of AssetCentral’s^TM capabilities. The entire Change Management Process can be managed from the system. Enabling access from any web-enabled device, users can easily record Moves, Adds and Changes easily.  Effectively logging and recoding an asset’s history during the Change Management Process ensures that an organization’s Asset Repository is kept up to date and populated with accurate device information.

Device Maintenance

In this example we have some devices in need of repair. AssetCentral^TM as we alluded to can track and manage devices that are taken off the network for repair or returned to the manufacturer. AssetCentral^TM in this instance can be utilized a few ways.

1. A user can login to the system and query the Collections Feature. The Collections Feature is used to create “Collections” or “Groups” of “Things”. In this case Spare Parts. AssetCentral^TM will enable the user to see if they have the parts or spare device in inventory or if they will need to notify purchasing.
2. Admins and users can also look up any Return or Warranty information from the Asset’s “Record Page”. AssetCentral^TM has the ability to attach scanned product information to any device in the system
3. Depending on the organization’s processes, Managers and Administrators can assign individuals “ownership” of equipment and in the case of maintenance or repair the system can provide contact information of the device’s “owner” to facilitate appropriate procedures.

Decommissioning

Retired or decommissioned assets can also be managed in AssetCentral^TM. These are assets that are no longer of use to your company but have not yet been properly disposed of or destroyed. An accurate history of these devices must also be kept for compliance and audit purposes. In some cases these assets may be retained for a certain time to keep sensitive data secure while a new asset is used. In most cases retired assets must be properly disposed of before they are taken off the books.

Disposed

Compliance requires that a disposed asset is one that has been officially wiped of data, transferred to a disposal company and the disposal company has provided an official certificate of disposal ensuring the asset has been properly disposed of.  AssetCentral^TM provides a secure and accurate repository to store all disposed documentation and accurate history of the device throughout its entire Life Cycle for reporting purposes.

We hope that the above examples, as simple as they may be, demonstrated some effective use cases for incorporating a simple, cost effective solution such as AssetCentral^TM in your IT Asset Life Cycle process.

Let us know how your IT Asset Life Cycle is implemented in your organization. What similarities and differences do you see between your life cycle and ours?

TAMPA, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– AlphaPoint Technology, Inc. (OTCBB: APPO.OB - News) is pleased to announce today the appointment of Peter Breen, General Manager of Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR - News), as a new member of the Company’s Board of Directors. Mr. Breen will begin his tenure immediately and brings to the Board more than 20 years of financial industry experience at the highest levels.

Mr. Breen is currently General Manager and Business Owner responsible for all day-to-day operations, overall management, growth and innovation for the Corporate Issuer Solutions division within Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR - News). Broadridge is a $2.4BN NYSE Company with 6,000 employees worldwide.

Prior to his arrival at Broadridge, Mr. Breen served as a Managing Director at The Bank of New York-Mellon (NYSE: BK - News) and oversaw all business development for BNY Mellon’s Shareowner Services business, and served as a member of the Senior Management Team of that business unit. Additionally, Mr. Breen also had the distinct pleasure and honor of serving on BNY Mellon’s Revenue Growth Board, a permanent body of 22 officers, reporting directly to the CEO and Executive Committee. The Board was formed to oversee all revenue related efforts across the entire enterprise.

Mr. Breen commented, “I am pleased to be able to join the AlphaPoint Technology Board of Directors and trust that I can make a contribution to the continuing success of the company.”

“We are delighted to welcome Peter as a member of our Board of Directors,” said Gary Macleod, President and CEO. “His experience, which crosses multiple industries, brings breadth and additional perspective to our Board.”

AlphaPoint Technology, Inc. provides Data Center and IT Asset Management Software. AssetCentral is a cutting-edge, easy-to-use, web-based IT Asset Management (ITAM software) and Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM software) solution that empowers IT professionals to simplify data center operations, streamline processes, implement best practices, improve service delivery, mitigate risk, and help drive Green Data Center Initiatives.

Jean-Marc Krikorian, Director of Strategic Alliances at AlphaPoint Technology

Data Center Professionals oftentimes carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. They ensure all assets within their data center are functioning properly and are quick to act when an asset needs to be added or replaced, thus ensuring their business users have little to no downtime. Isn’t it about time that productivity enhancements that are so commonplace for business users are also available to data center professionals? AssetCentral is your solution. Join us to witness how AssetCentral can make your busy and arduous daily efforts in the data center, simpler. We’ll walk you through a typical “Day-in-the-Life” of a data center professional and how AssetCentral is the IT asset management software you’ve been waiting for.

Please visit the AssetCentral webinar registration to reserve your place. Join us every week!

Jay Letendre, Vice President of Business Development at AlphaPoint Technology

In this multi-part series we will discuss how AssetCentral can be incorporated into your organizations Asset Lifecycle process. The first entry we will discuss the basic description and processes involved with the Asset Lifecycle.

Before deploying an ITAM solution, it benefits an organization to discuss and define the various stages its hardware assets go through. By answering some simple questions such as:

• How are they purchased?
• How are they used?
• How to we decommission and dispose of them?

By answering these questions you have already begun to define the “Asset Lifecycle” within your organization. Once this has been defined, you will quickly see the places where your company will need to deploy tools and apply processes, that will over time keep your asset repository up to date and in compliance.

The asset lifecycle defined below has several stages, which are specific IT equipment assets. In a generic sense, the following lifecycle applies to any fixed asset you bring into the IT landscape from desktop to data center.

Asset Lifecycle Diagram

The following diagram shows an example of the various stages of an Asset Lifecycle:

In most cases a device or asset starts off as being On Order or Procured and then moves through the various lifecycle stages shown above until the asset is eventually Disposed of or Decommissioned. The difference in the color-coding indicates which organization has physical possession of the asset with each stage. The arrows between lifecycles are the business processes that you should consider to ensure your asset database is properly updated as the status of assets change. The above is only one of the many examples of how an Asset Lifecycle Diagram may look. Your particular organization may differ.

In Part II of the series we will discuss how AssetCentral can be incorporated into the Asset Lifecycle to provide your organization the solutions it needs to have an up-to-date Asset Repository and how each business unit can use AssetCentral to ensure accurate information is maintained on each asset.

AlphaPoint Technology – Honorable Mention

Tracking IT Assets With an App

Software firm develops a cross-platform application that enables IT pros to manage their assets via smartphone and tablet.

AlphaPoint Technology, based in Bradenton, Fla., is an IT asset management software company. “In order to have an accurate and precise count of your IT assets, the data collection and inventory management procedures should be as efficient as possible,” explains Gary Macleod, CEO. In the past, data collection and inventory management procedures were a very manual process. “We would have on-site audit teams, which would take physical inventories of data centers,” he continues.

AlphaPoint worked with the Warshaw Group to develop a front-end mobile software solution to integrate with AssetCentral, AlphaPoint’s flagship product, which makes it easy to track and manage IT assets.

AlphaPoint selected the mobile inventory functionality of Mobile Validity, Warshaw’s mobile app development platform, to enhance the overall user experience of AssetCentral. The app is compatible with iPad, BlackBerry, and Motion Computing’s F5 tablet. It was rolled out in November 2010.

“Now, it is more of a one-person process, where a technician goes up to a server and inputs the information into an application, using a form that is built onto the device,” explains Macleod. “The device also takes photos. It is a more advanced way of tracking the data.”

Mobilization of the data collection process has provided a number of benefits, including an increase in the accuracy of the data, which reduced the need for re-inventory by more than 75%. There’s been a 55% reduction in time spent on initial inventory, and reporting capabilities have improved and allowed for better decision-making.

Read the full article by clicking here.

Jay Letendre, Vice President of Business Development at AlphaPoint Technology

Last month Data Center Knowledge recently conducted its 2011 survey of enterprise class data center operators and found that data center design is still the top area of interest. The survey has be conducted in each of the last four years, and in 2010 data center design moved to the top of the list and remains a key topic of interest for 2011.

DCIM

“The newest and fastest rising area of interest at 70% is Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM). This technology helps integrate the management of facilities and IT ensuring the optimal use of the overall facility. DCIM plays an even more strategic role for operators with multiple data centers that leverage cloud technologies and real time energy pricing.”

You can read and download the survey here on Data Center Knowledge.

Jean-Marc Krikorian, Director of Strategic Alliances at AlphaPoint Technology

Spratt makes some interesting comments in this article:

•  “…business needs non-standard technologies for innovation.”
•  “…our innovative CIO creates a shadow infrastructure, replicates existing functionality, and buys products and services at sub-optimal purchasing power and from unproven vendors. Projects fall behind, costs accelerate, and the desired speed and agility are not attained.”
•  “…once we feel we have taken all cost out of managing a solution, we need to investigate if it is worthwhile letting an external party run it for us.”
•  “Though we don’t have a profit motive, we still need to price our services.”
•  “Usually, the business strategists and business managers are the innovators; IT’s role is to bring proven technologies to bear to enable and drive those innovations.

My Take: McKesson CIO Randy Spratt gives an insightful interview regarding his views of the many roles and responsibilities that CIOs face. Mr. Spratt reinforces the notion that effective organizations need to have a collaborative relationship between IT and the various business units and in those relationships it’s critical to treat the business units as customers. This means ensuring that IT services are not only supported by SLAs but are also priced effectively. Mr. Spratt also provides insights into the life cycle of services that are initially developed and owned by IT and then can be considered to be managed by third-party. Mr. Spratt’s reflections provide guiding points for many types of business partners, from ISVs to OEMs to VARs and SIs.

Article Link

Jay Letendre, Vice President of Business Development at AlphaPoint Technology

AlphaPoint’s AssetCentral platform offers easy IT Asset Management in today’s complex Data Centers by providing un-matched visualization of where assets are located in a web-based easy to navigate interface. People are visual in nature and AssetCentral capitalizes on that by enabling real-time modeling and mapping of a company’s IT infrastructure. In addition to its unique visual capabilities, AssetCentral is built with an open architecture thereby ensuring that clients can continue to leverage their existing IT investments. This open architecture allows for AssetCentral to integrate with other ITAM and DCIM tools and platforms that might already be in use in a client’s environment.

The benefit for data center and IT managers

AlphaPoint has found that its customers like the visualization and ease of use of AssetCentral. In addition, especially in these challenging economic times, the price-point for AssetCentral also aligns appropriately.
AssetCentral provides critical business benefits when it comes to managing Data Center assets:

1. Do I know where this equipment is?
2. Do I know what it is doing?
3. Am I getting the most from my investments?
4. Where can I put this equipment? Do I have Space? Power?

Once a user or any number of unlimited users log in from any web-enabled device or workstation these questions are answered in AssetCentral simple and intuitive interface. Consolidated up-to-date asset information is displayed in AssetCentral providing the user the ability to have current information at his fingertips in order to make important decisions.

In addition, a Data Center will see an immediate benefit from migrating to AssetCentral from complex, hard to maintain asset lists stored in spreadsheets or other types of documents.

“It’s your Data Center”

AssetCentral also enables client-side customization with the ability to add “Dynamic Asset Information Fields” that are important to you and your organization.

A priority

Maintaining a Data Center is a complex effort that needs to be agile enough to meet the demands of a variety of users; from employees to business partners to clients. A solution like AssetCentral easily ranks in the top three of priorities within a Data Center. Some of the costly challenges that organizations face in their DCIM/ITAM practices are:

1. Keeping an accurate and current asset inventory needed for procurement decisions as well as audits (be they government, regulatory or others).
2. Quickly “visually” locating assets in order to manage them.
3. Determining the free rack space and power availability available to deploy newly procured assets or rearrange existing assets.
4. What are the biggest challenges for data center and IT managers when it comes to AssetCentral?

Some of the biggest challenges faced by clients prior to AssetCentral being chosen as a solution are:

1. Complex asset lists and databases that are difficult to keep updated and accessible to multiple users
2. Not having an asset inventory solution in place at all
3. Tired of the complexity, overpriced and underused features included in some of the other DCIM/ITAM solutions
4. Zero or very little support when it comes to integrating with existing or new software purchases

Overcoming challenges

Data Center and IT Managers need to think about what it is that they are looking to achieve on a daily basis. If they use a solution every day, all day, chances are they are going to stay away from complexity. Also, if possible, chose a solution that can integrate with the tools already used in their organization. This will allow them to keep previous software purchases as well as keep the learning curve low. With respect to complex asset lists or not having anything at all, choose a solution that allows ubiquitous web-based access the will enable the asset database to be updated and kept up-to-date.

DCIM and ITAM are very complex processes and very few solutions address every aspect. Therefore, focus on those must-have needs. Think of the following in making your decision:

1. Ease of Use. Can the solution be configured to the way your users work today?
2. Reporting. Can the solution provide the reports needed to run your Data Center and inform key stakeholders?
3. Integration. Can the solution integrate with other solutions you’ve already invested in?
4. Licensing. Is the licensing model easy? Is it flexible enough to meet your needs as your organization changes from month-to-month or year-to-year?