GigaOm Radar for IT Asset Management (ITAM)v1.0

1. Executive Summary

Information technology asset management (ITAM) provides insight, compliance, and cost management for all IT assets in every technology domain, from hardware to software to cloud computing assets. ITAM solutions are designed to track an abundance of business and technical data related to assets and their use within the digital network environment. Fiscal management of all IT assets is enabled in the areas of process control, compliance, and financial management.

Demand for ITAM is becoming increasingly important as the need to better manage assets expands for economic and control reasons. ITAM solutions offer visibility and actionable insight that can reduce the costs required to purchase IT assets and maintain them for the life of the asset. Other cost factors come into play when considering the millions of dollars spent on IT assets and the potential fines that may occur upon being audited for any asset use that is not in compliance with applicable government regulations. ITAM technology applies across all vertical industry segments and business models. It is crucial to helping IT remain compliant and minimizing asset costs.

ITAM provides inventory and data collection, oversight and compliance, financial management, risk control, and vendor and contract management for all IT assets via the following: hardware asset management (HAM), software asset management (SAM), network infrastructure devices, and cloud asset modules (CAM). It is closely aligned with FinOps in that it offers finance and risk capabilities while also aligning with information technology service management (ITSM), especially for organizations that have adopted the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) ITIL 4 process standards.

Implementing an ITAM practice and toolset is crucial to many audiences both inside and outside of the IT domain. C-suite executives and legal professionals are likely to be the most focused on managing risk and reducing spending. Yet, technologists will also want to implement an ITAM practice to better track, manage, and plan for IT assets and their deployment.

Organizations are investing in ITAM solutions for several reasons, including:

• Avoiding the possibility of compliance breaches, primarily for software assets, which occur when software is being used in some places around the corporate environment without legal rights to do so. This typically happens inadvertently in large, enterprise environments where operational and system controls are inadequate to ensure that compliance is in alignment with purchase agreements and distribution of any type of asset.
• Management and control of IT assets that support technology staff and all employees across the enterprise. The rollout of an ITAM program and associated toolset empowers asset managers to track detailed data, plan for purchases, automate lifecycle triggers and policies, and ensure that assets purchased are in active use.
• Serving C-level executives’ interest in the bottom-line and top-line usage of their investments. Understanding the need for IT asset spending and oversight of prudent management of all investments is important to this group. Additionally, they will appreciate controls that are in place to avoid the possibility of unwanted press or other hits to reputation related to contract non-compliance.

This is our first year evaluating the ITAM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This GigaOm Radar report examines 18 of the top ITAM solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading ITAM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.

2. Market Categories and Deployment Types

To help prospective customers find the best fit for their use case and business requirements, we assess how well ITAM solutions are designed to serve specific target markets and deployment models (Table 1).

For this report, we recognize the following market segments:

• Small-to-medium business (SMB): In the SMB segment, ITAM functionality is similar to that found in enterprise-class solutions at a more cost-effective price point and sometimes with limits on scale. Solutions in this market segment commonly are bundled or closely integrated with ITSM solutions from the same vendor. Pricing in this segment typically is based on the number of technicians or assets. Service provider targets are also part of this segment when vendors are able to offer multitenancy.
• Large enterprise: Large enterprises benefit from the robust capabilities of ITAM, ensuring that the cost, compliance, and process aspects are all incorporated into these solutions. Functionality is often quite similar to that found in the mid-market. However, additional depth is provided with regard to asset categories, their data, financial metrics, and risk analysis. ITAM helps enterprises save IT spend and remain in compliance when it comes to corporate targets and contractual commitments.

In addition, we recognize the following deployment models:

• On-premises: Self-hosted deployment allows organizations to install and manage ITAM solutions on their own infrastructure. It provides greater control over data and customization but requires in-house hardware and software management and can be important to some verticals such as government and finance.
• SaaS: SaaS deployment involves accessing ITAM solutions hosted and managed by the vendor. Operators access the service over the internet, eliminating the need for on-premises hardware or software installation.
• Hybrid: Hybrid deployment combines both SaaS and self-hosted models, offering flexibility. Some components of the ITAM solution may be hosted in the cloud (SaaS), while others run on the organization’s infrastructure (self-hosted). This approach suits organizations with diverse security requirements and infrastructure setups.

Table 1. Vendor Positioning: Target Market and Deployment Model

Table 1 components are evaluated in a binary yes/no manner and do not factor into a vendor’s designation as a Leader, Challenger, or Entrant on the Radar chart (Figure 1).

“Target market” reflects which use cases each solution is recommended for, not simply whether that group can use it. For example, if an SMB could use a solution but doing so would be cost-prohibitive, that solution would be rated “no” for SMBs.

3. Decision Criteria Comparison

All solutions included in this Radar report meet the following table stakes—capabilities widely adopted and well implemented in the sector:

• SAM, HAM, and network asset management
• Asset discovery
• Inventory management
• Cost tracking for existing IT assets
• Process controls

Tables 2, 3, and 4 summarize how each vendor included in this research performs in the areas we consider differentiating and critical in this sector. The objective is to give the reader a snapshot of the technical capabilities of available solutions, define the perimeter of the relevant market space, and gauge the potential impact on the business.

• Key features differentiate solutions, outlining the primary criteria to be considered when evaluating an ITAM solution.
• Emerging features show how well each vendor is implementing capabilities that are not yet mainstream but are expected to become more widespread and compelling within the next 12 to 18 months.
• Business criteria provide insight into the nonfunctional requirements that factor into a purchase decision and determine a solution’s impact on an organization.

These decision criteria are summarized below. More detailed descriptions can be found in the corresponding report, “GigaOm Key Criteria for Evaluating ITAM Solutions.”

Key Features

• Advanced inventory management: Advanced inventory management expands the scope of basic hardware, software, and network assets to include other types of IT and potentially non-IT assets in the corporate environment. These assets can include cloud-related assets, corporate categories such as manufacturing inventories, and integration with security-related assets.
• Workflow-automated discovery and detection: This refers to the capability to define a workflow and to automate the discovery process for inventory detection and recording. Automation is important due to the high volume of assets covered and the state of constant change in IT.
• Financial management: ITAM financial management incorporates the cost tracking and controls that are part of table stakes and then extends this functionality to integrate with financial systems in finance, IT, and purchasing.
• Lifecycle management: An important feature of ITAM solutions is both definition and management of the lifecycle of all assets. The basic premise of ITAM solutions is that all assets move through a lifecycle that includes identification of the need, acquisition, operational use, maintenance, and eventually retirement or repurposing of the asset.
• Compliance management: This refers to compliance with the organization’s own best practices for deploying, managing, and retiring IT assets. It also includes compliance with any regulatory requirements that apply to the organization’s vertical market segment.
• Contract and vendor management: Common functionality for vendor management is incorporating vendor records, copies of contracts, and tracking of asset performance. It includes the ability to record, track, manage, and evaluate vendor relationships within the ITAM solution. Additionally, it creates records of the business’s interaction with any external entity, transaction logs, contract storage, and metrics related to performance management of the vendor and its offerings.
• Integrations: ITAM is integral to several other IT and business domains that increase the value of ITAM functionality as a standalone solution. As a result, the ability to integrate with other solutions is crucial to a successful ITAM program.
• Reporting and analytics: These capabilities are central to realizing the benefit and value from any ITAM solution. Reporting includes dashboards and graphics that show the state of IT assets within the enterprise.

Table 2. Key Features Comparison

Emerging Features

• Hybrid/distributed work model support: This emerging feature provides a means to identify work location for distributed and hybrid work environments. In doing so, it can target policies, reporting, and access based on work models.
• Corporate versus BYOD distinction: ITAM can identify ownership, allowing the company to exert process, policy, and disposal controls over its own devices. When ownership does not exist, organizations can enforce policies while not having control over disposition.
• Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliance and reporting: ITAM can provide a window into the ESG impact by providing data that reflects operational energy usage, manufacturing, and disposal impacts of hardware assets. Buyers can then make the best environmental choices and provide a feed for ESG reporting solutions.
• AI-assisted discovery and management: AI is incorporated in nearly all technology solutions at one level or another. For ITAM, AI can play a role in more quickly and effectively locating and inventorying assets along with their ongoing management by observing patterns and changes in the asset environment.
• AI-assisted predictive risk management: AI can help to predict and manage risk by assessing the environment regarding compliance with contracts and regulatory requirements. The need for additional predictive capabilities to advance ITAM will grow as the integration points and complexity of assets under management expand.
• Telemetry: Telemetry in the context of ITAM enables the solution to make judgments about the performance of IT assets and asset categories within the overall environment because IT assets and their connection to applications and business service definition are crucial to enterprise performance overall. A solution may be able to predict asset risk and/or performance of assets using telemetry data. ITAM telemetry does not replace ITOps; rather, it’s a component that informs management of the assets only.
• Enterprise asset management support: Enterprise asset management expands the scope of asset management beyond IT procured assets and service delivery. This can include a broad range of enterprise assets and smart devices depending upon the industry vertical of the enterprise environment.

Table 3. Emerging Features Comparison

Business Criteria

• Flexibility: This criterion assesses an ITAM solution’s adaptability to manage a wide range of IT asset categories and to grow those categories to support change over time. It also considers the flexibility to incorporate third-party solutions by integration or data extraction and to export data for use outside of the ITAM solution.
• Scalability: Scalability refers to the ability of an ITAM solution to expand and grow in terms of volume and types of assets managed across the corporate structure. It also considers whether automation is adequate to be able to support an increased volume of assets.
• Ease of use: This criterion evaluates how user-friendly and intuitive an ITAM solution is, considering factors like user interface design, simplicity of configuration, automation, and accessibility of features.
• Cost: Cost factors for ITAM solutions evaluate the potential financial impact of implementing an ITAM solution and the total cost of people, process, and solution. For vendors, the people and process are not a component of the cost measure or pricing structure covered in the Radar report. Still, implementing a robust ITAM solution requires corporate investment in a qualified team and participatory process development across the organization.
• Support: Support for the ITAM solution is the structure around technical support from the vendor, user support groups and events, and community groups, as well as participation in ITAM best practices professional groups. The availability of consulting services is also important for buyers that require technical support in streamlining their processes and procedures.

Table 4. Business Criteria Comparison

4. GigaOm Radar

The GigaOm Radar plots vendor solutions across a series of concentric rings with those set closer to the center judged to be of higher overall value. The chart characterizes each vendor on two axes—balancing Maturity versus Innovation and Feature Play versus Platform Play—while providing an arrowhead that projects each solution’s evolution over the coming 12 to 18 months.

Figure 1. GigaOm Radar for ITAM

As you can see in the Radar chart in Figure 1, the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant contains a notable concentration of seven vendors. This cluster shows the market has a high concentration of established players with a strong emphasis on comprehensive solutions that tend to be part of a broader portfolio of ITSM/FinOps/ITOps solutions. When combined with the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant of another six vendors, the mature solutions make up the majority of all ITAM solutions evaluated.

In the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant is a group of six vendors, demonstrating competitive pressure from vendors with a focus on specialized, high-quality solutions for specific use cases rather than broad platform offerings. The boundary between full platform approaches and collections of smaller application modules positioned as Feature Plays is blurry. Many in this group of vendors combine the configuration management database (CMDB), ITSM, discovery, and ITAM into a fully integrated solution for the mid market. While some could be moving toward becoming a Platform Play, most vendors will remain in this quadrant and serve the segment that suits their own pace of investment, size of company, and scope of offering.

There are far fewer vendors in the Innovation half of the Radar. This is indicative of a market that’s not particularly fast-paced, and vendors and customers both are prioritizing stability over rapid enhancements.

In reviewing solutions, it’s important to keep in mind that there are no universal “best” or “worst” offerings; there are aspects of every solution that might make it a better or worse fit for specific customer requirements. Prospective customers should consider their current and future needs when comparing solutions and vendor roadmaps.

5. Solution Insights

Alloy Software, Navigator

Solution Overview
Founded in 2002, Alloy Software Inc. is a US-based provider of ITSM, ITAM, and network inventory software solutions. The company remains private and under the control of its founders.

The company strives to help its customers offer superior customer service through the use of its products. It takes a unified approach to service desk, service management, and ITAM. Therefore, Alloy’s ITAM solution consists of several tightly integrated solutions that serve both ITAM and ITSM, including Alloy Navigator, Alloy Discovery, and AlloyScan. Alloy Discovery and AlloyScan serve to capture the IT asset environment and scan automatically for changes that occur over time.

Alloy’s solution is a complete and integrated one. It rests on a 20-plus-year history of proven technology. At the same time, Alloy has kept up with changing IT norms along the way. The company distinguishes itself with action-based, customizable workflows and flexible deployment options.

Strengths
Most important among Alloy’s ITAM solution’s strengths is its combination with a solid ITSM solution in one package. It relies on ITIL concepts while also recognizing its limitations. One example is the vendor’s approach to data and service definitions through the CMDB as its single source of truth for assets and IT services.

The solution enables SAM, HAM, and network asset management as well as coverage for security assets. It also can track devices and other assets used in hybrid work environments through detailed location tracking.

Finally, it has a strong workflow engine that allows flexibility to meet the demands of many environments with out-of-the-box workflows that can be used as a baseline and are tailored to customer needs. These workflows are intuitive and graphical and include script-based instructions for technical users.

Challenges
The most substantive challenge of Alloy’s ITAM solution is the need to expand its ability to manage cloud-based assets. This is an area for improvement recognized by the vendor and is seen in the solution’s continuum of asset categories. More robust functionality in both the discovery and management of cloud environments and in cost and audit models for cloud-based resources is needed.

Other areas ripe for growth include limited integrations with external FinOps or purchasing solutions. Alloy’s solution has cost, financial report, and basic purchasing functionality in the solution. However, it is not integrated with more sophisticated solutions. Its compliance is primarily targeted to software assets rather than all assets under management.

Purchase Considerations
While Alloy’s solutions can serve customers of any size, it is most commonly used by SMBs to help IT automate its operations. Alloy’s solution is suitable for buyers that seek a complete ITSM and ITAM solution from a single vendor. Large enterprise customers that seek best-in-class point solutions will require custom integrations should they choose Alloy. Also, the service desk will not be used effectively in environments where an alternative service desk solution is deployed. That said, Alloy offers customers a seamless, integrated solution that relies on ITIL standards, a well-known source of truth in its CMDB, and a strong workflow engine for customizing the solution.

Pricing is an area of transparency for Alloy, which charges a flat rate per month per technician for both ITAM and ITSM as a total solution when purchased as a SaaS solution. Perpetual licensing is also available with annual maintenance agreements for customers that prefer to keep solutions on-premises.

Alloy’s staff is primarily based in the US. For buyers around the world, Alloy has partners in place to serve APAC, Europe, and the Americas. These partners are available both for sales and to provide services and customizations.

The company isn’t focused on any particular vertical market but has a history in financial, healthcare, education, technology, public sector, retail, and manufacturing.

Radar Chart Overview
Alloy is among a small group of mid-market vendors that offer tightly coupled ITSM and ITAM solutions underpinned by a CMDB as its source of truth for all assets. It is positioned in the Maturity half and is balanced between being a Platform and a Feature Play. It represents a reliable choice for service-centric IT shops because it has kept pace with changes in the market and adapted to the current norms within IT infrastructure. Yet, it is not on the bleeding edge of innovation. Its goal is to provide a reliable solution for its customers and so is committed to changing up dynamics and introducing new features. For example, it has introduced security assets proactively and continues to be a Forward Mover when it comes to cloud technologies and the variability of their deployment.

Aranda, ITAM

Solution Overview
Aranda was formed in 2002. Its service management portfolio provides asset management, power management, software metrics, a CMDB, and additional products to support a full ITAM implementation. The company has high visibility in Latin America and a heterogeneous customer base.

Aranda ITAM is made up of a series of several integrated products. These products include Aranda Device Management (ADM), Aranda Enterprise Mobility Management (AEMM), Aranda Security Compliance (ASEC), Aranda CMDB, and Aranda Query Manager (AQM). All are deployed as a single platform for ITAM.

Aranda ITAM provides comprehensive capabilities for managing hardware, software, cloud, security, and network assets within the solution. Specific functionality includes asset discovery, inventory management, asset tracking and lifecycle management, remote management, monitoring and reporting, and policy management. Asset discovery using a unified endpoint management (UEM) tool (Aranda Device Management) can discover Windows, Mac, Linux, and network devices, using several protocols such as SSH, WMI/WBEM, SNMP, DNS, NetBios, and ICMP.

Cost management covers acquisition and depreciation costs of the assets deployed, which is basic functionality, and it scores accordingly. Within its asset management solution, Aranda ITAM is able to provide thorough tracking of corporate versus BYOD.

Aranda ITAM provides the ability to define and manage energy policies related to device consumption and related reporting. There is no direct integration with ESG solutions, although data can be exported and imported into those applications. Many sustainability factors are considered including CO2 consumption, energy usage, and costs per kilowatt-hour.

Aranda is able to deliver enterprise asset management because its solution is agnostic as to whether assets are IT or corporate assets. The CMDB provides continuity across the entire enterprise. For some assets, the data must be uploaded directly into the solution.

Strengths
Aranda is deployed as a single, cohesive solution to deliver ITAM functionality, eliminating the need to purchase and implement separate applications or modules to deploy complete functionality.

Licensing is configured by each individual buyer according to their needs. Cloud licenses are heavily discounted compared to on-premises ones. Limited licenses are available for development, test, user acceptance, and production environments.

Aranda uses predictive AI for some hardware devices to avoid faults before they occur. This is limited to HP devices at this time, with others planned for future updates.

Challenges
ITAM consists of multiple tools under different stock keeping units (SKUs), making purchases complex. Professional services, from Aranda or a partner, are required for a full deployment to assist with its configuration, parameter-driven customization, and deployment. The SaaS offer is considerably more expensive than the on-premises solution.

While the solution employs chatbots to ease the support process, other technologies such as AI, drag-and-drop features for workflow, and knowledge management could further advance their use.

Evaluation of Aranda service management system (ASMS) resulted in high marks for its local language support and automation of self-service functionality. However, it became clear that ASMS’s customization demands more technical knowledge of its users than some of its competitors.

Purchase Considerations
Aranda ITAM is a multilingual solution, with support for English, Portuguese, and Spanish. Latin America is Aranda’s primary market and Spanish is well supported.

Aranda ITAM makes use of AI, which may be acceptable for most companies. However, for organizations that have not yet committed to using software that incorporates AI, this may be a buying consideration.

Common use cases for Aranda include government, healthcare, banking, and financial services verticals, with deployments in South America and the US.

Radar Chart Overview
Aranda is part of the group of mid-market vendors that offers tightly coupled ITSM and ITAM solutions underpinned by a CMDB as its source of truth for all assets. This company is positioned as a Leader in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant of the Radar chart. It leans more toward Feature Play because it is a specialized, regionalized solution. Aranda is an Outperformer, as it moves to develop solutions that meet the unique needs of its target market.

BMC Software, BMC Helix for ITAM

Solution Overview
BMC is a longstanding enterprise management technology vendor headquartered in the US with a worldwide presence. It specializes in enabling the digital enterprise with products that provide operations management, service management, ITAM, automation, workflow orchestration, and other operations management tools.

BMC Helix Discovery can inventory assets in enterprise and telco environments. This includes network, infrastructure (servers, VMs, containers), mainframes, storage systems, and software in multicloud, hybrid cloud, and on-premises environments. The output is the creation and categorization of configuration assets and relationship data, along with mapping applications to the IT infrastructure. BMC Helix Discovery is an agentless solution that is available in SaaS and on-premises versions. The SaaS-based version is divided into a cloud-native service provided by BMC and the BMC Discovery Outpost application software that runs as a Windows-based physical/virtual server in the customer’s data center or on a public cloud.

BMC Helix Discovery supports service modeling capabilities that allow users to build business services on discovered assets. This enables users to associate the role of assets, impact, and risk to business services.

BMC Helix Discovery automatically captures end-of-life (EOL), end-of-support (EOS), and end-of-extended-support (EOES) information for operating systems, software products, network devices, storage devices, and hosts. This helps asset managers to retire and/or reallocate all types of assets, as it controls costs and supports compliance needs. Discovery functionality provides the basis for asset optimization, cost management, compliance, and risk mitigation. Inventory is maintained through scheduled and on-demand discovery runs.

As part of BMC’s Helix for ITAM, the solution provides software license management to manage costs and allocate licenses while complying with software commitments. By automatically linking discovered software configuration items (CIs) to software license certificates, BMC Helix for Asset Management can report on license compliance and facilitate license reallocation. Similar functionality is available for hardware asset compliance.

BMC Helix for ITAM uses its workflow engine to help teams manage the details across all lifecycle phases of an asset. This begins with requisition, purchase, receipt, installation, and deployment. The workflow engine leverages the CMDB CIs to track all lifecycle stages. The solution also tracks asset costs along the path of the lifecycle, again recording those details in the CMDB for use at each phase. Rudimentary purchasing features are also included to record requisitions, process approvals, create purchase orders, and manage receipts, along with creating related CIs. Finally, contract management features incorporate status, type, terms, conditions, payments, and warranty, so that business terms are incorporated into the ITAM solution.

BMC Helix for ITAM is closely integrated with BMC Helix for ITSM and ServiceNow ITSM. One standout feature that BMC Helix’s change management offers is a novel way of assessing the risk of making a specific change for services that fall both in the ITAM and ITSM domains. The assessment uses the known state, the change itself, and history to reach a risk score, which can, in turn, help admins decide whether and when to go ahead with the change. The integration with DevOps and other change-intensive processes is important in today’s fast-changing environment.

Strengths
The entire BMC Helix suite including ITAM and ITSM is a well-built platform that makes excellent use of AI, natural language processing (NLP), and intelligent heuristics. AI has been put to good use at all levels, and dashboards can be dynamic. Additionally, buyers that require customization are able to rely on a data model that enables user customization and an upgrade pathway.

BMC Helix is strongly committed to best practices and supports ITIL 4 and change, asset, and problem management as well as the CMDB structure for its source of truth.

Workflows necessary for asset lifecycle management can be created using a no-code/low-code interface, and complicated interaction with non-BMC systems can be accomplished using BMC Helix iPaas (integration platform as a service), though this does mean acquiring an additional product.

The solution has a user-friendly, graphical interface that enables technicians to view the entire flow of IT asset management and identify requests or incidents that directly impact an asset. Monthly updates are provided to expand out-of-the-box asset coverage.

Challenges
As with other integrated ITAM and ITSM platforms, the increased flexibility doesn’t necessarily lead to ease of use, particularly during the deployment phases.

Asset discovery is an add-on product and other platform products may be necessary to achieve a comprehensive asset and inventory discovery solution. As such, BMC Helix can become a large and sometimes costly solution when multiple modules are needed. However, discovery can be purchased standalone to limit cost for a targeted solution. Other add-on products would include FinOps and more direct connections to comprehensive business office solutions.

Asset tracking and reporting can be time consuming, as it is largely configured manually. Reporting can also be confusing due to the vast amount of information available within the CMDB. BMC has introduced a visual query builder that should help in this regard.

Purchase Considerations
BMC Helix for ITAM is sold primarily as a SaaS-based solution. The discovery engine is agentless, which simplifies the implementation of the solutions. Buyers should also consider the investment required in processes and best practices as they embark on a purchase of BMC Helix and supporting products.

BMC Helix has use case content developed in a number of market segments including the manufacturing, IT, and energy sectors. The solution enables users to build custom layouts, which facilitate tailoring the solution to a particular use case or customer requirement.

Radar Chart Overview
BMC is positioned as a large enterprise provider with moderate innovation in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant. It is a Fast Mover that adds features at a steady pace as the market demands. BMC provides a solid solution with little risk for its buyers, having been originally developed several decades ago and updated through ongoing investment in areas such as cloud, ML, and its UI.

Broadcom, CA Asset Portfolio Management

Solution Overview
Broadcom acquired the CA Asset Portfolio Management suite in November 2018. With that acquisition came a number of enterprise-class software solutions including CA Asset Portfolio Management. Since the acquisition, Broadcom has continued to market these products under the CA brand while enhancing functionality according to its customer needs.

ITAM is available via CA Asset Portfolio Management which includes strong financial, contract, and vendor management, and detailed data stored in a CMDB that helps with data-driven decisions internally and externally. The solution is web-based, scalable, and includes integration points for Broadcom project and portfolio management, service catalog, and service desk capabilities, including an integrated CMDB at additional cost.

This solution provides both control and visibility of all IT assets throughout their lifecycle, to proactively manage address costs, risks, and process consistency. The suite was established as a leading solution long before its acquisition by Broadcom, and has been well-adopted by the large enterprise community. At the heart of this solution is the management of assets throughout their lifecycle, from acquisition to disposal. The technology monitors asset availability, tracks license usage, and assists customers in preparing audit details.

Broadcom’s solution allows users to manage vendor relationships, covering contact information and multilayer relationships across assets and vendors. As a result, CA Asset Portfolio Management provides a means for improving buying power and leverage with insight into vendor spending, performance, and forecasting based on history. Coincident with vendor details is contract information that helps ITAM staff to properly administer agreement terms and conditions.

Using Broadcom’s expansive IT operations solutions, CA Asset Portfolio Management collects the number of managed assets and stores that data in a “ca_telemetry” table once a day, which is subsequently collected via cloud services. In addition, the telemetry services collect product consumption metrics for assets every day from the “ca_owned_resource” table and calculate the monthly number of qualified assets. This information can then be used in the course of managing asset compliance.

In terms of decision support capabilities, CA Asset Management Portfolio offers IT asset managers many capabilities to streamline the process of managing whatever needs to be managed. This includes an impact analysis made possible due to the visibility of relationships among assets, models, vendors, individuals, and legal documents. The solution integrates with both CA Client Automation and CA Service Management, which provide connections through the CMDB and asset data linkage, along with workflow automation.

Strengths
CA Asset Portfolio Management includes a single-pane, self-service portal where users can request assets and review asset assignments. The portal employs a searchable asset inventory on desktop or mobile devices. Users can manage key documents that are relevant to asset management such as contracts, license provisions, and purchase orders.

Templates are available as part of the solution. The out-of-the-box content can be configured to tailor the solution and its reporting to meet the needs of the customer without requiring customization and coding. However, Broadcom will support any modifications, adaptations, or configurations that are performed through the interface. This support comes both from the support team and in the form of upgrades.

Challenges
The solution is in need of an updated and more graphical interface overall. Additionally, while CA Asset Portfolio Management integrates with a wide variety of solutions and offers basic financial management within the toolset, it does not have an external FinOps or purchasing integration.

Broadcom does not appear to be investing in emerging technologies including AI for discovery, AI for predictive risk or asset maintenance, or any support for IT asset contribution to ESG measurement and reporting.

Purchase Considerations
The primary consideration for prospective buyers is weighing the decision to purchase a longstanding, mature solution backed by a large vendor versus the alternative of considering a more recent entrant that may be more innovative but less reliable. This tradeoff must be considered in relation to the risk profile of the organization as well as the maturity of its IT asset management practice.

CA Asset Portfolio Management is a customizable, configurable solution that is not tailored to specific use case requirements. It is part of a larger Broadcom portfolio for both service management and IT operations. Additional products such as automation tools may be required for the full benefit of the customer. This product is sold for either on-premises deployments or as a SaaS-based solution.

Radar Chart Overview
Broadcom is positioned as a large enterprise provider in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant. It’s a Forward Mover because it has not made as significant an investment in enhancing its solution as some of its closest competitors. It has lower scores across the decision criteria we evaluated and so is positioned in the Entrant ring. Still, the solution is solid for any enterprise buyer that seeks a large enterprise, mature play in the market.

Eracent, Eracent IT Management Center (ITMC)

Solution Overview
Founded in 2000, Eracent demonstrates commitment to the market segments of ITAM and SAM. Its solution is called IT Management Center (ITMC), a modular solution with core functionality for ITAM and SAM supported by a discovery engine and an asset product library called IT-Pedia.

Eracent offers customers an extensive ITAM portfolio. Most notably, it has a complete discovery engine and data normalization built into the product. It employs complete lifecycle management and usage tracking and auditing at a granular level, down to the mouse-click. In its portfolio, Eracent has made a concerted effort to meet the requirements of large vendors such as Dell and Lenovo among hardware vendors and Oracle, IBM, and SAP for software assets.

Interesting capabilities include a subscription-based product for its customers called IT-Pedia. This is unique to Eracent as it is an IT product that provides detailed information about IT hardware and software products. Several competitors offer extensive software libraries at no additional cost, and similarly, Eracent’s Scanman software recognition library for discovery is included without extra cost. IT-Pedia provides “non-discoverable” information such as end-of-life dates, end-of-support dates, and vendor details, along with more common data elements such as make, model, and application names. Enrichment data collected with IT-Pedia updates the CMDB and related catalogs. This data improves performance tracking for vendors, detailed troubleshooting insight, and predictive lifecycle details for the customer environment.

The company’s solution includes a strong focus on security as it pertains to software licensing and offers an optional solution called Application Risk Management (ARM) for risk management and compliance with regulatory requirements. By analyzing a software bill of materials (SBOM), ARM offers Eracent customers the ability to detect the use of open source code that has restrictive license types or copyleft considerations. Other security-centric capabilities provide visibility across corporate cybersecurity policies.

Strengths
Eracent has extensive tools to help asset managers identify opportunities to save on licensing for unused products. For instance, users that may have Adobe licenses and yet are not using the product at all or only intermittently will be provided reallocation of that tool and the potential to purchase less in the future, a demonstrable savings for the user.

Internal to the system are cost management capabilities for budgeting and recurring expense schedules as well as acquisition cost management. Eracent provides users with the ability to define more than 20 layers of cost centers.

Challenges
Despite robust cost and expense management features within the solution, Eracent lacks an integration with any FinOps solutions. Additionally, some of its user interfaces are dated and would be improved by using newer technologies that offer more intuitive means to connect with users. Best practices are under development to guide ITAM teams. This development is needed to ensure enterprise buyers have this guidance for a solution that is labor and process intensive.

Purchase Considerations
Eracent has a strong presence in the US and Europe. Concerted efforts are underway with the addition of channel partners and staff in both India and Brazil. From a buyer’s perspective, this is important simply because the larger the presence, the more likely consulting staff will be available.

Eracent offers a focus on open source applications, whereas many competitors do not. It is an investment for Eracent. Another area under development is a best practices guide for ITAM teams.

Radar Chart Overview
Eracent is positioned in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant, reflecting the company and the solution’s maturity and longevity in the market. It’s near the line of Innovation due to its investment in new technologies such as deep insight into open source applications and approaches. Eracent continues to push forward and is categorized as a Fast Mover and Challenger approaching the Leader classification. While robust technology has been built over time, the innovation that has occurred has been much more gradual.

Flexera, Flexera One ITAM

Solution Overview
Founded in 1987, Flexera has a long history of building solutions for optimization related to asset packaging, initially with InstallShield, which was widely used for software downloads. Since 2015, the company has grown substantially through a variety of acquisitions.

Flexera acquired Denmark-based Secunia in 2015 for its vulnerability intelligence and remediation solutions, bringing Flexera into the vulnerability management domain. It followed this acquisition in 2017 with the acquisition of BDNA, an IT asset database solution expanding Flexera’s breadth of asset intelligence and visibility. Later in 2018, Flexera expanded its footprint into the cloud management space with its acquisition of RightScale. In 2019, Flexera acquired RISC Networks to expand its cloud capabilities. In 2024, the company acquired Snow Software, a strong SAM solution that will enhance the Flexera portfolio’s depth in SAM.

Today’s Flexera One ITAM solution has robust capabilities to manage hardware, software, cloud, network, and security asset devices. The solution offers data-oriented SaaS solutions designed to optimize the value of technology assets for hybrid IT deployments built on a set of definitive data, powered by Technopedia, which became part of the solution when BDNA was acquired. The outcome is a visual representation via Flexera’s Enterprise Technology Blueprint—encompassing on-premises, SaaS, containers, and cloud—enabling technicians and management staff alike to envision the entire asset estate at once. Flexera One ITAM is an API-enabled platform that manages discovery, inventory, curation, normalization, and enrichment of asset data.

Process development and management are available using the Flexera Software Workflow Manager solution, which facilitates definition and automation of the process and addresses service levels. Technicians can manage the lifecycle of assets to improve continuity and protect investments. Reporting is available through dashboards, “what if” analyses, and additional analytic capabilities through its integration with the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence engine.

Flexera One ITAM does not employ the use of AI for discovery, risk management, or telemetry for asset management performance factors.

Strengths
Due to Flexera’s acquisitions of cloud and security technologies, the company is in a strong competitive position for managing assets securely in the cloud and managing cloud and security asset categories themselves.

Flexera is finance-focused and is advancing forward in the ITAM market. It offers depth in cost management for large expense products both in the cloud and for dominant software solutions. Flexera One has specialized cost management optimization solutions for several cloud-based environments. Those solutions are AWS Cloud Cost Optimization, Microsoft Spend Optimization, Oracle Spend Optimization, SAP Spend Optimization, and Flexera One Select for IBM. Enterprises with multimillion dollar investments in cloud or mission-critical software applications will both appreciate and benefit from the cost savings that can result from close management.

Flexera One ITAM is in a unique position for managing cloud assets among its peers due to its acquisitions, particularly of RightScale in 2018. Cloud customers will appreciate the ability to orchestrate deployments into many public and private cloud environments and then front-end this with a self-service UI.

The solution is able to discover asset data from many diverse data sources and import it into a central repository.

Challenges
Flexera has expanded its footprint exponentially through acquisitions. Necessarily, acquisitions and their products must be integrated and streamlined at all levels for a consistent look and feel. This is a work in progress at any given time following an acquisition and may become a challenge for some users, depending on their needs and focus.

Some extensions and customizations require use of the Flexera One ITAM API, creating additional overhead and maintenance over time as upgrades are made to the solution.

Flexera One ITAM is not closely integrated with a wide range of ITSM solutions. It has a robust integration with ServiceNow ITSM that is offered at no cost and is available in the ServiceNow Store. Flexera One can serve as the asset data source for CMDBs that are deployed. Functionality beyond this would require integration services that are not available out of the box.

Purchase Considerations
Flexera One is a cloud-based solution delivered as a SaaS-licensed product. Prospective customers should consider the cloud environment deployed by the enterprise and the usage of Oracle, SAP, IBM, and Microsoft applications, where there is much to be gained by closely managing license costs and avoiding risks for those solutions.

Flexera One ITAM can be deployed in any industry setting. The company has a public domain focus and partnerships with IBM and Salesforce for companies that have investments in either area.

Radar Chart Overview
Flexera is positioned in the Innovation/Platform Play quadrant primarily due to its ongoing expansion and acquisition strategy involving solutions that specifically expand the company’s ITAM footprint. The company is an Outperformer and Leader in the ITAM market space because it pushes the entire vendor community forward to expand from SAM, HAM, and network assets to greater software understanding, demonstrating the need for high-security solutions, and now advancing and evangelizing in the area of ITAM and FinOps.

Freshworks, Freshservice Asset Management

Solution Overview
Freshworks was founded in 2010 to challenge the ITSM and ITAM product segments with a more direct approach by delivering its offering as a cloud-based SaaS solution. It was built around the idea that the future will bring the need for a service-first perspective on all assets as they play a role in ITAM, ITSM, IT operations management (ITOM), and enterprise service management (ESM).

The Freshservice Asset Management solution is made up of three primary feature sets including automated discovery of all IT assets, unified asset lifecycle management, and an integrated CMDB. Through these components, Freshservice Asset Management can discover IT assets including hardware and software, SaaS, and other assets. This data is stored in a CMDB. Lifecycle management provides inventory, maintenance, contracts, cost, and compliance features for the solution. Compliance is primarily designed to support internal process control mechanisms. The company has a partnership with Device42 to manage dependency mapping and relationships of assets to services.

Freshservice incorporates AI capabilities in its solution today. This functionality is called Freddy AI, which has been in use since 2018. It provides domain-specific context, generative AI capabilities, and the ability to interact with IT and non-IT domains. Freshservice provides a consolidated platform with no-code workflow automation. Freshworks believes that there will be integration with AI for generating key insights from a multisourced CMDB. This includes identifying potential duplicates and optimizing workloads for cost efficiency. Examples are detecting usage patterns in a large AWS server and recommending adjustments, such as upgrading to a larger instance size.

Strengths
Freshservice can handle small to large environments and can transmit asset details over low bandwidth networks. Multitenant capabilities are built into the SaaS solution from the ground up. It offers a recent and intuitive interface.

Freshservice offers many desirable ITAM features including the ability to track the cost of assets and provide a method of depreciating those assets.

Freshservice has the ability to track remote works, their devices, and ownership using the CMDB and CI definitions. In turn, workflows allow conditional processing based on an asset’s location.

Freshservice tracks waste and environmental impact in the CI and workflow engine. It has its own reporting of this information and can export data to third-party ESG solutions.

Challenges
Freshservice provides basic financial information as it pertains to each IT asset. However, it does not provide budgeting capabilities, risk/performance management in evaluating the potential shortfalls of many suppliers, or the ability to integrate with FinOps solutions. Another area of potential growth is addressing the need to manage security assets and their related policies.

Freshservice offers lifecycle management including the ability to attach a retirement process at the end of life to any given IT asset. Yet, it does not automate this process nor does it provide the ability to reallocate licenses during an IT asset’s lifecycle based on limited usage.

Purchase Considerations
Freshservice is offered only on a SaaS-based, multitenant platform and requires no developer support for its rollout to a customer environment. Data centers are located in the US, European Economic Area (EEA), India, and Australia, with customers having control over which data center serves their organization. The solution is affordable even for the smallest of organizations based on asset counts and agent usage. The company is transparent with its pricing. Traditional support is available.

Freshservice is designed to be used by companies in many different vertical markets and does not serve any particular use case. It is flexible and relies on the CMDB to support the solution’s flexibility to handle varying environments.

Radar Chart Overview
FreshWorks is positioned in the Innovation/Feature Play quadrant of the Radar. It is strong on innovation and is moving in the direction of the Feature axis, as it is a specialized offering. Due to the company’s unique approach to employing AI and the multisourced CMDB, FreshService is classified as a Fast Mover and Challenger, and we anticipate Freshworks’ pace of innovation will continue into the future.

Hornbill, Hornbill IT Asset Management

Solution Overview
Based in the UK, Hornbill has been active in the market since 1995, offering software solutions to mid-market enterprises. The company offers ITAM and ITSM solutions that integrate with any customizations, being completely codeless. Process automation plays a strong role as does the company’s attention to the needs of specific market segments.

Hornbill IT Asset Management provides visibility of hardware, software, network, and cloud assets with the goals of facilitating change planning and risk minimization through its dashboard and reporting capabilities. It offers several types of reporting, such as dashboards, list reports, and measures. Its solution provides a business perspective for assets due to its integration with Hornbill Service Management. It tracks assets to locate those that are redundant or unused so they can be reclaimed to save costs for the organization. It tracks asset history to support this effort.

As Hornbill IT Asset Management provides a platform for IT asset managers, it is able to capture asset data and understand the relationships across assets using common discovery tools that are available in the market. It captures organizations, contacts, and documentation through its SQL imports of data. The solution imports license data from third-party tools and schedules data imports ad hoc or using scheduled data imports with SQL, LDAP, and Azure.

Hornbill IT Asset Management provides capabilities to manage IT assets in many categories throughout their lifecycle with automated discovery of cloud and on-premises hardware and software assets. Hornbill offers a codeless, drag-and-drop workflow engine to automate ITAM lifecycle management as well as distribute activities. It also has integrations with chatbots and other virtual agents for its service and asset solutions. Through its reporting and dashboards, compliance can be tracked and managed.

Strengths
Hornbill has been an evangelist for service and asset management for more than two decades. The company has a presence in the UK and an understanding of the continuum of assets from services to operations. It is supportive and complies with some ITIL 4 best practices. The company is customer-centric with an established user group and support team. The solution has been redesigned with a user-friendly interface that is getting high marks for its usability as offered via the cloud.

Challenges
While Hornbill accepts submission of feature requests for future releases, doing so is a challenge.

Hornbill offers multiple, integrated solutions and an integration hub that enables customers to integrate other requirements on their own or through professional services, adding potential costs to deployment.

Hornbill’s solution offers reporting and the ability to export data to external reporting solutions, though it does not offer analytical capabilities.

Purchase Considerations
Hornbill offers its solution via a SaaS platform for its customers, having transitioned from an on-premises offering. It’s a cloud-based solution that relies on a continuum of services. Hornbill’s support for long-term pricing schedules enables buyers to rely on consistent pricing. At the same time, Hornbill charges for some of its extra functionality through add-on modules, which should be accounted for in the budget allocation process.

Hornbill has expertise in many verticals as demonstrated by working with local government, education, retail, manufacturing, and healthcare organizations. It is also a generalized solution that can be applied across other industry verticals.

Radar Chart Overview
Hornbill is positioned in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant due to its comprehensive portfolio of offerings supporting ITAM and its longevity in the market. It’s classified as a Forward Mover and a Challenger, as it moderately invests over time in its technology. It offers a tightly coupled service and asset management toolset primarily geared toward the mid-market.

IBM, IBM Maximo Application Suite

Solution Overview
IBM entered the ITAM market when it acquired the Maximo Suite from MRO Software in 2006. It is now an integral part of IBM’s enterprise software line. IBM Maximo Application Suite is a set of applications for asset monitoring, management, predictive maintenance, and reliability planning. IBM partners with Flexera to deepen its SAM functionality and partner in services and R&D.

The Maximo Application Suite is a single, integrated platform serving the needs of IT and enterprise asset managers. It consists of a number of products including Maximo Manage for asset management functionality, Maximo Health for asset health and replacement planning, Maximo Predict for IA and ML to predict asset failure, and Maximo Mobile to track and manage assets for the mobile workforce. Using this platform of tools for IT asset management along with IBM’s closed-loop model of prescriptive maintenance, Maximo steers users to a proactive management approach that mitigates risk across all assets.

From a user’s perspective, the IBM Maximo solution helps to manage all assets for their complete lifecycle including procurement, deployment, maintenance, operation, and end of life. There are customization and configuration capabilities that can be tailored to the customer’s business needs. These additions are handled through the use of workflow and coding via Java and automation scripts providing flexibility, although they are also time consuming.

IBM Maximo has a number of different and unique modules that support asset management teams in addition to the basic components noted above. They are Maximo Assist, which provides access to technical expertise across a variety of hardware assets; Reliability Strategies and Library, which is a resource that optimizes maintenance schedules and predictive risk avoidance; Maximo Accelerator Catalog, which consists of related partner products and templates that support asset management; and Maximo Predict, which offers technicians condition-based actions using AI and ML to avoid future equipment failures.

In addition to robust predictive management of all assets, IBM Maximo also brings business-centric capabilities for IT asset management. These include cost gathering and reporting, forecasting, cost analysis, vendor/contract management, and basic compliance capabilities. With forecasting, IBM Maximo can predict future trends and risks that may impact asset performance. The solution also tracks KPIs such as downtime or mean time between failures, which can in turn be leveraged to negotiate with vendors. Cost analysis is also available to provide insights related to estimated and actual maintenance costs and depreciation and to identify the value of each asset and keep it up to date. Finally, simplified tracking of contract provisions by vendor and compliance with those provisions are part of the solution through integrated functionality.

Strengths
IBM has made significant investments in the areas of AI, cloud, and predictive technology to support its prescriptive maintenance approach. This can be seen in Maximo Predict with its AI and ML functionality that predicts asset failure.

A unique feature of Maximo is the establishment and tracking of an IT or corporate asset health score. This score is used to understand maintenance and predict failure and replacement needs for IT assets.

IBM Maximo is a flexible solution for various asset management scenarios because it is highly adaptable and can be modified to fit the specific needs of multiple sectors and organizations. Additionally, it can scale to accommodate organizations with various sizes and levels of complexity.

Analytics capabilities provided by IBM Maximo allow customers to assess data from multiple sources to learn more about the performance of their assets, related costs for purchase and maintenance, and inventory levels. This analytics can assist organizations in optimizing their asset management strategies and making data-driven decisions.

Challenges
The initial implementation can be complex and time-consuming, requiring technical expertise and, due to the many modules necessary to achieve a complete solution, it may be less accessible for small businesses with limited budgets. Additionally, integration with finance and FinOps tools is lacking. The IT Asset and EAM modules could demonstrate more value if they were linked to financial systems already in place.

The solution is complex to configure and integrate with other solutions of many types such as geographic information system (GIS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

Purchase Considerations
IBM Maximo is a large solution designed for an enterprise environment. It comes in two different packaging options: client-managed software or SaaS. IBM offers a simplified licensing and usage model leveraging a credit-based system called AppPoints. This provides the flexibility to easily add functionality and users, scale your business, and pay only for what you use with a single entitlement. It can be scaled to your environment if need be, though it is largely used in enterprise settings.

IBM Maximo has been tailored to a variety of vertical segments, including energy and utilities, government, oil and gas, manufacturing, and transportation.

Radar Chart Overview
IBM is positioned in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant very close to the midpoint and is perceived to be moving toward the Platform side. The company is positioned as a Fast Mover and a strong Challenger, as it continues to innovate with a variety of predictive and cost-saving technologies.

Ivanti, Ivanti Neurons for ITAM

Solution Overview
Headquartered in the US, Ivanti Software has 36 offices worldwide. It was initially founded by the combination of LANDESK, known for systems management, and HEAT Software, a widely deployed ITSM solution. Recent acquisitions, including RiskSense, Cherwell, MobileIron, and Pulse Secure, have added breadth and depth to security and device management, and expanded both ITSM and ITAM in Ivanti’s portfolio.

For this evaluation, Ivanti Neurons for ITAM, IT Asset Discovery and Inventory, Service Mapping, and Spend Intelligence are considered in the scoring. Ivanti Neurons for ITAM enable users to manage IT assets throughout their lifecycle with functionality to discover, track costs, manage contracts, and address regulatory compliance issues. Ivanti is striving to “elevate everywhere work,” so it supports hybrid work models with technology to discover, track, and manage assets in real time regardless of the work model and distribution.

Ivanti scored exceptionally well across most key features in this research. The solution provides detailed discovery across hardware, software, cloud services, and data center environments. IoT is a growth area that will augment Ivanti Neurons for ITAM.

Ivanti provides users with many out-of-the-box lifecycle workflows to get them started. All workflows are customizable using Ivanti’s low-code, drag-and-drop platform. To round out Ivanti’s ITAM solution, it supports governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) evaluation, scorecards, and basic vendor management—standout capabilities when compared with its competitors.

Ivanti’s asset discovery tools include technology from LANDESK’s systems management roots, which bring infrastructure features to Ivanti’s asset solution. Auto-discovery is available, and the CMDB can be used as the system of record. The Ivanti Service Mapping tool helps organizations to identify potential risk levels for various service components. The ability to give the portal the look and feel of the customer’s environment and to present only the information relevant to particular roles or locations adds to its ease of use.

Automation and AI permeate many aspects of the Ivanti solution. For instance, Ivanti Neurons is described as a hyperautomation platform that can self-heal, self-secure, and provide self-service from the cloud to the edge of the enterprise. Ivanti’s ITAM solution can be supported by the company’s self-healing automation bots to monitor, maintain, and service the end-user IT environments where its agent can be deployed. These bots identify issues, ask questions, create tickets, automate tasks, and remediate issues preemptively, contributing to a more reliable IT asset environment.

Strengths
Ivanti’s strategy is forward looking in that it combines extensive digital employee experience (DEX) insights and IT security workflows with its ITAM capabilities. Additionally, the company subscribes to the best practices of IAITAM (International Association of Information Technology Asset Management), adding a layer of professional insight to its toolset.

Ivanti offers self-healing capabilities that restore settings that may otherwise cause widespread outages and result in a multitude of problems and incidents. This self-healing functionality relies on automation capabilities and Ivanti Neurons. The solution also offers its customers robust security capabilities and, due in part to its LANDESK roots, asset discovery and related systems management support for ITAM and the services that rely on IT assets.

Ivanti Neurons for ITAM Asset Repository provides users with a measure of the asset’s carbon footprint. This information is available by user, make/model, location, and department and provides a tool to evaluate equipment replacement based on impact and sourcing details.

Challenges
Ivanti Neurons for ITAM are used across multiple solutions including the vendor’s ITSM offering. While they provide additional functionality, they also represent a place where additional planning is needed to adequately take advantage of this functionality, perhaps through the use of professional services.

The solution offers cost analysis and predictive spending for categories of assets using Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence. However, there are no prebuilt integrations to FinOps solutions that buyers can take advantage of.

There are a few areas of corporate transition that may impact the buying and implementation process. One is that Ivanti has made a number of acquisitions in recent years and as a result, its ability to offer SaaS has not completely transitioned. The process is still underway though Ivanti has a substantial number of SaaS-based customers. Also, it is taking time and resources to move through the end of life for the Cherwell acquisition.

Purchase Considerations
Buyers will want to consider the Ivanti deployment model in making a purchasing decision. Ivanti is primarily sold as a SaaS-based solution, and while the company offers an on-premises option, it has more limited functionality and constraints than the SaaS-based license model.

Ivanti has a large solution ecosystem with a number of IT modules, including security, zero-trust access, patch management, and risk-based vulnerability management. Support for healthcare, human resources, facilities, ITSM, and asset management make Ivanti a compelling vendor for single-sourcing a number of services.

Radar Chart Overview
Ivanti is located in the Innovation/Feature Play quadrant of the Radar and is an Outperformer due to many forward-looking aspects of its feature set and plans for the future. It’s a Leader due to its high scores across the decision criteria we evaluated. Some highlights are the company’s incorporation of AI into its solutions over the last three years and its vision of addressing sustainability as a component of ITAM., both areas that add value when compared with other ITAM vendors. Ivanti is growing by acquisition and integrating solutions into a platform and will likely move toward more of a Platform Play in future iterations of this report.

ManageEngine, ManageEngine AssetExplorer

Solution Overview
ManageEngine is a division of ZOHO Corp. Founded in 1996 and previously known as AdventNet Inc., ZOHO Corp. is headquartered in the US with offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. ManageEngine provides solutions for service management, asset management, IT operations, and security.

ManageEngine’s AssetExplorer handles ITAM by discovering and classifying assets in a single repository, managing asset inventory and financials, mapping assets with users, and ensuring the reachability of all assets. This module is available as a component of the ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus toolset, or it can be purchased as a standalone solution, offering discovery and management of all hardware and software assets in a single service management platform. The solution discovers a range of IT assets including hardware, software, network components, and security. AssetExplorer and ServiceDesk Plus offer a GUI-based workflow with drag-and-drop capabilities, which adequately meets the needs of most users.

As an integrated solution with ITSM, ManageEngine presents a single console using real-time dashboards to show asset inventory, compliance, and status. It leverages an integrated CMDB, purchase management, contract management, visual dashboards, and reports that can be customized. The CMDB serves as the glue for holding together all ITAM and ITSM functions. It enables ManageEngine’s AssetExplorer to display the connections between assets and services as defined in the ServiceDesk Plus service catalog. The relationships between assets and services help IT asset management staff to understand how critical resources are used.

ManageEngine’s asset management capabilities address the business aspects of managing IT assets. The solution includes functionality for procurement, tracking asset costs, depreciation, and contracts. Unlike many of its competitors, ManageEngine’s purchase management module is incorporated into the solution. Purchase orders can be created, tracked, and managed without relying on a third-party solution. For more complex requirements, external integration using Rest API can be developed. Similar functionality is also available for contracts to capture, store, review, and comply with the many contract details that dictate compliance requirements within the organization.

ManageEngine has a broad solution portfolio that includes IT operations. As such, it has been able to use telemetry as it pertains to the management of IT assets. ManageEngine as a whole is an IT operations-focused solution provider. It has not yet tackled the inclusion of AI for either discovery or predictive risk management. It does offer integration with external solutions for this purpose.

Strengths
ManageEngine AssetExplorer incorporates a purchasing and contract management solution within the product that enhances its value for customers, alongside more typical ITAM cost-tracking measures. An advantage is that it also integrates natively with ZOHO Finance.

AssetExplorer is able to track assets being used in hybrid work models as well as corporate assets versus BYOD. This is handled through the ManageEngine Endpoint Central and incorporates policy measures and location insight.

ManageEngine currently is deployed in customer environments to support enterprise assets in addition to IT assets. In the future, additional automation will be available, as the company plans to include IoT devices to its realm of assets that can be managed.

Challenges
ManageEngine is able to discover a broad range of IT asset categories including security devices. However, its functionality for managing cloud assets is limited and an area for growth.

Compliance within the ITAM solution is limited to SAM and does not provide insight for regulatory compliance considerations.

While asset discovery incorporates cost management, vendor management, and contract management functionality, it does not provide a means to evaluate the performance of vendors and their assets when considering future purchasing choices.

Purchase Considerations
Buyers should be interested in a tightly integrated solution, especially with ITSM. Those who also want to leverage ManageEngine’s endpoint management, zero-trust security, identity management, and analytics tools will realize the full benefit.

The company offers transparent and moderate pricing that is based on the number of nodes (or assets) that are being managed in combination with the number of technicians needing access to the management solution. Another consideration is that the CMDB is part of the enterprise edition of the solution.

Customers may choose to purchase ManageEngine as an on-premises solution, SaaS-based deployment, or a hybrid combination of licensing models. It also offers a multitenant option for service providers.

ManageEngine isn’t tailored to any particular vertical market segment, referring to its offering as industry-agnostic. It covers a range of verticals and uses its configuration and customization capabilities to address unique needs of any given customer.

Radar Chart Overview
ManageEngine is positioned as a Challenger in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant. The company is rated as a Fast Mover, as it advances its IT enterprise management suite and ITAM functionality at pace with the market. We anticipate ManageEngine will remain a dominant solution in the mid-market and one considered by enterprise organizations for its telco roots.

Matrix42, IT Asset Management

Solution Overview
Matrix42 was founded in 1992 and is based in Germany. It provides ITSM and ITAM solutions to a diverse group of organizations in Europe (primarily Germany) and North America, both SMBs and large enterprises.

Matrix42 offers a solid ITAM solution that is tightly integrated with its ITSM offering built on a CMDB foundation, using a single-pane-of-glass approach to bring all assets together in one view. The company’s roots in UEM are evident as Matrix42’s ITAM solution is strongest in inventory management through its dashboard view of comprehensive inventory details. Buyers can expect a straightforward approach to management of IT assets of all types, ongoing inventory updates, reporting, and the ability to manage asset lifecycles through its drag-and-drop approach to workflow management.

Basic compliance for software assets only and cost tracking for all asset types are also included with the expectation that users will leverage FinOps, purchasing, and business office solutions for more sophisticated management of financial projections, risk, and operational processes. The solution includes the ability to track the cost of cloud services and spending internally within the solution.

A significantly beneficial feature of Matrix42’s self-service portal is its complete mapping of the service provisioning process because it also automatically initiates service provisioning, drawing from directory services and/or software distribution applications. This feature set applies to both ITSM and ITAM and hinges on Matrix42’s use of CIs in the CMDB. This enables tracking of service usage of all assets, cost details, location, asset ownership, and more.

Strengths
Matrix42 is a strong player in the German market with a presence in North America. Recent investments help support its ongoing innovation in digital workspace positioning in addition to the company’s ITAM, ITSM, and EUM technologies. It has also invested heavily in moving the product to ITIL 4.

For scalability, Matrix42 employs Kubernetes cluster technology as a strategy for scaling, operations, and automated deployment to benefit its platform and its customers.

For customers that do not have specific analytics products in their environments, Matrix42 ITAM dashboards and flexible internal reporting are available along with data exports.

Challenges
Customers are able to customize their own solutions through settings, configurations, and parameters. However, many deployments utilize professional services from Matrix42 or its partners.

Data export is used to meet some sophisticated requirements that are becoming increasingly important within the ITAM market. It provides a means to share asset data though it is not seamless, nor does it take advantage of the nuances of two-way integration. Still, it provides asset insights to external solutions in FinOps and external analytics solutions.

Purchase Considerations
Matrix42 can be deployed on-premises and in a public cloud and offers company management of the deployment. Language localization is part of the Matrix42 solution, and the company offers 12 languages including German, English, Spanish, French, and Italian.

Matrix42 offers licensing flexibility through a combination of end-user and single-user licensing schemes that are associated with a ratio of users to asset count totals. Additional licenses can be purchased over and above this threshold.

Matrix42 has a large footprint in Germany and is strongest in Europe, though there are also customers in the US, Dubai, and Australia. That said, the company’s support and corporate headquarters remain in Germany except where partners are supporting a specific geographical region. Matrix42 is growing and seeking expansion in all global regions.

Buyers wanting a tightly integrated ITSM and ITAM solution from a single vendor will be attracted to Matrix42’s approach to pricing, packaging, and integration of these solutions. Likewise, buyers focused on endpoint management and the expertise that comes from beginning with the end device in mind will appreciate Matrix42’s “roll up your sleeves” approach to this ITOps function.

Matrix42 addresses use cases through customization, ensuring it can meet customer needs for innovation through customization of integrations with the solution and the ability to integrate with best-of-breed solutions. The company guarantees that such customization will follow upgrades to core product revisions over time. These customizations can be accommodated with low- or no-code solutions and by the customer or through third-party service offerings.

Radar Chart Overview
Matrix42 is positioned in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant as a strong and established ITAM-specific vendor. Matrix42’s investment in ITIL best practices is evident in its connections among service modeling, provisioning, and requirements for ITAM. Matrix42 is a Forward Mover, adopting new technologies at a moderate pace compared to the market.

OpenText, Asset Management X (AMX)

Solution Overview
OpenText is a Canadian software firm that has had an active acquisition strategy. In 2023, OpenText announced it would acquire Micro Focus, bringing Micro Focus Service Management Automation X (SMAX) to OpenText’s portfolio. SMAX consists of three applications, ITSM, ESM, and ITAM in a single cloud-native solution that offers sophisticated agentless and agent-based discovery and low/no-code configuration. The solution is based on ML, and automation is built in. SMAX has now been integrated with OpenText and is called Asset Management X (AMX).

AMX is a comprehensive solution that addresses ITAM, SAM, and EAM, and it builds upon OpenText’s Enterprise Service Management platform, natively built for the cloud. It incorporates discovery, CMDB, and automation within the platform as a Kubernetes container application that runs in public and private clouds and as SaaS.

AMX can be used to manage all IT and enterprise assets across their lifecycles leveraging underlying foundational technologies of automation, the CMDB, and ML capabilities. Asset management features cover the range of core ITAM functionality including budgeting, procurement, discovery, usage, ownership, financial management, and compliance. A forward-looking capability beneficial to OpenText customers is its ability to track carbon consumption. This solution fits within OpenText’s ITOM portfolio and benefits from this continuum of solutions.

OpenText offers an integrated asset discovery solution that scored well on all of the key features and business criteria. The CMDB can be used as the system of record using OpenText’s universal discovery to aggregate, correlate, and reconcile all assets (hardware and software) and continuous integration data from various sources.

Workflow is attached to each asset record in the AMX solution and contains processes that are broken down into major and micro phases within the process, each one trackable along the lifecycle transition of that asset. Workflows are driven by business plans and requirements within the solution.

In addition, AMX includes ITAM functionality that supports the business and finance disciplines. This includes cost management for each asset, documenting acquisition costs, and depreciation at a point in time and over the lifetime of the asset. Chargeback capabilities also exist to bill departmental budgets as appropriate. Contract and vendor management also provide visibility of the vendor and performance to inform buying practices.

Business process management and OpenTelemetry are supported through integrations with external solutions. OpenText has introduced generative AI within ITAM in its initial version. This currently entails user and agent Q&A that extends to ITAM through the service map.

Strengths
OpenText AMX offers licensing flexibility and provides a variety of deployment models while managing cost. The solution includes exceptional use of AI and ML and has a solid foundation in ITIL 4 throughout its solution. The platform’s UI is consistent across most modules and is easy to use.

With Universal Discovery, a wide range of asset targets can be discovered including all standard operating systems, applications, and network and storage options including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, VMware, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Nutanix, Cisco, NetApp, and Microsoft Windows.

AMX is able to manage assets used in hybrid work environments through its asset model hierarchy that is used to classify assets, establish policies, and document relative locations.

OpenText has content management expertise, which adds insight for its current solution offerings as well as future document management capabilities that can be added as an embedded feature. For now, the experience is evident in current functionality that addresses document-centric features for compliance and vendor contracts management.

Challenges
As a platform, there are many pieces that need care and feeding, though the SaaS deployment minimizes them. The need for training prior to implementation may be a challenge.

OpenText AMX has functionality that supports SAM within its ITAM solution. This discipline has room for growth and expansion to cover the vast array of software used in commercial settings.

OpenText’s Universal Discovery is used to populate the asset inventory. This is an add-on module that increases the cost of deployment for this solution.

Purchase Considerations
AMX can be purchased as an on-premises or a SaaS solution. Equally, it can be acquired through a service provider that offers OpenText multitenant solutions. Licensing is flexible with perpetual licenses having a right-to-use option. An enterprise license agreement applies when AMX is deployed on-premises, and it provides flexibility within a defined time span (typically three years). Another option, SaaS Flex, lets customers vary deployed capacity from month to month while paying only for the average deployed quantity.

One consideration is that Universal Discovery (UD), which provides asset data for the AMX, is an add-on product. It is highly scalable and has been field-proven to scale with OpenText’s CMDB to 400 million configuration items. The solution is natively multitenant and is suitable for service providers.

OpenText AMX can be used across all industries. No specific vertical solutions have yet been introduced, though OpenText is contemplating a manufacturing specialization in the future.

Radar Chart Overview
OpenText is positioned in the Innovation/Platform Play quadrant due to its active R&D investment and acquisition strategy. The company is a strong Challenger and Outperformer due to a number of factors including advanced technologies such as AI and NLP, and a growth mindset related to the applicability of ITAM to sustainability and broad corporate asset management use cases.

Proactivanet, Proactivanet Discovery & IT Asset Management

Solution Overview
Founded in 1998 in Spain, Proactivanet has offices around the world and specializes in localization of multiple languages, with Spanish currently being top priority in countries such as Spain and Mexico. The company’s ITAM offering consists of various modules for discovering and managing IT assets and services using its Proactivanet ITAM and ITSM capabilities.

Proactivanet scored solidly for all key features. Its solution brings together discovery, inventory management, cost and risk management, and reporting for all asset categories across an enterprise. Proactivanet Discovery and Asset Management offers detailed asset data and can discover a number of asset types across hardware, software, and network components. It has demonstrated that it is a solution with depth of asset insight.

The solution uses its own agents for detection and observation and can inventory any version of Windows, Linux (any distribution), Unix, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, macOS, Android, iOS, and ChromeOS in both virtual and physical configurations. Its discovery engine also supports virtual machines running on Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure. The CMDB module is natively integrated into the solution and serves as its data store for all IT assets.

Proactivanet automates workflows, configurable from the solution’s UI, based on asset data including automatic localization and stage of asset lifecycle. There are many lifecycle statuses included with the solution and others can be added with no code required. Proactivanet’s concept of retirement is limited and characterized by deletion, although audit exists for deleted records. Queries and dashboards are part of the solution while more sophisticated analyses are handled by external reporting and analytics tools or via integration.

Proactivanet ITAM enables asset managers to reduce costs by assessing the actual usage of installed software across the company along with vendor, contract, and basic cost tracking. This functionality is employed across vendor solutions and enables Proactivanet customers to reduce their software license expense through reallocation of licenses that have been purchased. The solution also tracks asset cost, depreciation, and the asset’s retirement. No integrations currently exist with FinOps or purchasing solutions.

Depending upon the buyer’s deployment requirements for ITAM, some may need to purchase and implement additional, third-party products. Beyond ITSM and ITAM, the solution relies on external solutions for infrastructure capabilities. These third-party integrations include Zabbix, which provides infrastructure monitoring for event, capability, and availability management; 3CX for business communications (video conferencing, chat, VoIP); Microsoft Power BI for expanded dashboard capabilities (although Proactivanet ITAM includes out-of-the-box BI capabilities for those not requiring extensions); and Workspace ONE unified endpoint management, which expands Proactivanet’s device management capabilities. ITAM monitoring and event management (EV/MEM) are handled through such a connector.

Strengths
Proactivanet is a mature solution with a focus on serving localization needs in the ITAM and ITSM markets, along with support for ITIL best practices impacting both domains. Proactivanet’s Discovery & Asset Management module is fully aligned with ITIL best practices, as accredited by its PinkVERIFY Integrated ITSM and PeopleCert ATV certifications.

Hardware warranty information is obtained directly from Dell and Lenovo equipment warranties automatically to provide the date of manufacture and expiration date of the warranty and also the type of warranty contract, including contract extensions. All information is obtained automatically, without the need for manual intervention.

Due to the solution’s monitoring focus, there is telemetry available to evaluate asset vendor performance and to aggregate data across devices as needed.

Challenges
Proactivanet relies on integration with operational infrastructure capabilities specifically for capability and availability management when required. Several languages are available via translation software only.

When possible, Proactivanet will leverage existing definitions of device location and ownership using the AD or Azure AD, reading any corporate system automatically. If that information does not exist, determining both location of an asset and its ownership can be challenging and labor intensive because it requires that a location hierarchy be created, which is a manual process. A similar effort is needed to identify assets as corporate or BYOD by asset category in cases where AD or Azure AD are not available.

Proactivanet is working to improve out-of-the-box integration with third-party automation platforms and to improve and expand its use of AI/ML. For now, the solution uses ML and AI models to predict IT asset faults and their resolution and for predicting chatbot responses.

Purchase Considerations
Proactivanet provides a number of licensing options, including purchased licenses and software subscriptions for on-premises usage and licenses for its SaaS offering. ITAM pricing is based on the number of devices and the implementation model.

The solution can be installed using customer infrastructure (on-premises or customer cloud and multitenant). It requires Windows Server (physical or virtual) and a database engine, whether MS SQL Server, Oracle, or a compatible database as a service (DBaaS). Licensing is flexible and allows both on-premises and cloud deployments. Small to large environments are supported by Proactivanet, and its solution can transmit asset details over low bandwidth networks.

Customers are locally supported in Europe and Latin America, and all aspects of the product delivery (documentation, support, online training, and professional services) can be offered in native Spanish.

Proactivanet offers solution customization to comply with certain customer requirements. For example, Service Management and Control was customized for NATO’s Federated Mission Networks.

Radar Chart Overview
Proactivanet is positioned in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant. It integrates ITSM and ITAM seamlessly and most commonly serves the needs of mid-market buyers. Proactivanet is a Forward Mover and a Challenger. It stands out from other solution providers with its certification program called Proactivanet Maturity Model (PMM) within the toolset and by providing professional development for IT asset managers.

Serviceaide, ChangeGear

Solution Overview
Serviceaide, a privately held company, was founded in 2016. A total of six products make up the Serviceaide portfolio. ChangeGear is its integrated ITAM and ITSM product. The Luma AI Suite includes the Luma Virtual Agent (VA) and Luma Knowledge products. Asset discovery, process automation, and orchestration are also part of the solution.

ChangeGear provides Serviceaide customers with asset management, asset discovery, configuration management and change management, and no-code extensibility for unique and customized solutions. In addition, Serviceaide offers a number of ITIL modules that service ITSM as well including incident, request, and problem management. ChangeGear provides best practices workflows that are customizable and have been used to handle a number of unique mission-critical vertical applications.

ChangeGear’s Asset Management can handle typical IT assets, such as software, hardware, network infrastructure, mobile devices, and cloud assets as well as other tangible or intangible corporate assets. Asset Discovery Expert (ADE) provides asset discovery for on-premises, cloud, or hybrid IT infrastructure, and discovered assets are immediately added to a CMDB. ADE is an agentless tool with the ability to scan networks via all common protocols, and it features cloud-based discovery in AWS, GCP, and Azure. The solution handles inventory management including loaner programs, and partially supports ESG for data collection and policy enforcement and through integration with external ESG solutions.

ChangeGear’s workflow engine enables users to manage the entire asset lifecycle and is configurable for custom workflows for each asset type. It uses a visual management approach and includes a drag-and-drop workflow designer, visual approval processes, dashboards that include graphs and widgets, and communication designers for workflow-triggered actions.

Many financial and compliance management capabilities are incorporated into ChangeGear as budgeting, volume reporting, contract management, and disposal protocols. Users are able to monitor inventory levels, apply cost, and track depreciation of assets in real time. ChangeGear offers value to users by maximizing the value of assets and retiring and replacing unreliable assets, allowing them to reduce spending. Compliance is primarily focused on license allocation and usage.

Strengths
ChangeGear Asset Management is an integral part of the ChangeGear solution and can also be used separately with any ITSM deployment. This makes the combined solution a continuum of functionality from asset acquisition and deployment to its role in delivery of services to the enterprise.

Geo-locations have recently been added to Luma Mobile and are part of ChangeGear’s Customer Service mobile application. This solution embeds interactive Google Maps, which are useful for ITAM as well as ITSM.

ChangeGear customers have leveraged the product to serve unique enterprise asset management requirements. In some cases, this inventory data is imported from an external source and in others, it may rely on an RFID tag to scan inventory into the ChangeGear CMDB. Proof points have been established to demonstrate the utility and value of this capability to capture data, integrate workflows, and develop an approval process or notification. Examples include machinery and equipment on the manufacturing floor, real estate, artwork and collectibles, and many more.

Challenges
OpenTelemetry, AI for discovery and inventory, and AI for risk management are all features that do not exist in ChangeGear today. Current use of AI is focused on support issues, user experiences, knowledge curation and response, and workflow routing.

ChangeGear’s asset discovery currently does not automatically distinguish between BYO devices and corporate assets unless there is a VPN connection. Similarly, ChangeGear is not able to distinguish among work locations for hybrid workforces.

Two growth areas for Serviceaide ChangeGear’s discovery engine are adding container visibility for environments that use Docker or Kubernetes and the ability to deeply discover schemas in some database offerings.

Purchase Considerations
A free site license covers end users—requesters—who do not count toward the number of named or concurrent seats. Licensing has named, concurrent sales models for administrators and support analysts. Deployment models exist for on-premises, hybrid, and SaaS options.

ChangeGear pricing is based on the number of analyst users actively managing requests and asset tasks, and it takes into account the number of managed assets for the asset management module. To accomplish this, the solution comes with built-in AI, including a virtual agent.

ChangeGear is offered as a cloud-hosted SaaS solution for customers who wish to avoid managing on-premises implementations. Self-Managed ChangeGear is offered as an on-premises solution for customers who wish to manage their own implementation.

The company stands out with its focus on asset management for vertical market segments that include energy, healthcare, government, financial services, and education. The solution can be customized to meet the needs of any particular business case.

Additionally, Serviceaide has some unique qualifications because ChangeGear has been used in highly regulated settings including government, clean rooms, FDA-regulated industries, and power production falling under NERC Critical Infrastructure Compliance (NERC CIP) authority.

Radar Chart Overview
Serviceaide is positioned in the Innovation/Feature Play quadrant. It is well established as both an innovative solution and one that targets a specific feature set for ITAM. The vendor takes a service-first approach to ITAM. It’s categorized as a Fast Mover and Challenger, moving toward new approaches to a tightly integrated ITAM and ITSM solution.

ServiceNow, ServiceNow ITAM

Solution Overview
Founded in 2004, ServiceNow has grown and expanded its footprint to include operations and asset management, with a broad solution set to meet large enterprise needs. ServiceNow ITAM is a comprehensive, cloud-based solution that encompasses ITAM and all of its subdomain asset management segments.

The solution incorporates an automated workflow for asset lifecycle management, relying on CI items in the CMDB that cross-service management, asset management, and operations. ServiceNow ITAM’s discovery function serves customers as they identify applications and devices within the infrastructure, including depth of data and breadth of topology.

ServiceNow ITAM offers many benefits to corporate buyers to help them manage hardware, software, and licenses throughout their entire lifecycle, from procurement to retirement. The solution offers real-time visibility of all IT assets, allowing users to track their location, status, and usage. This location data is key to supporting hybrid work environments. It provides a means to remain compliant with vendor contracts and license agreements and provides visibility and avoidance of potential compliance penalties. It also assists IT asset managers with cost control and efficient use of existing licenses. Additionally, ServiceNow ITAM includes integration with and the ability to provide asset-related sustainability metrics to its ESG solution via API.

ServiceNow offers a single-architecture platform and data model, which is the CMDB. The continuum of applications used for service and operations includes ITAM and demonstrates all aspects of an asset’s usage. Automation, AI, ML, and NLP are all part of ServiceNow’s platform. The solution’s UI, though it sometimes requires the manual entry of commands, is consistent. Navigating the UI can be difficult to learn but becomes easier once a user works with a few applications. Administration can be complicated because the common service data model, which serves as the backbone for all applications within ServiceNow, is extensive so it can support all ServiceNow products.

Strengths
ServiceNow is a mature, robust platform with industry-leading deployment at all levels of business. The platform enables robust workflows and an exhaustive list of additional solutions that can be added. It serves the ITAM buyer with robust functionality for asset management and brings together service and operations management components for the complete operational perspective. ServiceNow ITAM is able to manage cloud assets and also brings cost management for cloud-related services to the collaboration.

As part of the company’s most recent release, ServiceNow advances generative AI technology to improve productivity directly as it relates to ITAM and other solutions. ServiceNow ITAM has automation capabilities that reduce the need for manual intervention and helps to streamline ITAM processes. Discovery, management, and compliance tasks can all be automated within ServiceNow.

Challenges
The primary challenge when considering any ServiceNow purchase is the need to understand and control the cost of the purchase due to add-on modules that enhance functionality but also add expense.

Understanding the breadth of the solution during the early learning curve is challenging and steep until the functionality becomes repetitive and routine. A roll-out plan that includes training, process definition, and communication is required. For a large, resource-intensive solution such as ServiceNow ITAM to run efficiently, well-equipped hardware is needed.

Purchase Considerations
ServiceNow IT Service Management includes Asset Management Core functionality and is available in Standard, Pro, and Enterprise packages, each with named users. ServiceNow offers three ITAM products—ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management, ServiceNow Software Asset Management, and ServiceNow Cloud Cost Management. Additional IT-related solutions are available at additional costs including Strategic Portfolio Management, IT Operations Management, Integrated Risk Management, and Security Operations.

ServiceNow is a SaaS offering hosted in a private enterprise cloud, fully owned and operated by ServiceNow. This cloud features a multiple‑instance architecture that delivers logical single tenancy by isolating all customers’ data from each other. This is achieved by using an enterprise‑grade cloud architecture and dedicated database and application services per customer instance, ensuring that there is no possibility of co-mingling customer data, unlike in a multitenant architecture with a shared database. Self-hosting is available on an exception basis only.

ServiceNow addresses the unique challenges of many vertical market segments with all of its solutions. Of note, the company has targeted solutions for healthcare, manufacturing, education, retail, and financial services.

Radar Chart Overview
ServiceNow is positioned as a Leader in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant. It is an Outperformer, with resources to support its growth and investment in innovation to remain ahead of its competitors. Its most recent platform release, called Vancouver, advances the company’s generative AI capabilities, which are applicable to ServiceNow ITAM in the areas of workflow development, productivity, and data usage.

SymphonyAI, Enterprise IT Asset Management

Solution Overview
Founded in 2017, SymphonyAI is a provider of IT and enterprise service management solutions covering service management, asset management, service automation, and enterprise copilot for streamlining enterprise processes. SymphonyAI is focused on differentiation through its use of generative and predictive AI.

SymphonyAI Enterprise IT Asset Management offers a comprehensive solution from a single pane of glass. This functionality includes its own asset discovery and inventory, lifecycle management, compliance monitoring, and reporting. Like other solutions, it is tightly integrated with its own ITSM.

Rounding out SymphonyAI Enterprise IT Asset Management’s key features, the solution provides both agent-based and agentless asset discovery. SymphonyAI discovery supports protocols such as SNMP, SSH, WMI, APT, and others. The use of a proxy server allows on-premises and cloud assets to be discovered. The CMDB can act as a source of record and supports manual and digital import of data. Dashboards and reports are managed and created using Izenda (a third-party tool included in SymphonyAI). The environment is low-code, but database field knowledge is required in some areas. The use of professional services is commonly recommended for advanced dashboards or reports.

SymphonyAI for IT Asset Management’s lifecycle stage management scored high marks on the Radar as the solution offers finite stages of life out of the box. Lifecycle management provides a series of actions that can be triggered at life stages such as allocate/deallocate or activate/deactivate. Barcodes and QR codes are used to streamline the management of assets that cannot be automatically discovered.

Telemetry is used in the solution today for both agent-based and agentless deployments. The granularity and frequency is improved with agent-based technologies, though both are effective in providing operational metrics for IT asset performance. Measurements typically determine the variance of some asset metric to its normal operation. Automated notifications can then be built into the solution to provide updates to asset administrators. More investment is anticipated in using telemetry in combination with AI in the future by SymphonyAI.

Strengths
SymphonyAI employs AI and ML core technologies to provide a solid and intuitive basis for this ITSM offering. While this technology has not yet been deployed for the ITAM solution, it is planned and will bring seamless AI functionality to complement its already available telemetry capabilities that illustrate performance concerns with all types of IT assets.

SymphonyAI features dynamic data masking (DDM), which limits sensitive data exposure by masking it to non-privileged users, serving a growing need for privacy policy implementation for customers. In SymphonyAI, DDM is applied for all tables and columns (except encrypted or other special cases) to hide the sensitive data in the result sets of queries. Implementation of DDM requires the use of professional services.

SymphonyAI’s positioning as a Leader results from functionality that stands out from its peers. One example is its support for a leading automobile manufacturer to improve its efficiency with RFID technology and tracking within SymphonyAI’s ITAM and ITSM solutions. This solution has been able to automate tracking, maintenance, and auditing of IT assets.

Challenges
The use of any third-party tools for advanced dashboard reporting or other purposes requires customization by professional services, which increases costs. Additional strengths in automation and integration with other tools that do not incur additional costs would be useful.

SymphonyAI is a forward-looking disrupter and anticipates heavy use of AI technology across all of its solutions. Yet, despite SymphonyAI’s name and branding, there is no AI-driven asset discovery and management or AI predictive risk management. Both technologies are on the roadmap for future releases though they are not part of today’s solution.

While SymphonyAI Enterprise IT Asset Management has a workflow engine, this engine is not yet tied to discovery and its inherent automation capabilities.

Purchase Considerations
The subscription fee includes costs for implementation, licensing for IT and non-IT assets, professional services for integration or workflow, and support. Once purchased, a concurrent license and any number of analysts can be created in the SymphonyAI application. However, the number of analysts who can access the application at any given time is limited to the number of concurrent analyst licenses purchased. Deployment options include SaaS, on-premises, private cloud, or hybrid deployments. Multitenancy is built into the solution.

SymphonyAI can be deployed in any vertical market segment or specialized use case. It relies on integration with specialized third-party solutions. Some vertical investment areas include financial and retail markets, non-IT asset management, manufacturing, and media segments.

Radar Chart Overview
SymphonyAI is positioned in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant. The company is seven years old and is one of the newest vendors in the ITAM market. It’s a Fast Mover, investing in predictive and generative AI. The company combines ITSM and ITAM like many other solution providers and leverages a CMDB for its data store. We anticipate that SymphonyAI will move toward the Innovation/Feature Play quadrant over time as it brings some of its R&D investment in AI to market and incorporates the features into ITAM.

USU, USU ITAM

Solution Overview
USU was founded in 1977 and is headquartered in Möglingen, Germany. The majority of its customers are in the DACH area (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) with a presence in EMEA and a notable number in North America.

USU provides a broad ITAM solution that integrates closely with its ITSM solution. It provides basic asset management for hardware, software, cloud, and network components by gathering inventory information through the USU Discovery module as well as importing through external discovery and inventory tools. Software is tracked and managed via an acquisition of Aspera in 2010, a solution that has been rebranded and is part of USU’s ITAM offering. Additionally, asset discovery includes infrastructure and services. The solution covers multicloud environments and data centers including cost management and optimization. Data is stored in a local USU solution as its source of truth except for software assets, which are not part of the CMDB.

USU captures asset cost information and is able to provide reporting back to the leadership team. It can record asset costs, contract provisions, chargebacks to departments, tracking costs, and payments. The functionality can typically be thought of as budget and balancing functionality. It provides a standard API for any required integrations for finance or other types of external applications.

USU’s process management relies on its business process manager, which is also used to provide workflow functionality via a graphical model based on BPMN 2.0. Using this tool, USU is able to develop binding mapping of the organizational structure with any evaluation structures at the same time, including its assets. Dashboards, reports, integrations, and workflows are customized via a low-code development process.

The low-code/no-code capabilities are an appealing feature that can streamline updates and upgrades without impacting existing customizations. The product has full support for development, testing, and production environments.

Out-of-the-box integrations are available for ERP systems such as SAP and Oracle, and for ITSM systems such as BMC and OpenText. There are additional integrations with mail, automation workflow tools, application management tools (such as software distribution and DevOps), USU-owned AI-based software components, Active Directory, and telephone systems. Integrations are robust and largely classified as device-centric inventory and data solutions. Again, USU offers a REST-API interface for expansion purposes.

The company has embraced the use of AI and has expertise among its own staff members, who can evaluate and assist with the design of effective applications as well as employing large language models and decision trees. An example of USU’s use of AI is increasing the ability to identify unrecognized software solutions or an automated import of PDF invoices. Telemetry is a central part of the USU solution in which it garners asset performance from monitoring components that are part of its offering.

Strengths
USU is perhaps the oldest provider of service, asset, and monitoring solutions meeting the needs of mid-market and enterprise buyers, depending on the market segment and geography. This longevity provides USU with the maturity and expertise that boosts the confidence of its buyers.

USU prides itself on being completely vendor-independent and transparent when it comes to all types of assets. It provides detailed reporting and data that informs the decision-making of IT asset leaders.

While not currently in shipping versions of USU offerings, the company is planning for and has recognized the connection between assets and their environmental impact, representing a forward-looking approach to ITAM. Therefore, USU is planning support for various uses and their dimensions so that staff can be ready to make better choices and demonstrate the environmental impact through data export to ESG reporting solutions.

Challenges
USU is a modular solution that comes with five modules, as selected by the customer. A number of costs and related SKUs grow as the user expands its needs and functionality.

As a result of USU’s early entrance into the market, the company is embarking on an effort to modernize its solutions. It purchased Aspera to support software asset management and combined this solution with the USU product line.

Purchase Considerations
The USU licensing model is based on the number of selected modules and the size of the company, and this remains consistent throughout the life of its use. However, USU offers other licensing models on customer request. Maintenance fees apply for on-premises deployments but are included for SaaS. Modules are included and not separately billed, ensuring predictability in pricing for products.

USU’s presence is most dominant in Germany. While this can vary, its customer base is roughly 50% in Germany and 20% in the US. That said, we anticipate this distribution to shift over time with an ever-increasing install base in North America.

Radar Chart Overview
USU is positioned in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant on the Radar. Like many of the ITAM solutions that tightly integrate with ITSM, USU has combined ITSM and ITAM by acquiring a solution and integrating its products. The company is designated as a Forward Mover and Challenger that is releasing enhancements at a moderate pace compared to the market but is notable in its early deployment of AI technology for ITAM.

6. Analyst’s Outlook

The ITAM landscape is well-established, with most vendors having been a part of the vendor community for more than 20 years. Yet, each year brings new perspectives, new ideas, and growth areas for ITAM solutions and buyers seeking value from the improved management of IT and non-IT assets alike.

Growth is occurring in the number and types of assets that require oversight and management. Similarly, the mix of locations that are being used to work is ever expanding. Users are relying on their own personal equipment for work-related activities, presenting organizations with benefits and yet opening up security challenges that are difficult to manage. Flexible and hybrid operational environments, mixed ownership of assets, and internal and external oversight all demand robust security and access at an increasing frequency.

ITAM remains relatively consistent with discovery, inventory management, the need for policy development driven by workflows, financial reporting, and contract/vendor management all being part of even the most basic ITAM solutions. The complexities arrive in even the most basic expansions. For instance, the hybrid work environment has introduced the concepts of geofencing and timefencing to place boundaries around access and tracking of devices and their owners. Geofencing captures the location data to define when and how those assets can be managed and tracked. Timefencing is similar to placing boundaries around the time when an asset will be in use for the business. These concepts are crucial for protecting privacy and also scoping usage for that asset. In reviewing feature sets across this vendor landscape, there were only two vendors that offer this capability. It is a need to be met in the near future.

This is one example of how changing norms can impact even the most longstanding products. Others exist within ITAM solutions or on the horizon as to how we can use AI to improve the experience and accuracy of asset management, increasing the bi-directional presence of business applications such as finance and procurement, or analyzing the vast amount of inventory data collected to better position the organization to make wise vendor and manufacturer choices in the course of doing business. These and many more will cause changes in even the most stable technology domain such as ITAM, creating more opportunities for feature expansion, partnership, and improved application of usage.

Another increasing usage requirement is to better connect ITAM with financial operations software solutions. Today, many vendors analyzed in this landscape are exporting data elements that can then be imported into financial operations packages. Others are relying on buyers to integrate solutions either with professional services or independently using REST-API integrations. More seamless integrations will help IT to realize financial value at the intersection of these solution sets.

For IT decision-makers, considering the appropriate level of sophistication and functionality for their organization will take some reflection on today’s needs combined with a vision for increasing business value from their organization’s ITAM investments. Perhaps today it is enough to simply manage the inventory, but in three years, they would like to be able to shave 25% off IT asset spending without making cuts. Doing so will require a solution that incorporates usage tracking features and alerts in an automated way. The ability to increase the ITAM footprint will drive a company’s future ability to succeed.

Organizations can begin by establishing an ITAM team and pursuing guidance and development of best practices that meet the company’s needs. This is beginning to define the process and consider the objectives of the ITAM solution. Most importantly, define these requirements in a granular way so that you have a list of solution requirements to move forward, a budget for a solution, and can begin the evaluation process. Relationships with the business, including virtually all employees, understanding work models, and talking with stakeholders about these needs will provide the foundation for long-term success.

To learn about related topics in this space, check out the following GigaOm Radar reports:

• GigaOm Radar for IT Service Management (ITSM)
• GigaOm Radar for Cloud FinOps

7. Methodology

*Vendors marked with an asterisk did not participate in our research process for the Radar report, and their capsules and scoring were compiled via desk research.

For more information about our research process for Key Criteria and Radar reports, please visit our Methodology.

8. About Lisa Erickson-Harris

Lisa is an accomplished, results-driven information technology and non-profit strategist with a history of guiding executives in making critical strategic and operational decisions. Her experience is that of a practitioner, strategist, analyst, and writer in the enterprise software industry and as a hands-on executive and consultant for non-profit agencies. Specifics include IT operations, R&D, alliance/partnership development, marketing, and sustainability planning. She is driven by innovation, a global perspective, and the power of strategic partnerships to improve the broader health, social and environmental condition.

9. About GigaOm

GigaOm provides technical, operational, and business advice for IT’s strategic digital enterprise and business initiatives. Enterprise business leaders, CIOs, and technology organizations partner with GigaOm for practical, actionable, strategic, and visionary advice for modernizing and transforming their business. GigaOm’s advice empowers enterprises to successfully compete in an increasingly complicated business atmosphere that requires a solid understanding of constantly changing customer demands.

GigaOm works directly with enterprises both inside and outside of the IT organization to apply proven research and methodologies designed to avoid pitfalls and roadblocks while balancing risk and innovation. Research methodologies include but are not limited to adoption and benchmarking surveys, use cases, interviews, ROI/TCO, market landscapes, strategic trends, and technical benchmarks. Our analysts possess 20+ years of experience advising a spectrum of clients from early adopters to mainstream enterprises.

GigaOm’s perspective is that of the unbiased enterprise practitioner. Through this perspective, GigaOm connects with engaged and loyal subscribers on a deep and meaningful level.

10. Copyright

© Knowingly, Inc. 2024 "GigaOm Radar for IT Asset Management (ITAM)" is a trademark of Knowingly, Inc. For permission to reproduce this report, please contact sales@gigaom.com.