• IT asset management (ITAM) repositories are providing financial data to support integrated IT service management (ITSM), financial management and service portfolio management directions.
• The enterprise-class ITAM repository marketplace is evolving to reflect data center requirements and solve software license compliance.
• The growing attention toward Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) v.3, the increasing adoption of configuration management databases (CMDBs) and vendors' product bundling has led to confusion about the appropriate role and use of ITAM repositories in the marketplace.

In the 2008 ITAM repository MarketScope, we saw a market penetration of approximately 35% of companies that had standardized on an ITAM tool. Although there has been a global recession occurring since then, there have been several drivers that have influenced ITAM to cause an increase in market penetration. In fact, a survey of CIOs in October 2008, conducted at Gartner's Fall Symposium in Orlando, Florida, indicated that controlling and reducing the cost of IT was the No. 2 goal for 2009. This led to organizations looking for any hardware and software savings opportunity, no matter how small, to meet that goal. As a result, Gartner has seen an overall increase in the number of ITAM implementations in place or under way of approximately 40%, as companies looked for ways to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their existing software and hardware assets.

While organizations may not have had the budget for tool purchases, we saw considerable focus on process definition and design. When they were ready for a tool purchase, organizations were influenced based on their satisfaction with the existing IT service desk (SD) tool, adjacent product sets and/or adoption of an incumbent vendor's service management strategy. This preference toward a suite-based approach has not changed in the past five years. IT organizations continue to link SD buying decisions together, since the two toolsets are often integrated as a first step in the implementation process, possibly even on the same platform, as is the case with BMC Software (Remedy), CA and IBM. Customers want to deal with one vendor for service and support, as well as leverage familiarity with interfaces and integration programming. While not as pervasive a trend, other buyers based their selection criteria on their satisfaction with their PC life cycle configuration vendor (e.g., Symantec-Altiris or LANDesk Software), and, once again, wanted to leverage the existing relationship for service and support, or better pricing. As new assets entered the environment and were put into service, the PC configuration tool inventory agent would be installed on the PC, and the data would be sent to the ITAM module for ongoing ITAM. When the entrenched vendors from those market segments do not offer a competitive toolset, users will evaluate vendors and select best-of-breed tools, recognizing that there will be integrations and not a single-vendor source for service and support.

Based on Gartner's definition of mainstream adoption used in its Hype Cycle reports, and polling conducted during conference presentations in June and December 2008, it is clear that ITAM has crossed a threshold. After being an available toolset for more than 15 years, it is now located at the bottom of the Trough of Disillusionment and is moving up to the Plateau of Productivity. This has been driven by a number of factors, including global economic conditions leading to an increase in software audits and a focus on software entitlement management, increased adoption of ITIL processes, and increased implementations of server virtualization necessitating a data center ITAM program. As organizations mature, IT aligns to meet the needs of the business. IT needs to have greater visibility into IT costs associated with the services it delivers to the business. Achieving this requires having insight into the infrastructure components (hardware and software) that compose the IT business service, and the associated costs of those components. We do not expect ITAM tools to stall within the Trough of Disillusionment, but there are economic factors that could cause a slowdown. Some current and evolving ITAM drivers and trends include:

• Software license compliance
• The global economic slowdown and constrained IT budgets
• ITIL
• CMDBs and IT service portfolios
• Data centers and virtualization
• Project and portfolio management (PPM) intersecting with ITAM
• The impact of software as a service (SaaS) on ITAM
• Sourcing options
• New device types entering the ITAM domain

For some software vendors, software license compliance is a basic counting of how many licenses are installed, compared with how many have been purchased — for which IT organizations have been in a constant defensive position every time they receive an audit letter, unless they have purchased a form of insurance known as an enterprise license agreement (ELA). Even an ELA does not guarantee that an audit will not occur; but many organizations feel that this is their best protection. However, the concept of software license compliance is changing and is no longer a basic counting of licenses deployed. The IT organization must now be able to correlate the parent-child relationship of the contract to the specific instances of installed software by version and maintenance level. This move is a game changer, and likely other vendors will soon realize that it can be profitable for them as well.

Year over year, the perennial worry facing IT asset managers who don't have processes or tools in place is the threat of a software audit that might result in having to purchase additional licenses because they can't prove whether or not a license has been legitimately purchased. Software vendors typically have clauses in their software purchase agreements that reserve the right to audit their customers, should they believe there is a chance that the company is not properly licensed. There are red flags that vendors often look for. For example, if the customer has gone through recent business changes, such as growth, acquisition or divestiture, then this will be an indication to software vendors that there may be an opportunity to collect additional revenue from the account. Since the beginning of 2008, Gartner has seen an increase in the number of audits that vendors are conducting. Based on conference polling data, this is as much as 30% higher than what we normally see. In addition, this increased audit activity has extended beyond the traditional vendors that are active auditors, such as Adobe, Attachmate, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, to include smaller vendors that typically don't have the head count or resources to conduct audits but now realize that this is a profitable activity.

Audit protection of the corporation is one of the early goals of most ITAM programs, and software license compliance should be a constant focus. A trend that Gartner has witnessed during the past 10 years is that, whenever there is an economic downturn, vendors tend not to sell many new licenses, so they attempt to make up the lost revenue by auditing or increasing maintenance costs. As a result, companies need to be proactive in ensuring that they are not exposed to unnecessary risk because they can't prove software compliance. However, savvy IT organizations recognize that, when an audit occurs, the costs of purchasing additional licenses and "truing up" could be significantly higher than the cost of implementing an ITAM program, which creates the perception that ITAM can be compared to an insurance policy. Nobody likes paying for insurance until the day they really need it. By tracking costs incurred from audits, companies can help build a self-funding business case for implementing an ITAM program.

Typically, in times of economic strife, ITAM processes and initiatives experience an industry uptick. If budgets are being constrained or cut, then squeezing every dollar becomes more important. When companies were feeling flush with cash, they often wouldn't pursue every opportunity to derive savings; however, we have recently seen a modification in this behavior. In a sense, no opportunity is too small to save money. They are evaluating new ways to control or lower the cost of IT and modeling, whether or not these decisions can have a meaningful impact. Not only are companies extending the usable lives of assets, evaluating downgrading warranty time frames, and attempting more application standardization, but they are also preferring software with concurrent use license agreements, and evaluating the potential savings that alternative licensing models could provide for their budgets. In some cases, they are looking at hosted virtual workstations and work space virtualization to reduce the footprint of the number of devices. However, these measures might actually push the costs to a different area, rather than actually lower them. A different aspect caused by the recession is head count reductions. Companies need to have in place a process for deprovisioning employees and a way to act quickly to retire the hardware from the fixed-asset register to reduce the property tax burden, when it is applicable. Companies are also ensuring that all transferable software is recovered from the device and pooled "virtually" or maintenance discontinued on those recently unused applications. A few years ago, we used to see the average large organization with more than 5,000 employees often overlicensed.

Many ITAM programs that Gartner has seen usually begin by focusing on PCs because of the large number of devices and, in some cases, the lack of control over end-user behavior. Global companies with multiple locations might consider laptops to be challenging because of their mobility and sporadic network connectivity. Without a regular inventory of these systems, it becomes difficult to ascertain compliance. In addition, Gartner is hearing about the increase in the percentage of laptops within organizations, which creates inventory complexity. According to Gartner data, more than half of corporate PCs shipped in 2009 were mobile PCs.

ITAM is also becoming a priority in companies with as few as 1,000 PCs. These companies are focused on ensuring that their environments are running as efficiently and effectively as possible, and less on CMDBs or costing out business services. This requires knowing whether software and hardware are being used effectively. If applications are installed, but not in use, then they are harvested from the PC for redistribution. If the hard disk is filled with JPEG and MPEG files, or even iTunes, rather than work-related data, then it could be wasting resources.

The current that underpins this trend is a need for IT organizations to understand how and why IT costs are high, and what can be done about them. This is why a strong focus on financial management is critical to the long-term success of these vendors. As customers and the industry as a whole evolve, the financial aspects of the discipline of ITAM will need to mature, regardless of whether the programs are service-management- or financial-management-focused.

An integral part of ITSM is understanding what IT assets exist within the organization, who owns them, where they are located, and what they look like. Without a good understanding of what is installed, the assets can't be managed. An accurate, reliable inventory of hardware and software, regardless of purchase price, is foundational to all of the ITSM processes, and this data is usually collected and maintained by the centralized ITAM team in the centralized ITAM repository.

The adoption and implementation of ITIL v.2 and v.3, and other process frameworks, such as CobiT and CMMI, has led to a higher level of maturity in the areas of problem management and incident management. Maturity in these disciplines, as well as in request fulfillment, is typically a precursor to a successful ITAM program. As companies consider when to implement change management, this process pulls along ITAM process refinement. In September 2009, ITIL released updated guidance related to software asset management. Even though the documentation has been called version 3, it is, in fact, only the second set of documentation releases, the first being in 2002, but it is intended to align with the current nomenclature, which is v.3, released in 2007.

Companies that are implementing the service support and service delivery processes are requiring greater visibility into IT financial management and the cost of assets that composes business services, which leads to the next step of aligning costs and services. IT service portfolios and IT service catalogs will need to know which assets are part of a service, how much those assets cost and how much they cost to maintain, and the depreciation cycle that they are on. To achieve this level of maturity, ITAM is a must.

Another recommendation from ITIL — to implement a CMDB — also led to increased adoption of ITAM. As more companies begin implementing IT service view CMDBs, having a data feed from the ITAM tool to provide cost data will be a necessary part of achieving the vision of business service management (BSM). BSM and the IT service portfolio and catalog require data from an ITAM repository in order to determine the current cost of hardware and software assets that comprise a business service. This data is then used to assess what the cost should be to the business for this service and to ensure that the appropriate contracts are in place with external vendors to achieve the service levels that the business requires. Without this visibility, IT's cost to deliver the services is only a mere ballpark figure and doesn't resemble real costs.

ITIL v.2 also prescribes that organizations develop a Definitive Software Library (DSL), which is the ideal location to store information about all software installed and being used in the organization. In v.3, this term has changed to Definitive Media Library (DML). This software could be packaged applications that were purchased through a software reseller; or service-oriented-architecture (SOA) components developed internally; or a combination of a packaged application, open-source code, and off-the-shelf applications. Regardless of the type of application, it is determined to be pre-approved, corporate-sanctioned, and authorized to run in the environment, and it should be stored in the DML. A record about this application, from initial configuration to current version, is centrally tracked in a library. This is different from an asset repository, which typically contains information about all purchased applications, not necessarily the ones that have been internally developed or modified in some way. The DML contains the definitive, corporate-approved copy of the application, as well as the current version that is supported. Technicians can access this library for installations. Although no vendors offer a basic library with check-in/check-out capabilities, or provide an audit trail to track changes, most companies use inventory tools to build such a library themselves.

Many organizations mistakenly assume that the ITAM repository can serve as the CMDB. This conclusion is based on similar inventory information being stored in both the ITAM system and the CMDB. However, the ITAM database management system (DBMS) is a domain-specific tool with cross-organizational goals that specializes in financial and contractual data. An IT service view CMDB does not require the same level of detail about financial attributes (that is, purchase record number or ship date) or contract attributes (i.e., the number of training days purchased with software). The ITAM tool will maintain data about all types of IT assets, including voice over IP (VoIP) phones, BlackBerry devices and iPhones, but this data does not need to be a CMDB. If a user has a problem with a BlackBerry, he or she will not bring down a business-critical service, so this data is not relevant to an IT service view CMDB.

Without visibility into the upstream and downstream cost impacts of a major decision, a change in strategy or direction could wreak havoc on costs. Even what appears to be a minor decision on the surface could have a negative impact without the careful planning and review of data. ITAM data is one piece of this higher-level decision process. To keep the cost of delivering a service in line with acceptable levels of risk, it is necessary to find a balance between agility and the bottom line. Prior to making a strategic change in direction, ensure that all ITAM performance data points are properly analyzed and understood. As a result, ITAM tools are often integrated with PPM to complete the financial management picture.

An IT service view CMDB provides accurate data to understand the impact of decisions on the environment, infrastructure, business units, and customers. All of the enterprise-class vendors that offer ITAM tools also offer fully integrated CMDBs — although some of them may not have and IT service view focus. While this integration is important, the vendors assessed in this MarketScope were not evaluated based on their CMDB functionality.

Based on Gartner's recent inquiries, it is clear that more companies are implementing data-center-focused ITAM initiatives, and we expect that the trend toward ITAM being applied to the data center will continue to grow, especially given the size of software spending within the data center. Tracking virtualized software does not present a complexity to an ITAM tool, as long as the DBMS contains the licensing model out of the box, which is specific to that type of application. Most ITAM tools support anywhere from six to 12 licensing models out of the box. Additional license types (that is, value units, LPARs, MIPS or partitions) will have to be added on a customized basis, depending on the selected tool.

The virtualization of applications presents a unique challenge to the discovery and inventory tools that indicate where and when the software was installed. With virtualized applications, the questions are the same as those regarding license availability. If there aren't any available licenses prior to deployment, then the virtual machine (VM) should not be installed. Timing is much more critical in virtual environments. Knowing when the VM went online and offline is necessary, particularly from a licensing perspective. Knowing whether software is installed, but offline, and could be turned on will also pose a licensing issue. If the company is charging for support, or the virtual application is part of a service to the business unit, then it will be necessary to know who is consuming the application and for how long. IT can't respond to an audit request if it doesn't have the tools to collect the data. If there is any good news from the customer perspective, then it is that the software vendors are in an equally difficult situation. However, IT can't allow software vendors to make guesses based on the vendors' interactions with similar companies in similar industries. The ITAM manager needs the data to be precise, or it could lead to significant, unforeseen budget expenses.

Within the data center there are often operational facilities management (FM) applications (such as Aperture, Rackwise and GDMC) that are used to monitor heat, cooling, and mechanicals. These applications are another example of domain-specific tools providing detailed information about how effectively the server and storage hardware is operating. When companies want to know the total cost of a project, they need to know how much it costs to run those servers. Therefore, limited FM data needs to be integrated with the ITAM repository to gain this visibility.

If configuration management is the day-to-day view of what is happening to the asset, and ITAM is the higher-level view of what is occurring over the life cycle of the asset. PPM provides a view of the project that is a step up from that of ITAM. IT assets make up projects, and knowing the entire cost of those projects is determined with a data feed from ITAM into a PPM tool. This enables the organization to do better planning, budgeting, forecasting and overall financial management based on real data about what is happening with projects. We see greater opportunity for vendors to further integrate between these toolsets. IT organizations regularly compete for the same capital, staff and expense dollars as business projects. Additionally, the results of portfolio management and projects are major influencers of IT asset cost and configuration, thus it is important that the two disciplines are managed harmoniously.

Given the synergies between the SD and ITAM, and the fact that SaaS is gaining traction, it is inevitable that this will eventually translate to ITAM tools and become a standard offering across vendors. Ease of use and standardization are some of the drivers that companies cite as the reasons behind SaaS adoption. However, ITAM is rarely used out of the box by large enterprises, and with many nuances around various different software licensing models across hundreds of installed vendors, these characteristics would never make ITAM a commoditized functionality. As vendors, such as BMC, begin to offer SaaS options for their clients, Gartner does not believe this will be useful to large enterprises, which often have complex software licensing agreements.

Large enterprises with a global presence often have unique requirements. Rather than internally manage the complete IT asset life cycle, large enterprises will likely outsource, host or subcontract. They may use a hardware vendor, value-added reseller (VAR) or other supplier to deploy the base image and install it at employees' desks. At the back end of the life cycle, an enterprise, that may be refreshing a large volume of assets annually will often hire a disposal vendor to back up data, transfer software and remove the asset from their premises, and resell it or dispose of it according to government regulations. During the life cycle, the enterprise might also consider outsourcing the low-level, unskilled, specialized tasks, such as data entry. If a large enterprise was going to adopt a suite-based approach, it would be difficult for it to find suppliers other than HP (which recently purchased EDS) or IBM, including global services to deliver on all these pieces worldwide.

A new, albeit modest, trend that we are beginning to hear about from customers is that ITAM is becoming responsible for managing and tracking telecom devices, like VoIP phones. ITAM is not yet being tasked with doing full telecom asset management, which includes invoice auditing, but is being asked to locate and associate users with telecom devices, since the service cost associated with the devices can be very high for organizations. By applying the same rigor that is used to track PCs and other IT assets to telecom devices, organizations can ensure that costs do not spiral out of control. To do this effectively, telecom asset management tools are being integrated with the centralized ITAM tool.

ITAM is the centralized management of the financial (e.g., purchase price, depreciation cycle), contractual (e.g., terms and conditions, purchased entitlements) and basic configuration data of IT assets within an organization. The number of device types and scope of the project may differ greatly by organization, but the primary goal is to begin by tracking and monitoring what is happening to the assets throughout their life cycles. ITAM is often confused with being the day-to-day management of the configuration of that asset or just the financial management of assets that are on the fixed asset register or that maintaining an inventory of deployed assets is managing the asset.

The ITAM repository market is bound by the tools that manage and integrate financial, physical and contractual data throughout the IT asset life cycle, from requisitioning of an asset to the retirement and disposal of either hardware or software assets. Core attributes include the capability to capture and maintain asset costs, depreciation, chargeback, contract terms and conditions, vendor service levels, asset maintenance, ownership, and entitlements associated with inventory components and configuration items (such as PCs, network devices, servers, storage or software components) that are necessary for the effective management and optimization of IT asset performance. In addition, it's critical that these ITAM repositories integrate with adjacent toolsets, both within IT operations and outside (for example, SD/request, autodiscovery/inventory, PC life cycle configuration management, HR and ERP) to deliver a more holistic view of asset performance over its life cycle. Target buyers range from IT operations managers solving operational asset management efficiency and effectiveness problems, to financial managers requiring cost and portfolio data to provide asset-related information to senior-level executives of IT organizations.

As in 2008, vendor products are slowly evolving from focusing on reporting data to providing better analysis of that data, which will enable better, more-efficient decisions, rather than merely improving reports with better graphics. This can be characterized as moving from "What do I have?" to "What insight can ITAM provide to improve the IT business decision?" Data analysis and scenario modeling increase the value of ITAM to the enterprise because this level of detail can't be found in any financial tools. Providing this information is critical to IT success in the future, because most IT organizations have a poor understanding of the cost drivers that make IT "too expensive."

Given the intersections and integrations with ITSM products, such as IT SD and PC configuration tools needed to achieve a centralized view of the environment, vendors will need to offer tight integrations with adjacent toolsets mentioned above. If these integrations or adapters don't already exist, customers will need to recognize their role in building and maintaining them. Even taking a suite-based approach, within a single vendor's toolset, is not a guarantee that the integrations will be adequate. The combination of tighter integration and better financial information will provide the chance to identify opportunities for IT asset portfolio efficiencies and to more directly align costs with customers that are driving down costs.

When choosing an ITAM repository, one of the top priorities most IT operations customers look for is how tightly integrated the repositories are with adjacent toolsets. The three primary toolsets with which ITAM repositories will integrate in new implementations (outside other ITAM tools, such as inventory and software usage) are SD, purchasing and configuration management. IT SD Level 1 support often requires access to inventory data, while Level 2 and Level 3 require access to contract and service-level information. Having bidirectional integration among these toolsets is essential, because changes to pertinent information can occur in either tool. On the other hand, purchasing tools typically are a one-way integration with the ITAM repository. As new hardware and software assets are purchased, data is populated into the ITAM repository and treated as individual items for asset tracking.

As ITAM implementations mature, change and configuration management processes and tools become integral to successful inventory and license management. Technicians installing software on PCs must verify that a user is entitled to the software and that licenses are available for deployment. Integration with PC life cycle tools is a requirement, especially if they're the source of autodiscovery/inventory data.

The needs of small or midsize businesses (SMBs), which we generally categorize as companies with less than 5,000 PCs under management, are sometimes vastly different from those of large organizations. There are many reasons why an SMB may not want to consider one of the enterprise vendors included in this MarketScope. SMBs may not be able to afford the purchase price or the cost to maintain a large suite, or the customization/implementation costs, or they may not want to tackle the complexity of rolling out a full ITAM program, but prefer to focus on software license compliance only. The problems SMBs face are more reactive (i.e., software license compliance, technology update or leasing) and don't require extensive back-end integrations to other toolsets or expensive ERP systems.

Although the large enterprise-class vendors (that is, BMC Software, CA, HP and IBM) focus on delivering comprehensive suites around their CMDBs or framework "lock-in" strategies, smaller vendors offer viable alternatives to SMBs that can't afford the cost of replacing all pieces composing an ITSM strategy, or to companies that may have best-of-breed approach tools or that want to adopt an alternative delivery model, such as SaaS. Furthermore, SMBs don't want to be treated as "just another customer with a complaint" when it comes to support problems, which is the kind of reaction they may encounter from a larger vendor.

Accordingly, SMBs have turned to vendors that may not have a complete set of modules, but their purchase prices and implementation service costs may be low. Several PC life cycle configuration management vendors, such as LANDesk Software and Symantec-Altiris, have extended their inventory capabilities to offer ITAM targeted at SMBs, but they may not offer as much ITAM functionality depth in areas such as financial management or decision modeling as other, more-focused vendors. However, these vendors will likely still be attractive to Gartner clients that are at the low end of being considered large. Several players in the ITAM market didn't qualify for this MarketScope based on limited repository capabilities. In many circumstances, the offerings in adjacent toolsets (for example, inventory/discovery) are strong and can provide good return on investment in those point markets.

Customers looking to solve specific problems (such as software license entitlement management tools for expensive design, manufacturing or scientific applications) or those that want to only focus on their licensing issues with SAP or Oracle will find that several additional players may have suitable tools. For organizations that fit this description, we recommend augmenting the vendors listed in this MarketScope with Flexera Software, Insight Solutions and Open iT.

Vendors must have an ITAM repository offering to support the most often seen requirements of large enterprise environments with more than 5,000 employees, as demonstrated by customer references. The inclusion criteria encompass these eight requirements:

• Software entitlement controls
• Asset catalog
• Software license and hardware asset management
• Integration capability
• Financial management
• Workflow automation
• Decision modeling
• Relationship mapping

The vendor's customer references must have at least four of these criteria in production. The vendor must generate sufficient client interest and inquiry to be noticed by Gartner analysts.

ERP players (for example, SAP and Oracle) aren't included in this evaluation. Although these products can be modified and customized to perform ITAM, most customers find they aren't designed out of the box to manage the more granular information (especially for software asset management [SAM] data) required to effectively manage IT assets. In addition, the integrations with autodiscovery/inventory and the SD aren't as evolved as in ITAM-specific repositories. We find that customers often integrate ITAM systems with ERP products to ensure that the information is consistent with corporate financials and is integrated with the purchase order process.

In addition, the other tool categories that aren't directly evaluated in this MarketScope are autodiscovery/inventory products and software usage products, although it's recognized that these tools often are a data feed into an ITAM repository, and are essential to understanding what assets are deployed in the environment. However, because these products don't offer any capabilities in the area of financial or contractual management, they aren't included.

Most configuration management tools that are primarily focused on PC life cycle management also provide autodiscovery/inventory capabilities, but don't offer complete ITAM functionality, as described in the eight functional inclusion criteria.

Overall Market Rating: Promising

As more organizations implement ITIL and build service-based IT organizations, knowing the cost and financial data behind those services is making ITAM a "must have," so that organizations can understand the cost and maintenance issues related to the assets supporting IT business services. As a result, we expect market penetration for centralized ITAM repositories to increase significantly, from approximately 35% today to 70% during the next five years.

Axios offers its ITAM core capabilities as part of its main product, assyst 9.0, released December 2009. Axios has taken an integrated ITSM approach to product development that differs from other vendors because Axios' ITAM offering is generally sold with the SD. This can benefit companies that want "one-stop shopping," service and support from one vendor without any integration issues. Most of the enhancements in recent versions of assyst were focused on improving the other process modules, with the exception of the purchase order processing, which manages ordering and inventory levels. Axios will improve its ITAM capabilities through removing its dependency on third-party vendors with the launch of its own native discovery tool in 1Q10. ITAM capabilities have not been the core of the ITSM offering, and this is evident in the area of financial management (specifically, budgeting and forecasting capabilities). Axios has limited ability to model technology or business decisions to determine changes to costs, assets or vendors.

Axios can provide an effective solution for organizations seeking an integrated ITSM suite, with limited ITAM capability.

Strengths

• Fully integrated suite provides good out-of-the-box capabilities
• Strong presence in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA)
• Strong client feedback loop helps with new releases

Cautions

• ITAM not typically sold stand-alone
• Discovery tool is new to market
• Lacks strong decision support and analytics

Rating: Promising

The current release of BMC's Remedy Asset Management module, released in October 2009, is v.7.6. Remedy's architecture, with Action Request System (ARS) as the foundation layer, makes it unusual for a customer to have Remedy Asset Management without having at least one of the other modules, most commonly incident and problem management. However, as customers mature to change management, it is often the precursor that indicates the need for ITAM capability. In 2008, BMC acquired ITM Software, which provided financially oriented capabilities for IT organizations. Although the technology is not on the ARS platform, this acquisition has provided a significant leap forward in terms of financial management capabilities. BMC has also developed PPM functionality to augment its IT Business Management (ITBM) Suite of products.

Overall, BMC has made significant progress with its ITAM module, and we expect continued focus and investment in the technology and the corollary ITBM Suite.

Strengths

• Large installed base for IT SDs, which is often an incentive for the Remedy Asset Management module to shortlists
• Data integration with Atrium CMDB and ITBM modules
• Good integration with complementary product sets within Remedy

Cautions

• IT business management with financial management functionality is not on the ARS platform
• Needs to rationalize multiple inventory tool strategies

Rating: Positive

In 2009, CA renamed Unicenter Asset Portfolio Management (UAPM), calling it CA IT Asset Manager. The current release is R12, which runs on CA's common integration platform across its ITSM solutions. CA has focused over the past year on combining its stand-alone Software License Compliance Manager product, which was targeted at SMBs, into CA IT Asset Manager, to provide additional support for enterprise contract licensing. CA has also joined a standards-setting group called TagVault, which is designed to create software standards, though it is too early to tell whether these standards will be adopted by the larger industry.

Although CA has worked on improving its software asset offerings, attention to its ITAM strategy and financial management as a whole will need to improve to remain competitive in the Strong Positive category.

Strengths

• All ITSM products are on the R12 architecture, creating seamless integration for a suite-based approach
• CA Clarity PPM solution has some direct integration with CA IT Asset Manager, providing an integrated decision-modeling capability
• Low-cost provider, in comparison to other enterprise vendors

Cautions

• No multitenancy support and limited application development (AD) support
• Adapters to third-party tools are not widespread
• PPM solution, called Clarity, is not on the R12 architecture, and, therefore, the integration is unidirectional

Rating: Strong Positive

The current release of Eracent's Enterprise Entitlements Management (EnterpriseEM) and Enterprise Lifecycle Management (EnterpriseLM) is v.9.4, which became generally available in August 2009. This version of EnterpriseLM improved financial management capability, and improved the association of contracts to work orders. EnterpriseEM added capabilities for tracking Citrix-based applications, which can be problematic in organizations running thin clients. Eracent has a larger installed base with its Enterprise Asset Management (EnterpriseAM) autodiscovery/inventory tool, which tends to pull its other products into deals for evaluation.

The most characteristic Eracent customer will probably be a midsize business or the low end of large enterprises, which will use the product straight out of the box and won't require customization or any high-end functionality, such as portfolio management. Eracent has shown improvement in responding to market changes in the industry, and further development beyond ITAM and into financial capabilities will likely improve its overall positioning in this MarketScope.

Strengths

• Repository is targeted more at midsize businesses and the low end of enterprises
• Native inventory tool is very scalable
• Good software entitlement management

Cautions

• Modest installed base for ITAM modules
• Data analysis is limited
• Does not offer a suite of ITSM solutions

Rating: Caution

HP acquired Peregrine Systems in 2005 to fill a void in ITAM functionality, and to acquire a large SD installed base. HP's current ITAM release was renamed to align with the other products and is called Asset Manager v.5.2 and was released in 2009. The four modules that comprise Asset Manager are Contracts, Financial, Procurement and Software Asset Management; and Connect-It is still in place as the integration engine to third-party tools. Today, Asset Manager is part of HP's ITSM group, which also includes Service Manager (formerly known as ServiceCenter and Service Desk), DecisionCenter, and Project and Portfolio Management Center. This grouping follows the ITIL model of ITSM, and adding the PPM product set to this grouping bodes well for customers. Initial integrations with these products have been achieved, and deeper integrations are on the road map. A federation adapter exists to Universal CMDB (UCMDB).

Overall, HP's Asset Manager is a strong enterprise offering that provides good functionality and complementary product sets. HP's continuing execution against its ITAM and associated product sets will be key to remaining in the Strong Positive category.

Strengths

• Large installed base for Service Desk
• Growing installed base for UCMDB provides good adjacent capabilities
• PPM tool that is integrated to Asset Manager

Cautions

• Typically, the highest-cost provider to buy, customize and maintain
• Long deployment cycles for many customers
• Integration with other service management products are works in progress

Rating: Strong Positive

The current release of Tivoli Asset Management for IT (TAMIT) is v.7.2 and was released in July 2009. IBM has positioned itself as the only vendor in the marketplace that can offer customers the ability to manage all their workplace assets, including trucks, trains, facilities, power plants and IT assets, across one common toolset. This positioning has been appealing primarily in healthcare, where MRI machines and other diagnostic equipment are all running on the same network, and in the utilities sector, which has similar network requirements. Gartner has not seen significant traction for the product outside of the IBM installed base. Due to IBM's global reach and its ubiquitous service organization, we expect that Tivoli's ITAM market penetration will increase during the next several years, but Tivoli will remain in catch-up mode with the market leaders and will have to focus on faster innovation cycles.

The TAMIT product is overdue for a major revision in functionality if it is to maintain its current ranking.

Strengths

• IBM Global Services sells effectively into installed bases
• Can offer an outsourced version of ITAM
• Only provider of mainframe software licensing inventory and usage products (through its Dorana and Isogon acquisitions)

Cautions

• Limited innovation to the product since IBM acquired MRO Software in 2006
• IBM Global Services lacks deep bench of implementation expertise
• When purchased in conjunction with IBM Global Services, the total deal price can be high, while software cost is modest

Rating: Positive

LANDesk Software released the current version of LANDesk Asset Lifecycle Manager 4.0 in December 2009, bringing additional entitlement capabilities. Previously, the product was coupled within the LANDesk Management Suite, so it was just a matter of turning on the ITAM functionality, not an add-on, if customers wanted ITAM. As a result, LANDesk sold successfully into its existing installed base. The new release, which has been uncoupled, will challenge the sales force to find the correct buyer and budgets within IT organizations, and has been making a modest push into data centers.

LANDesk Software and its parent company, Avocent, were acquired by Emerson in December 2009. Emerson announced that LANDesk Software is "for sale." If investments in Asset Lifecycle Manager continue postacquisition on a consistent annual basis, we expect that the market penetration will increase and additional feature functionality additions will continue to be rolled out on a regular basis.

Strengths

• Targeted more at the low end of large enterprises
• Visualization of asset relationships
• Active Directory synchronization and integration capabilities

Cautions

• Few packaged, bidirectional integrations to adjacent toolsets beyond LANDesk Service Desk
• Data analysis is limited

Rating: Promising

Provance Technologies is based in Quebec and is primarily sold through outsourcers, such as Pomeroy IT Solutions. Although it has some direct sales, this isn't Provance's primary channel. As a result of this focus, the product is architected more toward an outsourcer view, with unique outsourcer requirements in mind. While the privately held Provance is not globally recognized, the company has been around for almost 13 years and is primarily venture-funded. The current release is v.4.3, which includes several modules. In 2009, Provance became a Microsoft independent software vendor (ISV) partner, and we expect this will increase its market presence and visibility, since Configuration Manager has a large installed base for autodiscovery/inventory functionality.

Overall, Provance's strengths in financial management, and its familiarity with the demands of running an IT business, make it a good candidate for financially oriented ITAM programs.

Strengths

• Tight Microsoft Configuration Manager integration
• CIO dashboard
• Outsourcer presence can help outsource customers who need to better manage assets

Cautions

• Market penetration beyond outsourcers is modest
• Challenged selling directly
• No native inventory tool, although integrations exist to mainstream inventory tools

Rating: Promising

In December 2008, PS'Soft merged with BDNA, an agentless inventory tool vendor that sold primarily into large enterprises, and subsequently rebranded and rearchitected its product to IT Asset Management Next Generation (ITAMNG) built on .NET. The merger between the two companies does not appear to be very synergistic because of the different market segments the vendors target. BDNA targets large North American companies and has been attempting to make inroads into Europe. PS'Soft's installed base tends to be midsize European companies, although it has been trying to penetrate the North American marketplace for several years.

PS'Soft has been challenged in building its market presence outside the EMEA market. With only a small North American presence, it will take several years for PS'Soft to build significant business to sustain its investment. In the longer term, missing capabilities in PPM and financial management must be built out to support the functionality needs of larger enterprises.

We believe that PS'Soft's acquisition of BDNA was a good move, but, ultimately, the penetration of the U.S. market has had limited success. EMEA companies looking for good feature functionality should consider this product set as a good candidate for ITAM functionality.

Strengths

• BDNA agentless autodiscovery/inventory tool has a footprint in large enterprises
• Tight Microsoft Configuration Manager integration
• A cost-effective solution for price-sensitive organizations

Cautions

• Limited U.S. marketplace presence, focusing primarily on Europe
• Limited financial capabilities
• Lacking PPM capabilities

Rating: Promising

Altiris was acquired by Symantec in April 2007. The current release (v.6.5) became available in July 2007. Altiris underwent a rebranding effort and renamed the product the Service & Asset Management Suite, which contains the ITAM products (including Asset Management Solution, CMDB Solution, Connector Solution and Barcode Solution). The suite is built on a .NET architecture that Altiris recently revamped, adding new capabilities. Therefore, any customers that are on the current v.6.5 release will have to undergo a migration, not an upgrade, when ITAM v.7 is finally released in 2Q10. The acquisition of Altiris at this point appears to be primarily to focus on the other aspects of service management, and the ITAM repository suite and strategy seem to be a secondary priority to other product sets.

Overall, Symantec-Altiris has lost some market traction due to delays in the release of the new, much-needed functionality.

Strengths

• Visualization maps of the relationships among users, assets and contracts
• Strong brand and large installed base for client management and inventory, which pulls along ITAM
• Recently released IT Service Desk provides a suite-based approach to ITSM

Cautions

• New ITAM product was late to market and built on the new v.7 architecture, which requires a migration, not an upgrade, to get to the new release
• Lost market traction due to Symantec acquisition
• ITAM product line is placed within the security portfolio at Symantec, and, therefore, the R&D budget will be spread across a wide product portfolio

Rating: Promising

USU, a German company, has branded its ITAM product "Valuemation" and the current release is v.3.6, released in July 2009. The product is an integrated suite and comprises several modules that offer an ITSM solution. The pieces that are relevant to ITAM are Contract Manager, SAM/License Manager, Procurement Manager, Asset/CMDB Manager, Costing/Charging Manager, Planning/Calculation Manager and a CMDB. We believe that USU's strong financial capabilities will appeal to many customers where IT finance is driving the initiative, but additional work in the ITSM tool suite area will improve USU's appeal to IT operations. USU's market presence is primarily within German companies, although its installed base has expanded to other European geographies.

Overall, USU continues to add new functionality, such as dashboard reports, to the product and tends to meet the timeline for adding new functionality on a regular basis.

Strengths

• Strong ITIL focus built into workflows
• Suite of ITSM options for users that want a single-vendor approach
• Tool supports multitenancy, which enables location-specific data that can be rolled up centrally

Cautions

• Limited North American presence
• No native inventory tool, although there are partnerships and integrations
• Web service integration adoption rates are low

Rating: Promising