HP Asset Manager software

The fastest, most powerful way to economize your IT assets

What is federation?
Federation is the ability to
integrate and share data across
relevant IT processes. Through
these integrated processes, data
can be easily pulled from multiple
sources, integrated and then
unified and shared with the end
user at the presentation layer.
Federation offers the following
key benefits:
• Uses query capabilities to do
simple searches
• Optimizes transaction performance
• Manages the total cost of
ownership and value of
business services
• Reduces data duplication
How does it work?
• Common service definitions
are defined within the
HP Universal CMDB.
• Discovered and reconciled
hardware and software
inventory items become IT
asset records.
• Managed IT Assets are
presented to the UCMDB
as “Trusted Source”
configuration items (CI).
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Caught between cost and compliance, service
levels and outsourcers, IT organizations struggle to The HP Asset Manager
fully explain the value they provide to the business.
HP Asset Manager plays a major role in addressing solution
these challenges. HP Asset Manager enables IT
organizations to reduce costs and drive business Integration across the IT value chain
decisions by managing the physical, virtual, financial, It has long been the challenge of IT organizations to
and contractual aspects of IT assets. HP Asset get a clear, fiscal view of the configuration items used
Manager automates best practices across the asset to provide business services to the customers they
management lifecycle and integrates processes into serve. Aligning and integrating IT asset management
IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) service support workflows (ITAM) with an ITIL-aligned service management
including incident, problem, and change management solution enabling IT organizations to share common
to improve service quality and business outcomes. data with minimal duplication.
Business challenge
HP Asset Manager delivers out-of-the-box, real-time
federation with HP Universal CMDB. This integration
results in one of the few systems to automate the entire
IT organizations are under pressure to lower service
ITSM process without requiring a monolithic repository.
costs, increase service levels, and improve visibility
Federation reduces data redundancy and optimizes
into financial and operational decisions. Today’s
transaction performance—so that relevant data resides
economic environment is more challenging than
within its respective business domain, yet is available
ever—virtualization, acquisitions, device sprawl,
across the business infrastructure (see sidebar for
consolidation projects, asset allocation, and an
more information). In addition, discovered services or
overall lack of standardization across IT, all drive up
mapped views of component configuration items can
the cost and drive down the ability to deliver quality
be correlated to their physical assets, enabling IT to
business services to the organization. IT must align
rationalize the fiscal cost of delivering these business
costs with business priorities and prove their value
services to customers. HP Asset Manager offers a
by providing granular documentation of how IT
huge benefit for organizations looking to reduce
assets support critical business services. As a result,
costs of maintaining ITIL-aligned integrations, optimize
organizations need an integrated approach to IT asset
transaction performance, and share critical data
management. By establishing an integrated approach,
across the business infrastructure.
organizations can ensure that the right processes (such
as procurement, request management, and change
governance) are properly supporting the entire
service lifecycle so that actionable asset information is
aligned to enable the delivery of timely, cost-effective,
business services.
Figure 1: Federating HP Asset Manager with HP Service Manager, without replicating the data, optimizes performance, and enables data accuracy.

Service desk Change mgmt. Catalog request Asset mgmt.

• Incident • Planning • Self service • Hardware

• Problem • Approvals • Goods • Software
• Knowledge • Impact/risk • Services • Contracts
• SLAs • Virtual CAB • Provisioning • Entitlement

UCMDB

Discovery
Customer/End user Internet/ Firewall Web servers Application Middleware Backend
Intranet SAP, Siebel, Oracle, J2EE, .Net JMS, MQS, CICS Mainframe, SCA, Database

ITAM success starts with discovery data for many popular virtualization technologies.
This allows customers to identify virtual resources in
HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping Inventory
the network, match them with the physical servers,
(DDMI) software
and collect physical and virtual hardware inventory.
Sound ITAM processes are dependent on a good
Software Asset Management in a virtual environment,
discovery tool to scan the IT environment. HP DDMI
often requires not just the identification of software
automatically discovers all devices connected to IT
inventory, but also matching of software inventory with
network environment, providing the identification of all
host hardware data, while the hardware information
connected assets. HP DDMI collects the inventory of
itself can also be used for chargeback purposes.
physical and virtual hardware, and usage of software
installed across the infrastructure. The data is used for
A foundation for business-based IT
asset tracking and other purposes, such as software
compliance and reconciliation with the configuration HP Asset Manager serves as the foundation for your IT
management (the CMDB). organization to measure and communicate the value
IT provides to the businesses it supports. To do this
Discovery, virtualization, and software license compliance requires a thorough understanding of the physical,
With the introduction of virtualization, organizations virtual, financial, operational, and contractual
are challenged with virtual device sprawl and an relationships of assets to allow the organization to
inability to adhere to the proper licensing associated increase return on its IT investment.
with these devices. DDMI supports the collection of

Figure 2: DDM Inventory, Asset Manager, Universal CMDB, and Service Manager operate cooperatively to make sure the IT hardware
and software assets supporting business services are effectively managed.

IT Asset Management Configuration Management IT Service Management

manages the hardware System governs the enables these
and software provisioned relationship of assets to services to execute
to services configured services without incident

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HP Asset Manager key benefits:
• Optimize performance through
integrated ITSM processes
• Complete visibility of virtual
assets and their impact on
relevant business services
• Manage SW compliance on a
continuous basis
• Establish a foundation for
ITIL-aligned IT Financial
Management processes
• Comprehensive hardware
and software management for
desktop environments
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Figure 3: Dynamic dashboards show the different mix between physical and virtual assets in the IT environment.
HP Asset Manager drives IT operations and decision
making by:
Aligning IT with business objectives
• Directly tie IT cost to business unit consumption.
• Align business services to their supporting assets and
contracts.
• Measure the total cost of ownership in providing
business services to the organization.
Enhancing service and reducing asset costs
• Effectively manage contracts, leases, license
agreements, and warranties.
• Streamline the fulfillment of goods and service
requests from the service catalog.
• Complete asset and project expense audit tracking.
Mitigating security and compliance risks
• Quantify and measure financial compliance risks
of IT infrastructure.
• Proactively identify license compliance issues.
• Re-harvest and reallocate unused software licenses.
Manage the asset portfolio
Most organizations without an asset tracking solution
are challenged by managing assets in disparate
systems across IT. As a result organizations struggle
to get a consolidated view of their IT assets and
cannot answer basic questions such as “What are
my assets?”, “Where are they located?” and “Who is can be attributed and tracked to enforce standard
using them?”. HP Asset Manager Asset Portfolio is at
the heart of every HP Asset Manager implementation
and helps to address these challenges.
HP Asset Manager Asset Portfolio tracks, defines,
and manages the complex relationships between
assets, contracts, and costs, providing consistent
and accurate inventory information. Asset tracking
processes are simplified by consolidating assets and
each configuration item into a central repository. This
establishes a baseline inventory of accurate asset
data in a repository that allows users of all HP Asset
Manager applications to have a consolidated,
easy-to-access view of all of their IT assets, their
interdependencies, and their relationship to the
business services they support.
Manage vendors, contracts, and IT standards
Today’s complex vendor terms and conditions make
it more challenging than ever to control the rising
cost of software and stay compliant. HP Asset
Manager software provides a simple, standardized,
and proactive way to manage software license
compliance. Using a central repository of existing
contracts, HP Asset Manager associates software
purchase invoices with each software license
agreement. Contractual and expense data are also
collected and available and can provide reconciliation
reports from the physical and virtual inventory stored
in HP Asset Manager’s Asset Portfolio Management
module. HP Asset Manager also manages entitlement
to help control your software usage costs and promote
internal compliance. This level of control allows for
greater software optimization, as the usage of assets
rules and policies.

HP Asset Manager on
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is
your on-demand solution for IT
asset lifecycle management.
The SaaS market for IT management
solutions, which includes IT asset
management, is predicted to grow
from just 1 percent of the overall
IT management software market
in 2008 (estimated at $18 billion)
to 10 percent of the projected
market by 2013. It’s easy to see
why. IT departments faced with
increasingly complex demands
have successfully deployed solutions
in a dependable SaaS model much
faster and with less investment
of capital and time. HP Asset
Manager is available now in SaaS
mode. For more information on
HP Asset Manager on SaaS visit
www.hp.com/go/saas/am
Figure 4: Automate compliance processes to view licenses vs. software installations
Consolidate and streamline
procurement processes
Consolidating requisitions, preventing maverick
buying, and enforcing purchasing policies across IT
are all challenges that can have a significant financial
impact on the business’s bottom line. Organization
need a solution that provides complete visibility
of all existing requisitions, enforces standards and
purchasing policies, and prevents expensive
one-off purchases.
HP Asset Manager Procurement module addresses
these challenges by automating and streamlining
the entire request lifecycle. It verifies each request
against corporate approval standards by checking
against a catalog of approved assets. It monitors
existing stocks and budgets so that requests are
filled through available inventory whenever possible
and consolidates similar requisitions across the
organization in order to get a greater volume
purchase discount and save money.
Financially manage and chargeback for the utilization
of critical business services
HP Asset Manager Financial Management module
makes it easy to track costs associated with every
asset at every stage in its lifecycle, including expenses
related to capital and operations. HP Financial
Management institutes chargeback programs to
specific business unit. The ability to chargeback for the
utilization of virtual or physical assets enables greater
cost recovery, and provides visibility into the business
services being consumed at the business-unit level.
This visibility and cost recovery helps organizations to
better budget and future plan.
Realizing the value of HP Asset Manager
With HP Asset Manager organizations around the
world have realized immediate cost savings by
consolidating assets, reducing asset theft or loss
rates, mitigating hardware and software overspend,
reducing unaligned inventory, and automating
compliance processes to enforce standards. Using
HP Asset Manager, IT organizations can realize
a potential savings (for a typical organization,
5,000 employees and more) of up to an average
of $3-4 million dollars or more just in the first year
through deploying the HP Asset Manager solution.
Key differentiator
HP Asset Manager Data Center Infrastructure
Management (DCIM)
It is apparent that power and cooling in the world
of the data center is pandemic. With the cost of
energy rising at an unabated rate, the ability to
cool data centers where high density computing
runs rampant becomes even more challenging.
The HP Asset Manager Data Center Infrastructure
Management solution addresses these challenges
by extending capabilities into the management of
the physical infrastructure of your data center. With
DCIM organizations can improve energy efficiency
and support green initiatives, improve the utilization
of physical infrastructure resources (including space,
power, and cooling) and financially optimize
infrastructure investment both in the data center and IT.
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 Complementary HP Asset Manager Catalog Module
HP Service Manager Catalog provides organizations
with an IT shop window of all the goods and services
solutions and products that are available to the business. Out-of-the-box
integrations to HP Asset Manager streamline the
HP asset management solutions include the following fulfillment and approval process, so that requested
supporting products. goods can be fulfilled at the lowest cost to the business.

HP IT Service Management solution HP IT Financial Management solution

Out-of-the-box integrations to HP Service Manager
software provide customers end-to-end adaptive
management capabilities to streamline operations and
lower costs. The asset base can be easily reconciled
with other configuration items (CIs) to track the total
costs of goods and services. This provides a greater
understanding of total cost of ownership.
HP Project and Portfolio Management (PPM)
Center software
The out-of-the-box integration of HP Asset Manager
software to HP PPM software provides customers
the ability to track the capital and operational costs
of a project for total cost roll-up. The bi-directional
integration allows users to easily understand labor
versus non-labor costs so that the overall health of a
project can be easily tracked and assessed.

HP Asset Manager a key part of ITSM initiatives HP Asset Manager is a foundation for IT Financial Management

Self-service catalog HP Financial Planning and Analysis

and request
management HP Financial Planning
Governance and Analysis

Service pricing and charge-backs

Service level
management Planning and budgeting
Consolidated Cost accounting
service desk
Change incident and Asset
Financial planning and analysis
management Problem management
management HP Project and
HP Asset Manager
Portfolio Management
Knowledge
management
HP CMS and best practices

Configuration • Full visibility, control, and accountability

management system • Automated consolidation of budgets and costs
(CMS) • Automated cost allocation

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HP Financial Planning and Analysis (FPA) software
HP Financial Planning and Analysis supports cost
visibility for IT. It supports the informational needs of
IT management, accounting, and business leaders to
help them make better investments and IT execution
decisions. With highly configurable cost allocation
rules, HP Financial Planning and Analysis simplifies
and automates data consolidation and aggregation
from multiple sources.
HP Client Automation software
With the integrations to HP Client Automation,
configuration management inventory and software
usage data can be easily populated in HP Asset
Manager and reconciled against the asset record
(purchase order, contract). The ability to offer license
availability before distribution helps prevent software
overspend as well as verifies that license distribution
is driven by user entitlement. This integration allows
customers to quickly and easily identify over-licensed
software and remove it from their environment, hence,
saving organizations from penalty fees and additional
license cost.
HP Services
Get the most from your software investment.
With HP, you have access to standards-based,
modular, multi-platform software coupled with
global services and support, for all aspects of
your software application lifecycle needs. The
wide range of HP service offerings—from online
self-solve support to proactive mission critical
services—enables you to choose the services that
best match your business needs.
For an overview of HP software services, visit
www.managementsoftware.hp.com/service
To access technical interactive support,
visit Software Support Online at
www.hp.com/managementsoftware/services
To learn more about HP Software Customer
Connection, a one-stop information and learning
portal for software products and services, visit
www.hp.com/go/swcustomerconnection

Service management services

A complete solution With service management, HP Services professionals

help you fine-tune your people, processes and
technology to transform and continually improve the
Comprehensive training way your organization delivers IT services. To learn
HP provides a comprehensive curriculum of more, visit www.hp.com/services/itsm
HP software and IT Service Management courses.
These offerings provide the training you need to
realize the full potential of your HP solutions, increase
your network optimization and responsiveness, and
Contact information
achieve better return on your IT investments. To find an HP Software & Solutions sales office
or reseller near you, visit
With more than 30 years experience meeting complex
www.managementsoftware.hp.com/buy
education challenges worldwide, HP knows training.
This experience, coupled with unique insights into For more information about HP Asset Manager,
HP software products, positions HP to deliver the contact your HP representative or visit
optimum training experience. For more information www.hp.com/go/itamsoftware
about these and other educational courses, visit
www.hp.com/learn

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and financial asset management programs to help
you cost-effectively acquire, manage, and ultimately
retire your HP solutions. For more information on these
services, contact your HP sales representative or visit
www.hp.com/go/hpfinancialservices

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4AA0-5584ENW Rev. 4, October 2009