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If your organization is like most, you’re buying mobile computers to allow for remote and mobile workers – meaning corporate computing is no longer confined to the LAN. No longer confined to the company LAN, your computing environment is defined by mobility. Notebook computers mean employees can access business critical data from nearly any location, giving rise to an increasingly mobile, remote and dispersed workforce.
Computers are rarely confined by office walls. An accurate inventory requires full visibility not only into network connected devices, but also the vast number of mobile machines used beyond your physical control. This visibility is critical; without a thorough understanding of the computer population, you may base crucial (and often costly) decisions on inaccurate information.
Telecommuters, travelling employees and contract workers mean that for many computers, network connectivity is sporadic at best. Despite this, most data collection tools are fully reliant on a machine’s connection to the LAN. The majority of inventory tools rely on an installed agent, and, as is the case with most installed applications, this agent can be tampered with. You know how this happens: it’s removed by an employee or deliberately uninstalled by a malicious user. No agent. No asset data. Agent tampering is exacerbated by the large number of machines that are regularly used outside of the office, making tampering difficult to detect.
To bridge the gaps of off-the-network tracking, you probably use some kind of manual process. This allocates responsibility to individual employees, who, among other tasks, must supervise machine movement, detect missing or misplaced assets, monitor upgrades and installments, and regularly record and report asset status. Issues with consistent documentation are compounded by mobile computers’ ability to switch hands easily and move locations often – swift changes that manual records can be slow to reflect.
With an inaccurate account of inventory comes an inability to effectively plan for procurement, upgrades, migration and retirement. Poor visibility makes it difficult to identify and perform proactive maintenance tasks, compromising
machines’ optimal lifespan. This translates into high replacement costs, ineffective allocation, inefficient purchasing and ultimately, unnecessary expense. Not to mention that executive who is always complaining that their computer is a pile of junk.
To get complete visibility into your computer population, you require technologies that can track devices whether on or off the network.
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