Debbie,
I'll give it a shot...
TACACS+ and RADIUS are open security protocols that many vendors can use...
Within the Inventory and Asset management realm, are you looking to do the
capital deprecian thing or just manage warranties and contracts administration?
With Inventory/Asset management, you almost need a central repository to place
the data. And this data is very useful during problem management and change
management processes. Within a trouble ticket, it is very handy to be able to
lookup the live configuration.
So, what we do is to gather the data via the polling and discovery methods that
network and systems management bring to the table but populate the data in the
problem management system's database. In fact, Remedy has an excellent Asset
Management module that plugs right in to the Help Desk application. With a
little modification of the schemas, you can monitor and manage maintenance
contracts, spares inventories, and generate Vendor specific RMAs as part of the
problem management process.
If your spares are tied to SLAs in the SLA Module, you can track when you are
not covering the Sevice Level with hot spares. You can even track the Service
Level of the equipment provider when turning around problems.
Because Remedy is a workflow application, steps can be taken to ensure Warranty
cards are filled out and sent as part of the process of receiving new equipment
or new components and that warranty can be tracked directly into a maintenance
contract without lapsing coverage.
All this takes a bit of work but it has excellent ROI in that many companies
waste thousands of dollars by having a maintanance contract on something thats
under warranty or they let maintenance lapse. The intangibles are the fact that
someone working on the problem has an easy lookup to check out what revision the
component was.
HTH,
Doug...
D J Sparg <dsparg@NETACTIVE.CO.ZA> on 05/06/99 05:08:44 AM
Please respond to Discussion of IBM NetView and POLYCENTER Manager on NetView
<NV-L@UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU>
To: NV-L@UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU
cc: (bcc: Douglas Stevenson/Herndon/Mid
Atlantic/Predictive)
Subject: Security and Inventory/Asset Management
Hi All,
I have two questions:
1) My client is looking for a network security solution as in managing access to
their routers, switches, etc. They have a variety of equipment including Cisco,
Bay, Newbridge, Nortel, Micom. Xyplex, 3Com, etc. I know that certain vendors
eg. Cisco provide their own security protocol eg TACACS+ BUT has anyone come
across a security product that could protect access to all network resources
irrespective of vendor?
2) Same client is also looking for inventory/asset management of their network
resources. They want a central asset database which would get populated from a
number of data sources e.g. NetView, OpenView, etc. I know that there are a
number of asset and inventory tools out there, including Tivoli Inventory - BUT
my perception is that these products are oriented towards servers and desktops
and don't cater that well for network resources. Any info or views on this
subject would be very welcome.
Thanks
Debbie Sparg
Cell: 082-570-4559
Email: dsparg@netactive.co.za
|