Numara Takes Asset and Inventory Management to SMB

I have written often about the need for organisations to implement effective asset and inventory management practices. The reasoning behind my arguments states that in order to be able to deliver good IT services to business customers it is absolutely essential to have accurate knowledge available concerning the deployment and use of IT assets. It is accurate to say that in almost any area of business, management not based on good information rarely delivers optimum benefit. A number of asset and inventory management tools generally have now reached a level of maturity and ease of deployment that means that these solutions can now deliver real value to SMB organisations.

Small and medium sized businesses are just as reliant on their IT systems as any enterprise, in many cases perhaps more so. It therefore follows that it is essential to provide business users with the IT service levels that they need at a cost that the company can afford. As has been shown in many articles that I have written, in order to be able to deliver effective, secure IT services it is necessary to understand what IT assets are deployed in the company, for what they are being used and by whom. This is the realm of Inventory management.

Numara Software Inc. produces a number of management solutions specifically created for the SMB market. Amongst these solutions can be found Track-IT!, software that has a history spanning more than 10 years. The Track-IT! software delivers capabilities to help automate and control critical help desk and inventory management functions from a single portal. The software also includes some valuable asset management functionality.

Track-IT! currently supports Windows and Mac environments with Linux capabilities on the road map. Multiple discovery technologies are supported to gather software and hardware information on a regular basis. Discovery capabilities even stretch to network infrastructure components via the company’s own network monitoring solution.

It should be noted that Numara claims that the majority of its customers do not require professional services to get any of its solutions into operation. Such ease of implementation and use are characteristics of extreme importance to IT staff in SMB businesses.

In addition to the core Track-IT! software, Numara delivers a number of complementary tools that further enhance IT management capabilities. These include Numara PatchManager that automatically scans and deploys Windows security patches to multiple workstations, and Numara Deploy, software to package, distribute and install software to laptops, desktops and servers anywhere across the network. The company also offers Numara NetworkMonitor to monitor network health, availability and performance; items that will become increasingly important as more and more applications and services migrate to the IP Network, e.g. VoIP.

It is clear that in order to deliver business users with the IT services that they need securely and cost effectively, asset and inventory management capabilities for SMB organizations are essential. Numara is now looking to deliver these capabilities into EMEA from its North American and UK bases. Asset Management for SMBs is about to become a very active area and I expect a number of announcements in this space over the course of the next few weeks. SMBs watch out, asset management is coming!