{"id":93,"date":"2006-04-26T12:15:49","date_gmt":"2006-04-26T19:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/cote\/wp\/?p=93"},"modified":"2006-04-26T12:15:49","modified_gmt":"2006-04-26T19:15:49","slug":"microsoft-management-summit-2006-microsoft-acquires-assetmetrix-could-it-be-foundation-for-cmdbitil-asset-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/2006\/04\/26\/microsoft-management-summit-2006-microsoft-acquires-assetmetrix-could-it-be-foundation-for-cmdbitil-asset-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Management Summit 2006: Microsoft Acquires AssetMetrix, could it be foundation for CMDB\/ITIL asset management?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"AssetMetrix<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

This morning, Kirill Tatarinov<\/a> announced that Microsoft bought AssetMetrix<\/a> in his keynote. To put it in low-level terms, AssetMetrix maintains a huge database of applications “fingerprints” and provides services to both query those fingerprints and search through your network to inventory all the applications you have installed, based again on fingerprinting all those applications. They have 300,000 different
\napplications (including variants by version and packaging, e.g., OEM, retail, MSDN) fingerprinted, and they provide access to that data
\nover a web service.<\/p>\n

So the idea is that you run the AssetMetrix “agent” (I’m guessing) on your
\nnetwork, and it digs around on all the machines, profiling the
\nsoftware deployed. It identifies the deployed software by comparing the fingerprints against it’s library.<\/p>\n

The end result is that you have a very human friendly and informative
\nreport. For example, it can not only tell you that you have 623 copies
\nof Office installed, but that 23 of those are retail, versus 9 from
\nMSDN, or 591 from your enterprise license.<\/p>\n

With this data, you can see if you’ve paid for all the software
\nyou’re running, or, see if you’re using all the licenses you’ve
\nalready purchased. Of course, you could also use it to see if people
\nhave installed rouge software.<\/p>\n

The demo showed how AssetMetrix’s reports were pulled it into SMS so that you can see what you have installed on how
\nmany machines. Furthermore, SMS
\nmashes this data up with the official licensing numbers from Microsoft (which your sales rep will be happy to give you ;>) so you can get a side-by-side view to see if you’re in compliance with your licensing terms.<\/p>\n

The word was that it’ll be 6-9 months to fully integrate this functionality into SMS and provide it, of course, under the Systems Center brand.<\/p>\n

Analyst Day Reactions<\/h2>\n

We talked with them about AssetMetrix during analyst day. The
\nconcencous of the room was, of course, cynical: it’s a way to extract
\nmore money from people, and it has a big brother aspect since there’s
\na web service involved.<\/p>\n

Those concerns were addressed by saying that Microsoft has heard
\nfrom several customers that they want to inventory their software, but
\nthat there aren’t good tools available to do it. Indeed, the demo of
\nAssetMetrix integration into SMS proved this technical point:
\nAssetMetrix’s reports were much more human friendly and detailed than
\nthe default functionality in SMS. As an analogy, if you’ve ever walked
\nthe installed application tables in HOST-RESOURCES-MIB, you know what
\nI’m talking about.<\/p>\n

300,000 Configuration Items Out of the Box<\/h2>\n

From the demo I saw, it seems like nice software to me. As
\nMicrosoft hinted at, they were more excited about the catelog of
\n300,000 fingerprints than the here and now functionality of license
\nchecking. Indeed, that’s where the medium- and long-term value comes
\nfrom. You can see that AssetMetrix’s 300,000 fingerprints and profiles
\nwould provide a great foundation to build up Configuration Items in a
\nCMDB. Indeed, if the same methodology was applied to hardware, and
\n“soft assets” like people and processes, the AssetMetrix aquisition
\ncould pay off by becoming the founding architecute and data pool for
\nSystem Center asset management.<\/p>\n

A huge disclaimer on all this is that I haven’t talked to
\nAssetMetrix customers or even drilled deep down into their
\ndocuments. It’s all utopia “reporting” rather than the analysis that
\nwould come after spending more time looking at it.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer:<\/b> Microsoft is a client.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: assetmetrix<\/a>, cmdb<\/a>, conferences<\/a>, enterprisesoftware<\/a>, itil<\/a>, m&a<\/a>, microsoft<\/a>, microsoftmanagementsummit<\/a>, mms2006<\/a>, systemsmangement<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning, Kirill Tatarinov announced that Microsoft bought AssetMetrix in his keynote. To put it in low-level terms, AssetMetrix maintains a huge database of applications “fingerprints” and provides services to both query those fingerprints and search through your network to inventory all the applications you have installed, based again on fingerprinting all those applications. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences","category-enterprise-software","category-systems-management"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}