BOSS can help you coordinate the continual process of lifecycle management and enterprise optimization, while reducing stress and minimizing the scattering of resources.
Chances are that countless pieces of equipment and computer workstations in your office are not going to need upgrading or replacing on the same schedule. BOSS can help you coordinate the continual process of lifecycle management and enterprise optimization, while reducing stress and minimizing the scattering of resources.
BOSS offers solutions that manage organizations' assets from acquisition to disposal, beginning with asset procurement, through maintenance phases, and finally to retirement or end-of-life disposal. Each phase of the IT lifecycle is equally vital and the outcome from each cycle segment affects preceding and pending phases. From analysis and procurement to management and retirement, BOSS enables you to manage every level of your enterprise.
Asset management begins with a view of your enterprise from its beginnings to your ultimate future vision. The lifecycle phases, outlined here, explain what each stage entails and how BOSS can help you achieve your goals with our lifecycle management services.
BOSS, with its industry-acclaimed DiagWin platform-based products − Support Central and Enterprise − can help you manage your assets effectively from procurement through disposition.
Assessment
Asset lifecycles all originate with the same process. Analysis is the first step in any enterprise lifecycle. This governance phase entails a full assessment of your business needs and IT and non-IT assets. BOSS studies your licenses, current IT and non-IT assets, leases, budgets, compliance issues, IT support, and risk exposure.
With a comprehensive view of those resources that your enterprise owns, and those that your enterprise needs, you can make the best possible decisions and anticipate procurement costs.
BOSS analyzes your organization, and determines your key objectives and situation. Decisions are made about assets that should be retired, migrated, and/or procured. During analysis, BOSS consultants collect a comprehensive record of your entire network including workstations, network printers, servers, hubs, switches, routers, telephony devices, etc. This includes IT assets as well as non-IT assets such as refrigerators, microwaves, telephones, desks, chairs, etc.
Procurement
Once your business needs are assessed, IT and non-IT assets can be purchased, upgraded, or retired. This includes required hardware, software and any other non-IT components. The acquisition or procurement phase is important as it creates the enterprise framework for programs and processes before implementation.
Since CEOs make most purchasing decisions, they tend to factor in two things when determining whether or not to spend budget funds:
- VED: Is the product you are about to buy vital, essential, and desirable? If not, it will not improve business and therefore is not necessary. The first three important needs you have are considered vital. The next four requests are essential. Thereafter, all factors are desirable.
- ROI: If your purchases do not somehow benefit your organization, whether monetarily or otherwise, there is no ROI. It is crucial that your assets are somehow contributing to enterprise optimization; otherwise, they are not assets but liabilities or at least a budget drain.
DiagWin Enterprise can record and track all of your IT and non-IT assets. You can use metrics to track when systems are due for integration, patches, application upgrades, or retirement.
Deployment
BOSS solutions can enable your organization to deploy applications and patches quickly and reliably. In addition, BOSS can help you perform migrations of your entire system while keeping intact all existing information on all PCs. System upgrades are completed in a fraction of the time that you may have experienced in prior lifecycles. The award winning U-Win is an end-to-end Windows migration tool offering remote access, minimal downtime and a clean install.
Management
This phase entails the management required to ensure a secure network, stay current with updated patches and applications, conduct necessary migrations, track support issues, integrate systems, lessen risk, and create sustainable asset management workflows.
Chief among management needs is a good reporting tool that can pinpoint trends and provide a sound basis for informed decision making and purchases. DiagWin Enterprise provides more than 150 predefined reports, as well as the ability to create as many custom reports as you need. For example, these reports let you monitor application usage, detect license mismatches, discover changes in password policies, identify missing Microsoft patches, and determine which operating systems your organization's workstations are running, to name a few.
Technical support also plays a large role during the management lifecycle phase to ensure that users remain productive and systems remain functional. BOSSAssist, the help desk solution from BOSS, simplifies support issues for both end-user and IT staff with straight forward interfaces, automatic e-mail notifications, and robust reporting.
Another important need is for sustainable asset management workflows. The experts at BOSS can help you with developing and automating scalable workflows that best suit your organization and industry.
RETIREMENT (END-OF-LIFE DISPOSITION)
BOSS can mark as retired obsolete hardware and/or software prior to server or desktop migration or an operating system upgrade. Since retirement is the final phase of the lifecycle, repetition of the cycle follows, beginning with analysis and hardware/software procurement.
To find out more about the IT Lifecycle Management, contact us.