Working at the Card Catalog Library of Congress LC-H2- B-5636 [P&P]
Asset tracking software like Open-Audit by Opmantek streamlines IT decisions and improves accountability.
When a organization’s IT infrastructure grows beyond, say, 20 devices, it becomes very important to keep an accurate record of all of the information about the equipment. This kind of information is vital for:
- Accounting and tax record keeping on asset depreciation
- Recording the date of purchase for warranty performance
- Installed software to ensure licensing compliance
- Disk capacity tracking for planing upgrades
- Location information to make finding the PC for troubleshooting and maintenance
You could manually try to record all of this data using spreadsheets or a custom database, but that becomes far too tedious and labor-intensive.
You need asset tracking software – I install and recommend Open-Audit by Opmantek. This open source software was created by Mark Unwin of Brisbane Australia and purchased by Opmantek in 2013. Mark continues to lead the development of this excellent product.
Open-Audit runs on either a linux or windows system, and collects a huge array of data on various devices connected to your company network. Devices can be discovered and audited on a scheduled basis which allows you to track changes to installed hardware and software over time. Linux, Windows and Mac OSX PCs can be cataloged.
Basic setup of Open-Audit is pretty simple, and once this data is being collected regularly, many IT tasks become much simpler:
Want to ensure software license compliance? You can enter license counts for each Software title detected, and see which machines have a particular title installed.
Want to decide who needs an upgrade most? You can view a query showing installed memory and CPU speed and description. If you’ve populated fields such as purchase date you’ll have even more clues to make an effective decision.
Are users unknowingly installing spyware or adware? You can scan the installed software report for titles you don’t recognize (or are known bad apples).
Wondering if a system tucked in a far-away server closet is still alive and well? Check the ‘Last Seen’ report to find out if it has responded to an audit recently.
Asset tracking: Do you apply a company asset ID sticker to every device purchased? Update the asset tag field and you can supply accounting with useful information for inventory audits. If you have many physical locations you can create these (even including GPS coordinates) and assign devices to locations.
I’ve used the open source edition of Open-Audit at my clients. For smaller installations it offers a terrific set of features. Open-Audit Enterprise adds a host of features which look to be perfect for larger organizations: Scheduled Reporting, Reporting over time, more advanced reports, and of course support and custom development possibilities.
I deploy Open-Audit for your organization and help you get a handle on your IT hardware – Contact me today!
