Scope
UK NHS Commissioning Support Unit unifies ITAM and SAM across 50 domains and 100,000 devices, creating a ‘Single Source of the Truth’ for IT Asset Intelligence.
The Commissioning Support Unit provides expert support and advice to help clinical commissioners and other Health organizations to deliver improved health services to the local public. The Commissioning Support Unit works with over one hundred organizations, including clinical commissioning groups, hospital trusts and GP practices across England, representing the healthcare needs of more than ten million people.
Company Profile
Product: Certero for Enterprise SAM
The Challenge – Growth & Lack of Visibility
The merger resulted in a significantly expanded estate of 100,000 devices, which needed to be managed on behalf of customers across England.
The newly formed organization – had more than 50 active network domains, which consisted of a complex network, firewalls and NAT’d IPs. In addition, there was a series of legacy products and processes in place covering IT hardware and software asset management across various parts of the infrastructure.
There was no single repository of accurate data and no means of easily accessing the information needed to develop an integrated strategy. From a cost and reporting perspective, it was also essential to be able to easily identify and understand the particular IT infrastructure and usage aligned to each individual customer organization.
To overcome this, the decision was taken to implement a single, centralized, highly automated solution able to deliver end-to-end coverage of the entire estate, across hardware, software and licensing.
Certero for Enterprise SAM has transformed my daily work. Instead of documents and spreadsheets everywhere, we now have finger-tip access to a clear, accurate view of our assets and IT inventory across the numerous organizations and locations for whom we have responsibility. We evaluated a number of alternative options, with none being able to match Certero for Enterprise SAM.
License Management Officer
The Certero Solution – A Centralized Approach
Following the evaluation and comparison of several non-Certero solutions, Certero for Enterprise SAM was selected on the basis of some key capabilities, including: speed of deployment, comprehensive discovery & inventory, licensing management, powerful reporting and generally better user experience. Implementation was straight forward and quick, with deployment rules and credential sets within Certero for Enterprise SAM ensuring high coverage and capture of accurate, highly-granular inventory data, across each location.
Licensing entitlement was captured within the tool and separated by actual ownership, enabling the generation of an Effective License Position (ELP) per customer. This ensured that individual customers could be advised of any specific shortfalls and associated investment/cost implications. In contrast to the previous reliance on SCCM, which tended to indicate more licenses were required than was actually the case, automation within Certero for Enterprise SAM accounted for instances of bundled products or suites, such as Microsoft Office, ensuring correct licensing rules were applied.
Certero for Enterprise SAM suitably met the desired objective of providing an accurate, dynamic picture of both the overall licensing estate and by individual customer. In conjunction, the advanced metering feature provided visibility and an understanding of actual usage, thereby helping to identify re-harvesting opportunities and eliminate unnecessary new purchasing. This information was also very useful in helping mitigate the impact of any instances of under-licensing.
As well as helping to populate the CMDB, in turn supporting service management teams, Certero for Enterprise SAM’s powerful, easy-to-use reporting and business intelligence engine enabled users to cut and dice data as they wished, tailoring their reports or dashboards based on their individual requirements. By only seeing what they specifically needed, users could focus on that information necessary to support better decision making or planning in their particular area of responsibility or operational unit.
The tool is a joy to use, needing minimal training and on the rare occasions we need support, the Certero team is immediately on hand. As we look to continue growing as an organization and IT infrastructures continue to evolve, we are confident that Certero will continue to support us on the journey.
License Management Officer
Key Product Features
- Fast and easy to deploy
- Comprehensive discovery & inventory
- Straight forward and clear user interface
- Capture of entitlement data
- Functionality to manage multiple licensing models
- Single data source and finger-tip access to information and reports
- Supports integration with other tools
Key benefits of the solution
- Full visibility of the IT estate and assets across complex environment and multiple locations
- Ability to manage assets and licensing by sub-organization or business unit
- Helps ensure compliance, enhance control and optimize licensing
- Supports the organization’s continued growth
Ready to speak to the team that makes our customers so happy?