Published in Interface Tech News
LEBANON, N.H. ‹ IT asset inventory specialist Tally Systems recently closed a resale and distribution deal with Vancouver, British Columbia-based TechTrack Solutions. With this agreement, TechTrack plans to resell Tally's asset-tracking software and Web-based platform services, and may include Tally products in its own offerings.
"A lot of the revenue potential for this is over the long haul," said Randy Britton, communications director for Tally.
Tally offers two packages: TS.Census, a company intranet-based program for ongoing tracking at larger companies, and WebCensus, a Web-based application targeted at short-term users or smaller companies. Both provide customers with specific reports on installed hardware and software, including CPU components and application serial numbers, to assist companies with inventory and IT asset tracking.
"They get results in a matter of days," Britton said of WebCensus clients, many of whom are planning the timing and scope of hardware and software upgrades. "Knowing what you have in place really helps you to make that decision," he added.
Patricia Adams, a senior research analyst studying IT asset management for the Gartner Group, agrees, and said there is a lot of growth in this area right now.
"What's driving this is the recession," she said. "Companies are now tightening back on their spending." That leaves software companies coming up short in their sales figures, so they are auditing their clients.
According to Adams, while the typical response to audits used to be purchasing more than enough additional licenses to be compliant and leaving it at that, companies are now saying, "Let's just quickly run an inventory."
"It's more a project focus than a long-term focus," Adams said. But she added that some companies are even seeing value in continuing asset tracking.
Companies that know where their assets are can retire them when they're no longer needed, recover unused software license fees, and renegotiate bulk deals to save money. Also, Adams said, they can plan upgrades more efficiently, knowing ahead of time what hardware will need to be replaced to support a new software package such as Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
"Asset management has always been around," Adams said, but "now it's really coming of age."