Asset Management Services, Novell ZENworks Asset Management consulting

Services | Consulting Options

Consulting engagements are by their nature unique - no two customers have the same requirements. Listed below are some sample descriptions that may be used as starting points for your project. Individual items may be provided alone or combined to create a comprehensive engagement.

The options described below are oriented towards Novell ZENworks products. New software asset management offerings - not centered on any particular tool - are coming soon.

Business and Technical Assessment

Good planning leads directly to a good implementation. The Business and Technical Assessment is a guided process to discuss your business needs for configuration and/or asset management, how your environment is constructed technically, and to design a ZENworks implementation to fit your needs. Plan on this work taking 2-3 days, including time for project documentation.

Product Implementations

Basic Implementation
A 3-day start-up for new customers, designed to get you started and prepared to complete agent deployment on your own. The project may utilize ZENworks Asset Management or ZENworks Configuration Management.
- Core database and infrastructure installation
- Network discovery survey
- Baseline agent deployment
- Planning for comprehensive agent deployment by customer
- Administrator training

Complete Enterprise Implementation
Starting with a Basic Implementation (above), work with the customer to manage and complete deployment of ZENworks agents. Minimum of 2 additional days; duration depends on number of systems and locations to be added to the inventory and network infrastructure.

ZENworks Component Skills Transfer
There are a variety of different components in ZENworks Configuration Management - application deployment, imaging, patch management - each of which require a block of time for training. These blocks may be customized to fit customer needs.

Upgrades and Migrations

ZENworks Asset Management Tune-up
A project for existing ZENworks Asset Management customers with upgrade entitlements. (Also available for legacy Tally Systems Corp. customers with TS.Census implementations and entitlement to upgrade to ZENworks Asset Management.)
- Upgrade to latest ZENworks Asset Management version
- Upgrade to latest Product Recognition Update
- Training on new features
- Network discovery assessment of current agent deployment
- Review of best practices
Minimum 2 days; duration depends on starting version of software to be upgraded, as well as the number of systems and locations to be added to the inventory and network infrastructure.

ZENworks Asset Management Migration
This is an add-on to a Basic or Complete Enterprise Implementation project for existing ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management customers. Prior to broad scale agent deployment, inventory and/or asset management data from the version 7.5 database may be migrated into the ZENworks 10 database. Minimum of one additional day, depending on the volume of data to be migrated.

Software Asset Management

Any company above a nominal size should be interested in Software Asset Management. ZENworks Asset Management is a mature, full-featured product, available for stand-alone installation or integrated with ZENworks Configuration Management.

Software Management with ZENworks Asset Management
Most customers should be able to recover the acquisition and implementation costs of ZENworks Asset Management through analysis of software usage and purchasing practices.
- Analyze Software Files (a/k/a Files Not Identified) data for missing recognition
- Review installed vs. used software counts to identify savings points
Two days duration; best if preceded by ZENworks Asset Management Tune-Up (above) for 4 days total. Requires that ZENworks Asset Management has been collecting usage data in the production environment on a representative portion of devices for a minimum of 60 business days.

License and Contract Management
Whether you have an audit pending or not, license management is essential in today's IT environment.
- Review software purchasing and discuss best practices
- Train on ZENworks Asset Management procedures for importing purchase data and reconciling to discovered software.
Two days duration; may be expanded to assist customer with organizing data and moving forward with license management.

Software Management + License and Contract Management
A logical combination, covering all features of ZENworks Asset Management in depth. More than just training, this project includes hands-on work with customer data to move the software asset management process forward. Project duration to be determined by customer needs.