Data Analytics overview

Use the Data Analytics tools that install with Ivanti® Management Suite to significantly increase your IT asset-management capabilities in the areas of procurement, auditing, tracking, and reporting.

This help provides detailed conceptual and procedural information about configuring and using the Data Analytics tools. You can navigate the help topics in the Ivanti Help Center or perform a search using a specific key word or phrase to find the information you want.

About the tools

A parent item called Data Analytics appears in the Management Suite console's Tools menu and Toolbox containing these seven tools that help you track, manage, and report on IT assets:

•Asset Control: Boosts your ability to discover and manage assets. A primary element of endpoint device management is the ability to identify those devices within your infrastructure. Discovery is no longer just about hardware; software discovery and inventory are just as important.

•Console Extender: Adds data-related tasks to the Management Suite console through right-click menus.

•Data Translation Services: Enables you to use a powerful data-mining engine to scan your organization's devices for the inventory data you most care about—data relating to software licensing, warranties, and so on.

•Database Doctor: Helps you avoid data corruption and normalize data to reduce multiple product names and instances of data.

•Discovery Services: Adds discovery services for devices without an Ivanti agent that you may not have managed in the past, such as printers and other SNMP devices on your network. While you may not need to manage some of these devices directly, it’s important to have some measure of control over all of your organization's IT assets.

•Executive Report Pack: Enables you to expand, organize, and publish Ivanti reports to personnel based on their individual roles.

•Rapid Deployment: Ensures that the Ivanti agent is always available on all devices.

Learn more

As an IT professional, you want to reduce risk by knowing about each hardware and software asset in your network environment. Manual processes increase IT cost, which is a burden against your budget. The primary challenge is having a full view of assets, from PoP to retirement. Implementing yet another console increases deployment time, as well as the cost of controlling your IT assets.

Data Analytics solves these problems by tracking assets from the time they're purchased to when they're retired. With Data Analytics, you can easily monitor the purchase history, warranty information, and usage data of both software and hardware. You can use run-time configurations to patch and upgrade software seamlessly without losing your inventory information. Data Analytics captures PoP information and provides an end-to-end product lifecycle picture that establishes end-of-life and when to purchase new IT assets.

Data Analytics provides aggregated vendor data
Aggregated vendor data (via the Cloud) includes: HP, CDW, Insight, Apple, En Pointe, Dell, IBM, and many others.

Key results

  • Automated data collection
  • EULA/software license normalization
  • Third-party device inventory data
  • Executive reports

Purchase management

  • Purchase history
  • Barcode scanner integration
  • Automatic asset enrollment
  • License renewal
  • Asset retirement
  • Warranty expirations

Software- and hardware-usage monitoring

  • Hardware and software discovery
  • Asset mapping
  • Printer monitoring (toner level and pages printed)

Asset reporting

  • Data normalization
  • Custom data collection
  • Customizable reports
  • Configurable run-times

Efficient acquisition

  • Adherence to corporate policies or budgets
  • Business-to-business connectors (business alignment and automation)
  • Order-to-inventory visibility
  • Reduced risk of “renegade” purchasing and unauthorized buyers—the purchase event is part of the asset process
  • Unnecessary or duplicate acquisitions eliminated
  • Automated tracking of purchases at the point of purchase

Use Data Analytics to manage your assets in the following ways.

Asset mapping

Automatically map your discovered devices to their location, which improves device supportability and visibility. Inventory is not just an Ivanti feature—it’s at the heart of everything in IT.

Normalized data

As software has evolved, manufacturers have used various names for their company and products. For example, Microsoft software has been delivered under names such as Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Labs, Microsoft Inc., and so on. In addition, many of Microsoft’s brands have names such as Visio Corporation, which makes it difficult to discover software accurately at the endpoints. Data normalization, combined with a rules-based engine, allows you to inventory similar names into one system group. Now, various software products from Microsoft can be inventoried against one name, “Microsoft.”

Normalized data greatly simplifies how you manage software assets and helps you identify the assets being used on your hardware endpoints and by end users.

Rules-based licensing

Most organizations lack visibility into the software within their infrastructure. Using rules-based licensing enables better visibility and control, reducing security and liability risks and improving employee productivity.

Software-usage monitoring

One of the benefits of software-usage monitoring is that you don’t need to count every package simply because it’s there. For example, if Microsoft Office Professional 2010 is installed on a device, as well as Access 2007 and Outlook 2007, your license only needs to cover Office Professional 2010—information that Data Analytics can provide automatically.

Effective asset retirement

You can use Data Analytics to plan for a successful future by tracking assets in the following ways:

  • You can increase productivity and reduce costs by knowing ahead of time about warranty expiration and license renewal. Having a clearer picture of the assets you have—and the assets your organization needs—ensures that your users have the right tools to be productive. You purchase only what you need and reduce expensive over-buying scenarios.
  • Organizations without tools such as Data Analytics find that they overspend on software and hardware because they don’t know what they have. These same organizations overspend on software licenses to ensure compliance.
  • When you're in the planning phase, use Data Analytics to know what you have and what you need before entering into negotiations with your vendors.