07.28.2015
Flexera Software, the leading provider of next-generation software licensing, compliance and installation solutions for application producers and enterprises, announced the launch of AdminStudio Inventory and Rationalization. Fully integrated with AdminStudio Suite, the new inventory and rationalization product identifies, assesses, and consolidates enterprises’ desktop application portfolios to improve agility of day-to-day application service delivery, provide continuous rationalization capabilities and streamline platform migrations.
“Over time application sprawl builds as computing environments change and applications and versions multiply, resulting in ballooning operational and support costs. These problems are magnified during major migrations, such as Windows® 10,” said Maureen Polte, Vice President of Product Management at Flexera Software. “AdminStudio Inventory and Rationalization empowers IT teams to ensure continual rationalization and greater agility in preparation for major OS migrations. And because the tool is fully integrated with AdminStudio Suite, Flexera Software offers the only strategic end-to-end solution that centralizes, automates and manages the full Application Readiness process, from rationalization and compatibility testing to remediation and repackaging.”
Modernized Application Portfolios through Continual Rationalization
Organizations frequently only consider rationalizing applications already in production, overlooking new versions not yet installed. AdminStudio Inventory and Rationalization informs users not just of the applications discovered in their desktop environment but also of new updates, thus helping IT teams keep up to date while reducing support costs, security risks, and compatibility issues. In addition, the solution’s workflow capabilities and integration with AdminStudio Suite enables continual rationalization, helping IT decide at any time, such as when an application is requested, which applications and versions are necessary.
Transforming Data into Intelligence for Smarter Decisions
To make good rationalization decisions Application Readiness teams need ready access to current inventory data from Microsoft® System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). AdminStudio Inventory and Rationalization collects raw, unwieldy SCCM application evidence and securely uploads it to a cloud-based Application Recognition Service, which automatically standardizes the data and categorizes applications – producing an intuitive, easy to use, consistently named list of applications.
Moreover, most rationalization initiatives, such as desktop transformation projects, focus on sub-sets of the organization, requiring IT teams to identify which specific applications must be targeted. AdminStudio Inventory and Rationalization enables teams to organize the effort into smaller, logical groups of users, devices or applications aligning to the initiative, allowing them to create rationalization projects by business units, users, machines, or applications. Fully integrated with AdminStudio Suite, the solution also enables smarter decisions about which applications to upgrade, retire or replace based on an application’s compatibility status with current or future Windows operating systems, application virtualization formats, or whether the application can be run from a server for remote publishing.
Empowering Teams and Teamwork
Often, application rationalization analysis is done manually in individual spreadsheets, making data more inaccessible and collaboration more difficult. AdminStudio Inventory and Rationalization offers sophisticated collaboration workflow, retaining key information such as actions taken (i.e. upgrade, retire, replace or retain), research comments and product owners – allowing teams easily to track rationalization progress.
Once rationalized, IT then needs to prepare applications for the target environment, predict when they will be ready, and ensure IT meets service-level agreements. This is often tracked and managed as separate projects by several groups, preventing a holistic view of the projects’ readiness. AdminStudio Inventory and Rationalization enables team coordination via automatic workflows that assign tasks to each IT group involved in getting the application prepared, tested, and deployed into the enterprise environment.
“Application Rationalization is critical to cost containment and operational efficiency, preventing sprawl, duplication and costly support of applications that are no longer used or needed,” said Polte. “Through integration with other Application Readiness best practices, AdminStudio Suite is the only solution empowering IT teams to provide better and faster IT rationalization services with significantly reduced time and effort.”
flexera.com
