Web Edition Overview (Please see editions comparison table)

Centennial Discovery 2007 Web Edition Software Auditing adds powerful business tools, universal web access and configurable security to the exceptional inventory capabilities of the Centennial Discovery 2007 Standard Edition, thus enabling more efficient use of your assets and greater cost savings.

Universal Web Access: 

An easy to use web interface means many users can take advantage of the inventory information gathered by Discovery from anywhere in the organisation. Simply fire up the browser, and your there.

• Valuable data analysis available to key staff, including Finance managers, Asset managers, Network administrators and support staff.

• Build reports and save the results in Microsoft Excel format.

• Integrate the interface into your intranet using your company image.

Discovery Dashboard

Discovery.Dashboard provides administrators and other executive stakeholders with a clear graphical view of key systems intelligence.

Each Discovery.Dashboard user can choose from 15 pre-configured reports covering such areas as license compliance, asset availability, project planning and risk management. This intuitive single-page snapshot allows executives to make decisions based on real-time data for both tactical and strategic business needs.

Business Analysis Tool:

Centennial Discovery Web Edition provides decision makers with tools to analysis the population of IT assets in many different ways. Pivot analysis allows senior IT staff to test 'what if' requirements across the entire enterprise.

• Calculate the cost of an upgrade by specifying hardware and software prerequisites, component cost and labour time, then adjust the requirements to balance the budget.

• Display a breakdown of computer age by department or globally

• Examine the skew of manufacturer or device type across the organisation.

• Analyse asset usage by manufacturer or product.

Centennial Discovery Web Edition provides configurable levels of access security. From allowing complete anonymous access to any member of staff, to control by country, department or other organisational unit.

Centennial License Manager

Software represents a significant cost burden to the enterprise in terms of purchase, maintenance and management. To accurately compare discovered software against captured license entitlements, you need Centennial License Manager, the key to effective software asset management and license compliance.

Centennial License Manager is a web-based software license compliance solution that integrates seamlessly with Centennial Discovery to enable organizations to quickly achieve and maintain an accurate desktop software licensing position.

License Manager dramatically simplifies the traditionally-complex task of capturing license entitlement information, matching discovered software against vendor SKUs and finally reconciling installed software against licenses held.

License Manager benefits:

• Increase knowledge of your software estate and its usage – remain informed on the volume, patch status, location, licensing position and usage of your software assets installed on your network.

• Drive down costs – prevent unnecessary purchases or inflated maintenance agreements by accurately reconciling usage against entitlement.

• Achieve and maintain compliance – ensure that software usage does not exceed licenses held. Prove compliance with accurate reports.

• Improve IT governance – manage the complete lifecycle of software assets, from procurement to disposal

Why Centennial License Manager?

License Manager is the most intuitive, flexible solution for managing desktop license compliance across the organization:

• License capture wizards – simply follow on-screen instructions to provide a full audit trail of your software license entitlement and cross reference to the physical evidence. Also take advantage of the unique scanner wizard to document proof of entitlement

• Direct Software audit data import – import asset data directly from Centennial Discovery with no need for third-party data cleansers or converters

• Automatic Vendor SKU recognition – no need for manual matching of invoice items to vendor SKUs (where applicable) reducing the risk of transposition errors or other inaccuracies.

• Upgrade & downgrade rights management – intelligent rules for automatically calculating software upgrade and downgrade rights

• Multiple OUs and sites – manage multiple organizational units and office locations through a single system

• Enterprise role-based SAM – create multiple data entry users to capture proof of entitlement in the field while ensuring only the approved compliance manager/s are able to access the current license compliance position for each vendor.

• Easy export options – populate Licensing Statements and other forms quickly with live data from License Manager

How Licence Manager Works

Centennial License Manager is designed to dramatically ease the difficult process of managing software assets and proving license compliance

License Manager is the most intuitive solution of its type available, automating many of the tasks that previously took many man hours to achieve and providing a wizard-like interface which ensures that staff maintain high levels of productivity.

License Manager makes it easy to address the key areas of software management:

1. Import and filter discovered software

Unlike other solutions, License Manager automatically imports discovered software data without the need for additional data filtering and cleansing tools. Thanks to its seamless integration with Centennial Discovery, License Manager only imports the software titles that need to be managed and automatically ensures that new discovery data is updated on a regular, scheduled basis.

2. “Proof of Entitlement” capture

Authorized data entry users can quickly add new software purchases to License Manager through a structured web interface. All important information, such as vendor, purchase order, license quantity, cost, and both vendor and reseller SKUs are captured. Proof of Entitlement documents can be attached to each record for future reference and audit purposes.

For printed documents, License Manager features a unique scanner wizard which automatically scans the appropriate document and attaches it to the entitlement record.

3. Match entitlement with known vendor software

A key differentiator for License Manager is its ability to automatically match entries on entitlement records with known software titles. In most cases this will remove the need for the user to manually collate entitlement records with vendor software catalogs.

4. Report on license compliance status

Once Proof of Entitlement documents have been entered and the License Manager database is populated with the latest discovered data, authorized users can quickly reconcile entitlement against usage. License Manager will highlight over-licensing and under-licensing, as well as automatically calculating upgrade and downgrade rights.

Integration with Centennial Discovery

Centennial License Manager is the only solution of its type to come pre-configured to import software data directly from an award-winning IT asset discovery solution.

License Manager’s seamless integration with Centennial Discovery provides a number of benefits to customers:

• Direct discovery data import

• Getting information on discovered assets into a license management solution can often be a slow and laborious process, normally requiring the use of additional data cleansing tools or help from a SAM professional. This is not the case with License Manager, which automatically collects and filters the asset information from Discovery.

• Licensable software only

• License Manager’s integrated data collection and filter technologies also ensures that software managers achieve a high level of productivity by only presenting licensable software applications in the main inventory screen.

• Automated inventory updates

• License Manager can be configured to automatically update the software inventory at intervals determined by the end user. Updates are performed in the background, with only new information added to the License Manager database.

SAM Collaboration

Typically, a SAM initiative is not the sole responsibility of one individual; it takes a collaborative effort from staff across the Finance, Procurement and IT departments.

License Manager can be configured to allow an unlimited number* of authorized users from across the organization to take different roles and responsibilities appropriate to their job function and location. This leads to a faster and more effective approach to managing software licensing.

License Manager user roles comprise:

• Data Entry Users

• Usually a finance or procurement clerk, this user is responsible for entering information on purchased software licenses in the form of Proof of Entitlement records. Data Entry Users are not able to associate purchased items with vendor catalogs or reconcile licenses against discovered software.

• Software Managers

• Normally a manager-level IT resource, the Software Manager can take the Proof of Entitlement records already resident in the system and reconcile these first against vendor-recognized software SKUs and then against the actual discovered software from the network.

• Administrators

• Administrators have all of the rights above, plus the ability to configure the system for data collection, user management etc.

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Discovery.Portal (*Please see editions comparison table)

With the average 1,000 seat network typically hosting over 8,000 different applications, understanding what each and every software program is and does is a near impossibility.

But rather than spending endless hours ‘Googling’ unknown applications, Centennial Software’s unique Discovery.Portal* will provide the market name, publisher, summary and (where available) licensable status of tens of thousands of applications instantly into your Discovery Control Center.

Discovery.Portal provides the intelligence you need to make informed decisions about the software on your network – Should it be there?  Do we have multiple applications doing the same job? Is this program a security risk?

In addition, users have the ability to add their own comments and observations about the software to assist other users in the Discovery community.

*Discovery.Portal is available as an optional subscription payment to all Centennial Discovery users.

Click on the screenshot below for a larger image.

Discovery.Security Advisor (Please see editions comparison table)

Think your network is clean? Think again. With Security.Advisor, organisations have a unique opportunity to turn 100 percent visibility of IT assets into a detailed understanding of the security threats hidden on the network.

When it comes to running secure IT systems, understanding how published security risks and fixes apply to your network can be a real nightmare: How many machines on the network need the latest Microsoft patch applied? Where are those Cisco switches that need a firmware upgrade?

Thanks to its ability to track all software and hardware across the organization, Security.Advisor can pinpoint the exact location of security risks on the network.  Ranking risks by criticality and volume allows administrators to focus efforts on applying fixes where they are needed most

Software Vulnerabilities

Thanks to its market-leading software recognition engine, combined with a continually-updated database of known security vulnerabilities, Discovery’s Security.Advisor is ideal for pinpointing the exact location of applications that pose a risk to the organization.

Security.Advisor covers many of the top software vendors and ranks vulnerabilities by criticality and volume. Where possible, Security.Advisor links directly to patches and remedial advice from the vendors.

Firmware Vulnerabilities

In addition to monitoring the network for software vulnerabilities, Security.Advisor can also warn administrators when hardware devices such as routers, firewalls and other network appliances require patching to combat dangerous security flaws.

Greynet Software Detection

Security.Advisor helps organisations maintain a healthy network by highlighting the presence of potentially dangerous or unwanted applications on users’ PCs. These software programs can pose a threat to the organization in the form of:

Security Risks
Applications such as Peer-to-Peer file sharing, remote access and password cracking tools

Productivity
Games, gambling software and adult-related applications can indicate that some users are not working to their full productivity.

Security.Advisor’s database of ‘greynets’ can help administrators pinpoint unwanted files on the network, or allow organisations to create their own lists of unacceptable applications which require administrator attention.

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Discovery.Visual (*Please see editions comparison table)

Sometimes the easiest way to understand something is to see it with your own eyes.  From a general overview of the entire network, down to understanding PCs at the component level, Discovery.Visual* helps IT staff, managers and executives fully scope and understand their IT estate by dynamically presenting all discovered assets in a graphical format.

This enables users to quickly assess the relationships between PCs and switches; compare the status of machines; determine the extent of software deployments and much more.

With the adage that ‘a picture paints a thousand words’, Discovery.Visual helps managers:

• Make better IT decisions
  Full network visualization based on an accurate and dynamic view of the current network status enables faster and better IT decisions.
   

• Plan migrations, upgrades and capacity forecasts
  Plan and monitor IT projects visually – use colour-codes to follow the progress of projects and spot potential problems before they impact on delivery
   

• Manage IT service optimization and risk mitigation
  Identify the possible impact of network changes and systems downtime; immediately access user, software and configuration data on all PCs and hardware assets

Discovery.Visual is based on standard Microsoft Visio technology, and as such no special training or skills are required beyond an understanding of the Visio interface.

*Discovery.Visual can be purchased separately to work with any supported version of Discovery.

Click on a screenshot below to see the full image.

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