Bill, here is a response to a e-mail (you will find my orginal e-mail after the response) that I sent to John Nelli of Tangram. I sent him it after reading your message
Troy
Mr. Hilsenroth,
The unique functionality of Tangram's Asset Insight product has been used
to successfully define the asset tracking market and gain industry mind
share. Asset tracking is defined as a solution that automatically tracks
enterprise-wide asset changes. An ideal solution (i.e., Asset Insight)
transparently takes "snapshots" of distributed hardware and software assets
on a regular basis and stores the asset information in an open repository.
This repository includes a current and historical perspective of IT assets,
enabling organizations to determine what their assets look like at any
point of time and evaluate their speed and direction of change. With this
asset information, organizations can manage Year 2000 risks, plan IT
expenditures, reduce help desk support time, monitor Internet usage, manage
software licenses, reduce suspicious asset activity, and so on.
Asset tracking is also essential for any asset management program. While
many companies are competing in the asset management marketwhich can
include anything from a network management solution to a help desk tool
Tangram positioned asset tracking as a fundamental first step toward any
asset management initiative. Namely, before organizations can implement an
asset management solution, they must be able to answer basic questions:
What assets do we currently have, where are they, and how are they
changing? With an asset tracking solution, these answers are readily
available in a central asset repository.
Tangram established asset tracking in response to an asset management
market, which can be anything from a procurement system, to a network
management solution, to a help desk tool, to a suite of products comprised
of several "best of breed" solutions. There are several vendors struggling
to gain mind share in the asset management market, creating a lot of
confusion and overlap between products. In creating asset tracking, Tangram
has successfully avoided much of this confusion.
Tangram has positioned asset tracking as a fundamental first step to any
asset management initiative. While this positioning has been successful,
Asset Insight has experienced some marginal overlap with complementary
products that fall into different segments of the asset management arena.
The following is a list of the primary products that we are associated
with:
Tally NetCensus - Discovery tool
Intel LANDesk - Discovery tool
McAfee Site Inventory - Discovery tool
Asset Software International (ASI) AssetPro - Discovery/Ownership
Management tool with modules for tracking procurement, contracts, licenses,
and other information
Apsylog Asset Manager - Discovery/Ownership Management tool with modules
for tracking procurement, contracts, licenses, and other information
Microsoft SMS - Systems and Network Management suite with discovery
IBM Tivoli TME 10 - Systems and Network Management suite with discovery
Though we have experienced competition from major players with product
suites, such as Microsoft and IBM Tivoli, they continue to present only a
marginal threat to Asset Insight's position given the following:
IBM Tivoli, Intel, and Microsoft are major players with numerous resources
and widespread market penetration. Many companies have already invested in
their technology and often do not recognize the need for Asset Insight. To
address this, Asset Insight will be positioned as a solution that leverages
organizations' current investments in these other technologies, while
providing numerous other benefits. Organizations are beginning to recognize
Asset Insight as a unique business-focused solution that is complementary
to the large product suites.
Our strategic partners program will integrate Asset Insight with key
solutions, creating co-opetition as described below.
In 1997, Tangram successfully expanded the depth of the Asset Insight
product and raised the asset tracking competitive playing field. Asset
Insight is both a solid, compelling business solution and a foundation
technology upon which the definition of asset tracking can be repeatedly
redefined. In 1998, we will leverage our position of leadership and
continue building and reinforcing the wall between Asset Insight and the
potential competition. Our competitive posture is one of co-opetition.
Rather than find ourselves in competition with major players and suite
vendors, we have chosen to develop strategic alliances. The goal of our
strategic alliance initiative is to develop interfaces with the top three
providers of the following client/server management products:
systems management tools
financial accounting systems
help desk systems
IT asset management systems
purchasing systems
The purpose of these interfaces is to raise the requirements for our
competitors and provide our customers with a quicker return on their Asset
Insight investment.
Asset Insight provides numerous advantages over competing technologies.
Areas where our competitors are weakest:
Incomplete enterprise support and discovery - To effectively manage
corporate assets, organizations must be able to discover detailed
information on every computer in the enterprise. Asset Insight remains the
only product to support the enterprise. Many other products do not support
UNIX, OS/2, and Macintosh, and they have inadequate discovery. For
instance, Microsoft SMS does not support UNIX, and it collects only 15% of
the data that Asset Insight collects. Asset Insight's comprehensive,
enterprise-wide support clearly distinguishes Tangram from other companies.
Limited one-time inventories and inaccessible information - Organizations
need accurate historical information that enables them to understand asset
trends, identify emerging problems, and forward plan requirements. Asset
Insight is the only solution that stores comprehensive historical
information in a central, easily accessible asset repository. Competitive
products perform one-time inventories that are immediately outdated, and
the information is often scattered among decentralized servers or on
individual workstations, rather than in a central repository.
Lack of analyses and trending information - To effectively manage the
enterprise, organizations need more than raw data; they need a solution
that analyzes their data for them, giving them immediate answers to
business questions. Asset Insight is still the only solution that provides
one-page analyses, which enable any usertechnical or non-technicalto
transform thousands of data points into a single report for decision
making. The data provided by competing products, on the other hand, is
extremely difficult to access and analyze. Intel LANDesk, McAfee Site
Inventory, and Tally NetCensus provide limited canned reports. SMS
requires complex queries just to abstract raw data from the system.
Additionally, since an essential component of the analyses is historical
information and competitive products do not track history, Asset Insight
remains far ahead of these other solutions in this area. This key
differentiator has enabled Tangram to market Asset Insight as a business
solution for senior executives, rather than a technology solution for IT
managers.
Difficult implementation and administration - Because organizations are
grappling with resource constraints, they demand solutions that are easy to
implement and provide a quick return on investment. Asset Insight is a
drop-in solution that is installed quickly and easily, and inventory
updates are automatically added to the central repository on a regular
basis. Other products, such as Microsoft SMS and Tivoli, are extremely
difficult to implement, requiring extensive time and resourcesestimated
implementation time frames range from several months to a year. Similarly,
products that simply do one-time inventories, such as Tally NetCensus,
require data to be manually compiled, reconciled, and analyzed, which is
time consuming and prone to errors.
Year 2000 support - A key way to reach accounts right now is to address the
Year 2000 problem in the distributed enterprise. Since organizations are
beginning to recognize that the Year 2000 can be devastating to their
workstations and servers, they need an immediate solution to help them
identify and address potential problems. Asset Insight includes Year 2000
analyses that enable organizations to assess at-risk assets, determine the
cost of correcting at-risk software, manage the correction process, and
audit the enterprise to ensure problems are not re-emerging. Other
vendors, on the other hand, offer one-time inventories to help
organizations determine what applications are in the enterprise. This
gives Asset Insight a strong advantage over other solutions.
Hopefully, in a long-winded way this has answered your questions. Thank
you for your interest in Tangram, if I can be of further assistance, please
do not hesitate to contact me.
Tks, John N. Nelli
----------
> From: Troy L. Hilsenroth
> To: jnelli@tesi.com
> Subject: question?
> Date: Thursday, December 11, 1997 11:09 PM
>
> Mr. Nelli
>
> Does Asset Insight have any particular competitive advantage over the
> other products in the asset management field?(HP, CA, Tivoli) Or, what
> are your selling points when approaching a contract where you have to
> compete against a rival?
>
> thank you
>
> Troy L. Hilsenroth |
