Here is a great article out of Network Magazine
MAY 1998 CONTENTS > BUSINESS CASE >
Managed Assets Mean Business at
PeopleSoft
A year ago, PeopleSoft could only guess at its IT
assets. Now, with Tangram's Asset Insight, the
company has a clear view of its resources and has cut
its cost of ownership.
by Katrina Glerum
Len Cook, workstation engineer for Pleasanton, CA-based PeopleSoft, has every reason to
glow. He has just overseen the deployment of Tangram's (Cary, NC) Asset Insight asset
management software to PeopleSoft's global network. Six thousand workstations are now
automatically reporting their inventories to a single database, and, by the second quarter of
1998, the company's finance department will have a clear picture of the IT assets throughout
the firm. For a company with 100 million dollars in IT assets and tens of millions of dollars in
annual IT expenditures, such knowledge can cut the cost of IT ownership significantly. (For
more information on asset management, see the tutorial "Asset Management, Part 1," by Lee
Chae.)
THE ASSET CONFUSION
NIGHTMARE
How many computers do we have? Where are
they? What are their components and configurations?
Are they leased or owned? What maintenance
contracts do we have? What software is installed, and
what are we actually using? Is it all licensed? When do
the licenses expire? What are the hidden hardware
costs required to upgrade our software?
Any company with significant IT assets knows
how critical managing these assets is to the bottom
line, yet most firms have only vague estimates for
these questions. That was the case a year ago at
PeopleSoft. A market leader in manufacturing
client-server applications for accounting, human
resources, and distribution systems, with over 6,000
employees, 2,200 clients, and revenues of over $800
million in 1997, PeopleSoft is one of the fastest growing
companies in the United States, according to Fortune
Magazine. As you might expect, given its business, the
company has always been proactive about managing
its distributed network. Even so, the last time it
attempted to inventory its IT equipment, it had to turn to
a physical method of accounting-a team of people
visited every single desk with a barcode wand.
The problems with barcoding are legion. The
process is not only time-consuming, expensive, and
tedious, but it also reveals little or nothing about
fundamentals like hard drive space, RAM, or OSs. In
PeopleSoft's case, another issue made such a physical
inventory virtually useless. About 90 percent of its
employees are nomadic users, which means they
connect to the network only when they come into the
office or dial up through Remote Access Service (RAS)
modem connections.
"How do you barcode something when you
don't even know where it is? You can't," says Cook.
"You have to ask users to enter the information
manually," which leads to such problems as data-entry
errors and noncompliance. "Doing inventory by
barcode provides very little data at an extremely high
cost," he adds.
FINDING A SOLUTION
It was Wes Clark, manager of PeopleSoft's
workstation engineering department, who recognized
that a software asset management tool was required.
Clark, who is known for solving problems before
anyone else knows they exist, is responsible for
implementing a comprehensive workstation
standardization program for the company, and the
lack of a thorough asset tracking system was
hindering the effectiveness of his planning. So, in
early 1997 he hired a team of contractors to help him
find the right asset management system, then hired
Cook to manage the project.
In addition to the workstation team's requirements, Clark identified the critical business
needs that had to be addressed. Accounting managers wanted to know the value and location
of IT assets, as well as licensing issues, while department managers wanted to be able to get
a snapshot of the resources available to their employees. The business urgency was partly
due to the fact that PeopleSoft was just beginning to move from a policy of leasing to
purchasing its PCs. Any rise in the cost of ownership, such as longer term maintenance
contracts, hardware licenses, an increased likelihood of upgrading rather than turning over
equipment, and issues related to depreciation, makes reliable asset tracking more valuable.
With its high percentage of nomadic users, PeopleSoft required a system that could
initiate inventory reports from the client. Some asset tracking systems require the server to
actively investigate machines on the network, presumably in the middle of the night when
users are away from their desks. Obviously, this wouldn't work for dial-up users. In addition,
the company needed a system that would generate a small report packet so that dial-up users
wouldn't be inconvenienced by long data transfers.
PeopleSoft also needed an asset management solution that required minimal or
nonexistent user interaction, consumed minimal resources, and supported a variety of
operating systems (Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 3.1, Macintosh, and Unix). In
addition, the system needed to track changes in asset inventories, file reports into existing
databases, and implemented without disrupting the company's current system for building and
maintaining workstations.
Beyond these technical requirements, PeopleSoft's decision-making process was guided
by one other concern that is as integral to its functioning as its technology: Whatever the
company chose had to be a "cultural fit."
People just love going to work for PeopleSoft. This year the company ranked 20th in
Fortune Magazine's list of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Cook is not unusual
in commenting, "When you get up to go to work in the morning, you really want to have fun."
This atmosphere didn't come about by accident, of course; it has been actively fostered
through corporate policies that grant employees trust and autonomy. The relevance of this to
asset tracking, Cook says, is that much of the asset tracking software out there acts like Big
Brother, manipulating files, monopolizing the machine, or snooping on usage habits. Whatever
package PeopleSoft chose would have to maintain that critical employee-corporation
relationship.
COOK FINDS INSIGHT
When Cook was hired in April 1997 to oversee the project, he had already lived several
careers. He insists it was a natural progression that led him from 17 years as a photojournalist
to taking commercial photos of Silicon Valley wares to running a network installation company
to his current position at PeopleSoft. In addition to asset management administration, Cook is
responsible for implementing Rational Software's (Cupertino, CA) SQA Robot automated
testing system and overseeing quality assurance for workstation builds.
By the time Cook arrived on the PeopleSoft scene, preliminary product evaluations had
established Tangram's Asset Insight as the leader in a field that included Apsylog, Microsoft,
Tally Systems, and Tivoli Systems. "It was Tangram's contract to lose," Cooks says, and his
job was simply to "preside over Tangram's success or loss." He diplomatically adds that he
had no criticisms of the other products, which all "seemed like they would do what they said
they could do," but Tangram's system seemed to be the best fit for PeopleSoft's needs.
ASSET INSIGHT FUNDAMENTALS
The Asset Insight tracking architecture has four components: client, server, Data Manager,
and Asset Viewer. The client is installed on any workstation or server that reports an
inventory. The server is installed on any machine that gathers client reports and delivers them
upstream, or that collects upstream instructions to be distributed to clients. The Data Manager
handles data entry to the asset repository database, recording only the changes in inventory
details, which enables historical tracking. The Asset Viewer is a GUI for accessing the
database and generating reports. It can be installed on multiple machines (see Figure 1).
Asset Insight uses an Oracle ODBC database (Workgroup Server 7.0) as the asset
repository. Its open architecture allows SQL queries to extract data for use in other enterprise
databases.
Asset tracking is enabled through the use of Discovery Modules, which are programs
that run on the client at inventory time. They investigate the machine and generate the
inventory file, which is then sent to the server. Inventory can be set to run either periodically
or only at boot time.
PEOPLESOFT'S IMPLEMENTATION
"We want to know what kind of hardware platform we have out there, what kind of drive
space we have available, what kind of processors are out there, and what kind of RAM is out
there," explains Cook. "We want to know license issues so we can manage costs."
While Asset Insight's Discovery Modules can automatically identify and report on
hundreds of hardware and software components, as well as over 3,500 software
applications, PeopleSoft chose to limit its inventory to a couple dozen software applications; a
"laundry list" of hardware components such as RAM, processor, hard drive capacity, hard
drive capacity remaining, and external drives, and software components like configuration
files, OS revision number, and network parameters.
In addition, Asset Insight reports various nondiscoverable data, such as serial number
and asset tag ID of the machine, user name, business unit, and office location, which are input
as parameters either at build time or when the user first uses the program. PeopleSoft does
not monitor personal files, browser caches, bookmarks, or usage patterns. The Asset Insight
client then simply reports the existence of these items to the central Data Manager, which
compares the reports to the repository and records changes. Not only do newly purchased or
installed components appear automatically without user interaction, but theft and piracy, were
they to occur, would also appear.
Asset Insight is scheduled to run weekly at noon on every workstation in the company.
This particular time was chosen because of the high number of nomadic users; a midday time
increases the likelihood that the machines would be turned on when the inventory runs. The
inventory runs as a low-priority process in the background, consuming about 7 percent of the
processor capacity. When the inventory is complete, the workstation transmits its report
immediately or at the next dial up.
Because the first inventory is run on a machine before it even leaves PeopleSoft's build
room, and because "noon" is relative to the user's time zone, reports are staggered fairly
evenly. At peak time there might be a queue of about 100 reports waiting to be processed by
the Data Manager, although there are generally only about a dozen or so. The server running
Data Manager and the asset repository, which also holds other financial databases, hasn't
been taxed by Asset Insight since the system went into operation.
The Asset Viewer is installed on managers' PCs to let them view snapshots of their
departments' resources. Data from the asset repository is imported into the finance
department's primary database.
IMPLEMENTATION AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION
PeopleSoft's project timeline was planned in three stages. By the end of the first stage, Asset
Insight was expected to run on a Windows NT test database with a small group of test
workstations. By the end of the second stage, Asset Insight was to be running on a Unix
development server to inventory the workstation engineering department and the workstation
steering committee. Companywide implementation was to be completed by January 1998-a
target which was narrowly missed.
PeopleSoft would not release budget figures, but it did reveal that it purchased licenses
for at least 6,000 workstation clients, several thousand servers, one Data Manager, and one
database, as well as up to 50 Asset Viewers. Deployment of Asset Insight was planned to
take no more than 60 percent of one person's time.
The initial Windows NT database was completed on schedule and smoothly enough.
Asset Insight seemed to install and uninstall without disrupting anything, so a functional
database (a Unix server running a database) was established for a single floor (the
workstation engineering department) and the workstation steering committee.
While the initial installation went smoothly, after some testing it became apparent that
Asset Insight needed to be altered to fit PeopleSoft's established systems. Three notable
conflicts came up. The first conflict concerned personalizing the software. For example, to
make the data that Asset Insight collected more appropriate, PeopleSoft wanted to change the
user data entry interface (the screen that pops up on the user's machine the first time Asset
Insight runs, requesting input or confirmation of some information). Cook wanted to be able to
edit this screen so that it looked like a PeopleSoft application, but he discovered he couldn't do
that without Tangram's assistance.
The other two conflicts concerned the Asset Insight ID. Tangram's software automatically
assigns this ID to client machines to act as a key field, which marks the position of the client in
the asset repository database. Asset Insight generated this ID as a random number when the
Asset Insight software was installed, and this process had a couple of undesirable
consequences for Cook's team, since PeopleSoft tends to wipe out and rebuild workstations
regularly.
The first ID problem was that to save the ID, the workstation engineers either had to
extract it from the database or back it up before the rebuild; in both cases, they had to
manually re-enter the ID when they reinstalled the Asset Insight software on the rebuilt PC.
Cook wanted Asset Insight to recover its own ID or, instead of generating a random number,
generate an ID from the client's own MAC address.
Second, PeopleSoft finds that the best way to maintain its strict workstation standard is
to build a master machine and then clone any number of user workstations. If the ID is
generated at installation, every clone would get the same ID as the master machine where
Asset Insight is installed, rendering the inventory useless until Asset Insight is removed and
reinstalled on the clone. Cook wanted Asset Insight to generate its ID at first inventory rather
than at installation. In such a setup, the clone could be built with Asset Insight already installed,
an inventory could be run on it in the build room, and the new workstation would have a
unique ID.
Because Tangram was upgrading its software at the time (switching from Visual Basic to
C++), it was reluctant to invest time in rewriting the Visual Basic code. Nevertheless,
Tangram's engineer's were very responsive in helping Cook come up with workarounds, and
they eventually included all three changes in the current 2.3 release of Asset Insight. "We now
have a product that is very similar to what we really wanted in the first place," says Cook.
Once the Asset Insight data entry and database had been adjusted to suit PeopleSoft's
needs, Cook tested the new setup on his floor, and then began rolling out Asset Insight
globally on a domain-by-domain basis.
This is where the trickiest part of Cook's job came into focus. Bearing in mind that a high
priority of his project was to maintain the open environment the company fosters, he sent out
an e-mail explaining what the software was, what it was intended to do, and-more
importantly-what it was not going to do. The e-mail had a button that recipients could push to
initiate an installation over the network. Despite the fact that installation was voluntary, Cook
says his department enjoyed 100 percent compliance and zero negative feedback out of 5,000
people. "In my experience that goes beyond exceptionally mellow," he says.
He admits there were a few bad installations. Machines were disabled or developed
annoying performance problems, but engineers determined that those problems were related
to configuration issues on the machines themselves, which Asset Insight helped point out.
Cook says, "Through Asset Insight, we did not actually cripple any machines. The blue screen
of death is something we managed to avoid."
THE BIG GAIN
Now that a solid asset management system is in place, the gains are beginning to roll in. At a
minimum, Cook says, Asset Insight will help PeopleSoft realize "a 2 percent saving on the cost
of ownership, just by being able to point hardware in the right direction at the right time."
Industry analysts have put the savings figure at $300 to $2,000 per desktop, meaning that for
a mid-sized company with 5,000 workstations, a company will save from $1.5 million to $10
million by using an enterprisewide asset management system.
PeopleSoft has a snapshot of the current or historical IT situation, so that "when RAM
requirements increase, for example, we will be able to look at the company, find out what
machines are upgradable, and what the cost of upgrading will be-all with a software tool,
almost on a real-time basis," says Cook.
For any assets not currently in the database, Cook can insert a new parameter into
Asset Insight and, within a week, have a snapshot of the entire company. PeopleSoft found
this function useful even before Asset Insight was fully implemented, when the company
entered a license negotiation with a vendor for a very expensive piece of software. This
software wasn't currently being inventoried, so Cook simply added it to the central list. Within
a week the new inventory request had propagated to all the machines on the company
network and reported the existence of this software without requiring any user interaction.
This knowledge puts PeopleSoft in a powerful position when negotiating with vendors.
"The picture is very clear to me," Cook says. "We want to figure out what we have and pay
for it, but we also want to know what we don't have and not pay for that. We're a software
vendor, so we are very sympathetic to other software vendors who complain that people are
using their product without paying for it." However, since the general tendency is for vendors
to overestimate software licenses and for customers to underestimate them, Cooks says that
from now on, "we negotiate from fact rather than estimates."
If it ever became necessary, the company could get that snapshot in a single day. "I don't
sit up late at night thinking, `Gee, what could we do that would cause us to trigger an
immediate global inventory?'" Cook says, "but the capability exists if we do need it."
WHAT'S COOKING NOW?
Cook says he will keep working on the asset management project until the upgrade to Asset
Insight 2.3 has been completed. This work takes only about 40 percent of his day and is
expected to continue to decline. After that, it will be turned over to the support organization.
In the future, the data from Asset Insight will be supplied to the Primus (Seattle) help desk
database through Infopump scripts. This will allow help desk personnel to bring up a screen
that shows a caller's complete configuration, or even trigger an inventory on the spot to help
pinpoint problems.
When asked what lessons he has learned from this process, Cook reserved his only
criticism for himself. "Next time I will develop a better communication sequence-let people
know what is going to happen when, and what they need to do to comply with this event." He
says he and his team made a good faith effort to do this, but they could have done better. "I
should have made it more clear that the software should not be installed over a RAS
connection, for example," he conceded. People who didn't read that far into his e-mail ended
up suffering a 40 minute download over the telephone line.
With words that make him the envy of technologists everywhere, Cook insists, "It's hard
for me to see how this process could have been improved because everyone involved did
their jobs so effectively." |
