On November 15, 2011,
Lanamark announced Lanamark Suite 2012. The new release provides agent-less,
Services-Oriented Analytics for IT solution providers delivering desktop and data center solutions across physical and virtual infrastructure. Here is a summary of new features:
Multipoint Data AccessFrom a services delivery perspective, it is always more efficient for IT solution providers to analyze collected IT asset data on their premises. Going on-site is more expensive and hosting data elsewhere (e.g. Lanamark or VMware) is not always an option. The key value of this technology is that it enables all data access models:
- Enterprise: if data needs to be analyzed on client premises due to corporate, network or security policies
- Solution Provider: when data can be streamed to a public or private cloud managed by the IT solution provider
- Lanamark: if the solution provider prefers to have Lanamark host the data and downloads it for analysis
Based on survey of Lanamark partners, more than 80% prefer to have IT asset data to be streamed directly to them. Why? Because it allows them to accelerate services engagements and lower service delivery costs by not having to take an extra trip on-site or spend time convincing clients to send the data elsewhere. Furthermore, it alleviates the need to install analytics and reporting modules on client premises.
Asset IntelligenceHave you ever looked at raw data
returned by an operating system? It isn't pretty! Duplicate vendor names
(e.g. HP and Hewlett-Packard), trademark symbols and device drivers
pretending to be applications are just the beginning. There is no
context about hardware or software assets and no consistency because vendors report data in their own ways.
With Lanamark Suite,
raw data is history. Raw IT asset data is normalized and then enriched with additional business context. For
example, each machine is classified as a desktop, a laptop, a server or a virtual
machine.A machine with four processors becomes a machine with one
processor that is quad-core. A server now has other useful properties
such as age, warranty, power consumption, form factor and rack units. Device drivers and services that pretend to be applications are
classified as such and can be filtered out. Raw application processes
are mapped to application packages so that application usage (not just
installations) can be determined.
Segments and Business GroupsFor small IT environments, it is appropriate to analyze individual IT assets or look at aggregate metrics across the entire environment. However, this is not an option for larger environments with hundreds of servers and thousands of users. The new version enables IT solution providers to create custom segments and then assign users and machines into business groups within each segment. For example, segments for locations, business units, departments and user classes may be needed. Within departments, it may be necessary to group users by function (e.g. Sales, Marketing, Finance) and for locations, it may be valuable to split users and machines by geography. After users and machines have been split into business groups within each segment, then it's possible to perform analysis and reporting at the segment level. For example, aggregate CPU or memory usage across time with a split by department may be valuable in a high-level analysis .
Dependency MappingAnalyzing applications, users and machines
is valuable but understanding the relationships among them is critical. For example, it may be necessary to only see machines used by users in Finance. How can this be accomplished? First, a departmental segmentation needs to be created with a Finance business group. Users may then be assigned into the Finance group based on information integrated from
Active Directory. Finally, user-machine
dependencies can be analyzed to see which machines Finance users were actually using
during the course of data collection. Dependency mapping helps answers
questions such as:
- Which users are using a particular group of machines
- Which machines have a particular set of applications installed
- Which software applications does a particular group of users have access to
Extended Platform Support - No AgentsSupport for HP-UX, IBM AIX and Oracle Solaris has now been added. Unlike most tools that
can either look at desktop or data center assets, Lanamark Suite
enables IT solution providers to look at both asset types. Why is this
valuable? Installing one tool for analyzing
desktops and users, a second tool for looking at servers and a third
tool for profiling virtual infrastructure, creates more sales and
services overhead. It would be necessary to get approvals from a client to
deploy three different tools, allocate time and infrastructure resources
to deploy them and then consolidate results from three different
interfaces. And this does not include the overhead of providing training
and support to team members from three different vendors.
With Lanamark Suite, there is only one data collector for discovering and profiling
applications, users, desktops, servers and virtual infrastructure. Data
collection is agent-less, so there is no need to waste time going
through lengthy security reviews or worry about clients pointing
their finger for blanketing their environment with agents. Installation is quick and painless - no complex software deployments, no
resource-intensive virtual appliances and definitely no time-consuming
distribution of agents to target systems. Once the data is collected, there is one interface, one reporting engine and one place to look at all the data.
Thank You Many thanks to all customers and partners who pushed the boundaries of innovation at Lanamark and provided ongoing product feedback, reviews and field validation. If you'd like to learn more, visit our
corporate website, give us a call or
ask for a webinar.
We look forward to seeing more creative marketing from Liquidware Labs in 2011.
While explicit, the claim that "...all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected and disclosed to...government, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of government agencies, both domestic and foreign." in our opinion sounds simply draconian. Add the fact that now there is an agent sitting on every single machine under this privacy policy, the question is, how will this fly by any company's legal department?
