Single-System
Asset Management

Most large schools already use some sort of software for managing large depreciable assets such as building and air conditioning systems. What they don’t know is that the software they’re already relying on may be able to find gold in campus IT assets, as well. One company offering products that can be used for managing every type of asset on campus, from buildings to software license agreements and PDAs, is Sunflower Systems (www.sunflowersystems.com). Sunflower’s customer list includes a number of large government clients (including areas of the Departments of Justice and Education), and the University of California system.

Stanford University (CA), for one, implemented Sunflower 18 months ago, as part of a much larger campus overhaul of its financial management systems. The school is using the inventory asset management module (Sunflower Assets 3.7.1), and agreement assets module, among others, and is in the process of implementing the IT management module. Departments are required to use the capital equipment modules, but use of the IT module is discretionary.

According to Ivonne Bachar, director of the Property Management office at Stanford, her office’s objective is to offer the university a single repository of data that can be used for capital and sponsor-owned, as well as IT assets. Sunflower was appealing, she says, partly because it can interface with an Oracle (www.oracle.com) back-end database and financials. Stanford tracks IT assets and other items, she explains, including site licenses and software versions loaded on machines. The tracking software is also used for more complex monitoring: tracking the stewardship, accountability, and transaction history of sponsor-owned, donated, loaned, and leased equipment. It also helps with replacement planning and with the disposition of assets, she adds. Tracking how IT assets are disposed of when they are deemed ready for retirement can be hugely complex. Disposing of potentially hazardous equipment, following regulations like HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley, confidentiality concerns, and security issues all come into play.

Managing AV Assets

In the corporate world, IT asset management software is traditionally used for tracking hardware and software. But colleges and universities may also want to track other high-tech assets—especially audiovisual equipment and other digital accessories—simply because there’s so much of it to manage. Additionally, with some software packages, monitoring and remote control of media and instructional technology equipment can be accomplished in real time. That enables you to extend central help desk capabilities to classrooms through the same asset management system.

According to the University of Minnesota’s Classroom Technical Services department manager and engineer, Jim Gregory, there’s a long list of assets for which an IT or AV department might be responsible. That includes video and data projectors, laptop and fixed computers, digital cameras, touchscreens, Web cameras, PDAs, photoplay devices, and any sort of switch that can be computer-controlled. Without tracking and/or monitoring software, Gregory says, there’s simply no way a large institution can handle the sheer volume of equipment a network or AV administrator often is responsible for. With the right product, anything in the classroom that can be added to the network can be not only tracked, he says, but also controlled.

That’s evident at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus, where Gregory is an engineer and department manager for Classroom Technical Services, within the Office of Classroom Management. He uses AMX Meeting Manager (www.amx.com) to manage equipment in 65 buildings: 300 classrooms across three campuses, spread over seven-plus miles. The department uses Meeting Manager to track and troubleshoot every piece of equipment under its control—often allowing a repair to be scheduled before a problem hits. (Because classrooms are laptop-ready at the University of Minnesota, the software is used more to monitor the classrooms and ancillary devices than the computers themselves.) Once a Meeting Manager network is set up and all devices are connected, the software collects information from each classroom and sends it to a server for storage. At the university, the data can then be used to generate reports as specific as a printout of all rooms with projectors whose lamps are within 50 hours of burnout, for example. Or, system errors can be gathered from all projectors so that the central help desk can respond appropriately. Reports can be integrated into a scheduling system, allowing an administrator, for example, to track how much use a given piece of equipment gets—whether it’s a data projector, a computer, a VHS deck, a DVD player, or a camera. Gregory can then compile numbers for upper management, regarding how certain equipment is being used.

“We can then make informed decisions about our investments in technology,” he says. “Without this, we’d have to deal with everything anecdotally; you’d have no sense of what’s actually going on in the classroom.”

Another benefit of this type of IT asset management: Because the network is used to monitor classrooms 24 hours a day, seven days a week, “We can assign a tech to go out and fix a problem before classes start,” Gregory says. “That can happen before a faculty member even reports it. So, we can achieve a much higher uptime in the classroom.”

And in the event of a serious problem—unauthorized removal of a projector from the network, for example, or an extended outage—a text message can be sent to pagers and cell phones of specified staff members. If a theft occurs, a report can be sent directly to campus police.

Remotely Effective

At University of the South (TN), the small liberal arts institution where Wayne Bussell is the system administrator for computer labs and classrooms, an IT asset management suite, NetSupport (www.netsupportsoftware.com), and remote system management provided by NetSupport Manager, are saving the school both time and money. Even better, the savings started almost as soon as the products were installed.

Roughly four years ago, Bussell says, the school was running only Apple Macintosh computers. After a big push to move to PCs, he says, “there was no way I could visit every machine and do the upgrades necessary; I had to find something to automate it.”

Using NetSupport, installed in 2003, Bussell is currently managing 85 machines, and really likes the features and control it gives him. For example, the inventory control module can collect a complete software and hardware inventory from each computer. Bussell says savings were realized almost immediately: “Our return on investment was within a month.” The original cost of the entire suite: about $4,600 for 75 licenses.

After installation, the system works by creating a client installer package that immediately polls every machine on the network, returning asset data such as system name, manufacturer, memory size, serial number, workgroup, processor, network adapter, printers, hard drive size and available space, USB connectors, and much more. The software also can perform tasks like deleting files, or sending executable files for users to run.