IT Operations Success Requires Knowing Your Assets

It’s surprising how many times I hear weeks or even months old inventory data driving all sorts of projects and even security-related processes. You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint and full inventory of supplies. Why would you embark on an IT project with out-of-date inventory?

With Tanium, finding the most up-to-date information about your endpoints is merely a matter of asking what you want.

Legacy operations tools result in months-old, static inventory

With legacy endpoint management tools, like SCCM, this information is gathered through an inventory process that is conducted once per week. In these legacy operations environments, inventory data is almost instantly out of date due to the dynamic nature of endpoints. A DBA must then be engaged to extract information. And since it’s a database, extending it with additional data points is costly and time-consuming. Many organizations might schedule updates from legacy tools to their CMDBs. These updates are only performed on a weekly or monthly basis due to the time and server resources it takes to gather data.

Increase project success with the inventory data you need

Tanium garners inventory directly from live endpoints within seconds. Reporting in Tanium does not require DBA skills. You simply ask a question. Extend questions to new fields with hundreds of out-of-the-box sensors and the ability to craft custom ones for unique needs.

Tanium users leverage current inventory to fuel many projects and processes. For example, we have several customers that are upgrading to Windows 10. To properly plan migration they need accurate and up-to-date software inventory for software purchasing and upgrades.

Another customer wanted to decommission Windows 2003 servers. The project required 10 to 15 data points on each server (including running services, users logged in, DNS, active connections). With Tanium, the project took a few hours. Without Tanium, they thought the project might take months.

The Tanium Asset product module extends live system data in Tanium Core Platform with offline systems to give a holistic view. Tanium Asset also enables data export into a CMDB as frequently as multiple times per day. Within Tanium Asset, additional context can be added from external data sources, including warranty details or other procurement information.

Putting it all together
With the Tanium Architecture and Tanium Asset, we can provide detailed inventory and asset management information using an easy to learn interface. Tanium Asset is an integral part of the Tanium Operations Suite, which is designed to transform IT operations through speed and simplicity.

This is the third blog in our series covering Tanium for IT Operations. Read our previous two installments here:

1. 1. It’s Time to Modernize IT Operations. Business Resilience Depends on It.
   2. IT Operations Starts with Visibility to All Devices

To find out more about Tanium Asset specifically, please visit our product page, or reach out to us at [email protected].

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About the Author: Tim Mintner, Senior Director of Technical Account Management. Over the past 20+ years, Tim has worked in IT Operations with organizations ranging in size from a few hundred to several hundred thousand computers. Tim has had roles as both a developer and an implementation consultant and has spoken at Microsoft conferences in the US and Europe on Operating System Deployment and IT Management.