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The most valuable feature is asset management. There are different features in the product, but we use only asset management to discover software and hardware information for all the devices.
Although it helps us ensure compliance with CA SAM integration, I'd want good information for all UNIX and virtual devices and a thin client for software and hardware discovery.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
It helps us discover where software is installed. It helps us realize the inventory and ensure compliance with the integration with CA SAM. After that, we can measure the license usage and the financial position for the enterprise.
What needs improvement?
For the future, I want to have good information for all UNIX and virtual devices. At this time, ITCM doesn’t take all of the information on virtual platforms. Another point – ITCM must be integrated in solutions that manage mobile devices such as smart phones.
If possible, it would be nice to have a thin client for software and hardware discovery – a simple, light agent. At this time there is only a heavy agent and when we install the agent on devices, it is resource intensive.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. Only one problem with the performance database: there is only one database for all devices and inventories, and sometimes it stresses the system.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Good. I can separate all of the functions – ITCM is realized with three levels. The agent on all of the devices, a scalability server collects information for up to 1000 devices. We have also one or two central servers that collects information from the scalability server. It’s possible to expose all of our infrastructure.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is good. The team is reactive and always gives us a good solution when we have a problem.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We added ITCM because we didn’t have a solution for our UNIX servers. We are now also using ITCM for Windows servers, because the signature catalogue for product discovery is better in ITCM than SCCM.
What about the implementation team?
It was difficult because we have so many kinds of devices -- UNIX, Windows, etc., and we must concentrate many people when we installed the solution. It’s complex to manage all of these resources.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We select the vendors that offer the best features of the product first and foremost. After that we look to see if the vendor has a good support team.
We also looked at IBM TADD. We selected ITCM and CA SAM for discovery of information on desktops and servers; the ITCM agent is lighter than the TADD agent which consumes more system resources.
When we realized our project for software asset management, we bought CA SAM – that was the most important product, but CA proposed that we go with an ITCM+SAM package, but for us the most important product was SAM.
We use ITCM to discover information about all of our platforms.
What other advice do I have?
We have many problems with UNIX agents. It’s not stable. The Windows agent is stable and works perfectly, but that’s not the case for UNIX. We made many changes with the help of CA to reduce the problems with UNIX agents for inventory and the stability of the agents. We still have issues.
Prepare for the installation of the agents. Find a group of people to be in charge of defining the scope of installation. You must have a good understanding in order to prepare for agent installation.
