IT Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Information Services

Quality Information Drives Actionable Business Outcomes

You’ve heard the old axiom that “information is power.” It is also a necessity in today’s fast-paced world that is driven by speeding up time to market with your products and services, complying with industry and regulatory standards, keeping your IT assets secure, and staying ahead of the competition. Whether you’re a busy CIO, CSO, VP of Infrastructure, Desktop Manager, or Server Manager, your job requires quality information in a timely manner to effectively do your job. You need this information quickly and consistently without depending on complicated, and antiquated, methods to obtain it.

When it comes to IT asset and print fleet management, access to comprehensive information about devices, uptime and service levels helps organizations reduce costs, optimize device usage, and drive operational efficiency.

Simply put, you need a single pane of glass enterprise view with drill down capabilities when you need it.

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CHE Consulting, Inc.’s IT CMDB Information Services address three key challenges within today’s enterprise IT environment

• High costs/expenses of delivering IT services
• Hidden risks associated with IT infrastructure security and compliance
• Operational inefficiency associated with obtaining quality data to support business decision making

How do we do it?  By identifying and reducing the cost of delivering IT services, analyzing and avoiding risk, and increasing operational efficiencies through:

• IT asset identification
• Industry and regulatory compliance
• Print environment intelligence

 

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How IT CMDB Information Services Meets Each of the Three Challenges

• Challenge #1: High costs of delivering IT services

  IT Asset Identification:

  

  In today’s complex enterprise IT environment, identifying and maintaining accurate asset inventories is a time consuming and expensive process.  Some companies use a combination of labor and IT tools to build their asset list, while others have made multi-million dollar investments in enterprise management software suites that offer CMDB as an integrated element.  We understand the time, effort, energy, and resources it takes to effectively manage your full array of IT assets.

  Below are some examples of cost reduction strategies that our IT CMDB Information Services support:

  ♦ Merging IT infrastructures following merger and acquisition activity
  ♦ Right-sizing licensing and support purchasing
  ♦ Standardization and enforcement
  ♦ Eliminating under-utilized or legacy applications
  ♦ Enterprise storage capacity analysis

• Challenge #2: Risk associated with IT Infrastructure security & compliance

  Compliance:

  Our services provide intelligent and historical compliance software and services to identify vulnerabilities and risks for Microsoft Windows computing devices.  These capabilities keep IT leadership and executives informed and knowledgeable so they do not have to deal with unknowns, processes or tasks that are not current.

  CHE Consulting, Inc. delivers a platform of intelligent and historical compliance software and services that deliver the following:

  ♦ Integration with the perpetually updated National Vulnerability Database (NVD) – a government maintained repository of all known hardware/software weaknesses
  ♦ Catalogues software identified weaknesses and vulnerabilities
  ♦ Compares and provides actionable information on each device’s current configuration against the NVD repository with ranked vulnerabilities and weaknesses
  ♦ Provides a method to document associated actions

  Print Fleet Security:

  Many organizations do not have a good answer to the following questions, how to you address security settings within your print fleet?  Do you rely on your Managed Print Service (MPS) provider?  Do you have any idea what you have?  Do you have any security measures implemented at all?

  Multi-Function Devices (MFD), printers and scanners can be susceptible to the following potential vulnerabilities:

  ♦ Access to the Internet
  ♦ Stored data on hard drives
  ♦ Email (in domain/outside domain)
  ♦ Download/upload software (applications)
  ♦ Open communications ports (e.g., FTP)
  ♦ USB drives

  The above-mentioned devices have built-in security settings to address risk, but often they are not set, or they get changed.

  CHE Consulting, Inc.  provides you with the following capabilities to ensure you are optimizing a secure print environment:

  ♦ Evergreen enterprise inventory as the foundational element
  ♦ Lifecycle asset management – end of life/disposal reporting
  ♦ Evergreen enterprise security settings reported
  ♦ Roadmap to sustainable security model, methodology, and maintenance program
  ♦ Records of compliance efforts maintained
  ♦ Optional remote maintenance of key enterprise settings
  ♦ Comprehensive reporting (e.g., top 10 devices with most weaknesses/least weaknesses, remediated security setting statistics, imaging devices by open port, device security setting state, to name a few)

• Challenge #3: Operational efficiency

  Print Environment Intelligence:

  We provide you with current data on all of your printing assets regardless of who the manufacturer or service provider is.  The information we provide will give you the detail you need to determine if your print program is effective and will also be invaluable in supporting your decisions for the future.  Our program is self-funding and will provide positive ROI on an annual basis.  CHE Consulting, Inc’s. IT CMDB Information Services provide the information, processes, and analytics necessary to manage your enterprise print environment.

  The solution is remotely implemented, administered, and delivered as a service by our team of Print and IT professionals.  The following list illustrates some of the key areas and uses that will be addressed within the enterprise print environment:

  ♦ Comprehensive enterprise print analytics
  ♦ Fleet inventory
  ♦ Fleet cost analysis
  ♦ Elimination of click count anomalies
  ♦ Manage consumable stock inventory/predictive ordering
  ♦ Vendor selection, renewal, management
  ♦ Uptime reporting
  ♦ Service level reporting