Computer
World
January 30, 1998
ASSET MINDER TRACKS INFO
As president of Jewelstone Systems Inc., a
software developer specializing in mutual fund
applications, Rob Massaar needed to get an exact
picture of his company's IT infrastructure.
"I wanted to be able to say to my
accountant: Give me a list of all our assets. Let
me see everything on paper," Massaar said.
"Over the last two years our company has
grown quite a bit and we had no way of accurately
tracking everything."
In order to remedy that problem, Massaar turned
to Toronto-based PC Imageware Corp. and its Asset
Minder Pro IT inventory software, and now he has
no problem providing his insurance agent with a
list of every IT asset.
In the first commercial release, Asset Minder Pro
2.0 runs under Windows 95 or NT and tracks and
records not only hardware acquisitions and moves,
software versions and updates, but also softer
information such as warranty, leasing and
maintenance information for an enterprise's
entire computing fleet.
"With the number of mobile workers in the
new economy, and the growing number of multiple
computing environments under one roof, nobody
really knows what they have," said PC
Imageware president Nick Francis. Especially with
the release of Windows 95, nobody really knew
what their upgrade path was - everybody went
around with a screwdriver and tried to figure out
exactly what they had and what they needed to
upgrade."
Besides just storing information, Asset Minder
also works in conjunction with bar coding and
security sign-out systems and its contact book
allows e-mail or Web addresses to be
automatically hot-linked. Asset Minder's alarm
feature can even be programmed to pop-up and
notify the manager when leases are coming due or
when it is time to perform regularly scheduled
maintenance.
"Many managers just go out on the network
and gather up information about the hardware and
software that is on the LAN, but that just
provides a picture in time," Francis said,
"it doesn't tell you what's in storage, or
what's not connected to the LAN at that point, or
what needs to be turned-in from a person who is
leaving the company. Asset Minder brings
everything under one roof."
Craig Twigger, development manager of Richmond
Hill, Ont.'s Deevan Computer Services Inc., an
asset management and year 2000 consultancy
agency, agreed on the need to centralize asset
management capabilities.
"Most corporations don't have an asset
management program and a great majority of those
that do have systems in place that are too
overblown."
For those reasons, he likes Asset Minder Pro as
an "easy-to-get-into system." Deevan
president Vince Forrestal agreed.
"A lot of companies try to get into the best
practices all at once, but it is best not to
attempt to do that in one fell swoop. Asset
Minder offers an important stepping stone and
gives them a great repository."
Coming complete with it's own FoxPro database,
Asset Minder Pro allows asset information to be
scanned in, transferred through OLE attachments
or inputted directly. As PC Imageware president
Nick Francis explained, those options provide
variety in the type of information the system can
store.
Asset Minder Pro Server, including the
Administrator and a single user licence, retails
for $399. PC Imageware in Toronto is at
1-888-462-4392.
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