As the number of assets increases through combinations of software- and hardware-based solutions, ensuring a secure, compliant and reliable IT infrastructure has never been more challenging. Every asset in an infrastructure constitutes a potential risk, but with CNS you get a unique overview of all assets, contracts, and licenses. This way, you get to stay ahead of business and be proactive about risk management, procurement, budgeting, and compliance strategy planning. So, maybe CNS could be your strongest asset?
Risk Management
– CMDB: Asset control with an option to automate through the Conscia API to integrate into your own business applications
– Service Strategy: The right item, with the right SLA on the right location aligned with the operational plan
– Goal: Operational excellence gained through transparency
Financial Predictability
– Lifecycle: Budget forecasting, and service contract maintenance
– Technology roadmap: Real-time strategy discussions and decision making around technologies, to ensure future-proof design
Audit Compliance
– Security: Predict and asses the vulnerability impact on serial number level, to ensure correct documentation to use in Audits
– Tech Roadmap: Create your software strategy to ensure consistency and mitigate security risks
- Why CNS
- CNS Insights – Inventory Dashboard
- CNS Insights – Lifecycle Dashboard
- CNS Insights – Software Dashboard
- Best Practices
- Restful API
- API – Collector
- API – Compare
Here, asset management is automated to the greatest possible extent with compliance and security in focus through best practice advisories.
Inventory dashboard is about ensuring alignment against the service strategy.
Do you have your assets registered on the right locations?
Do you have the right service levels on the right assets?
Total number of assets
The aggregated number of assets from CNS and the Collector, that is included in the Insights area. Refer to support slides to elaborate on that
Number of service levels in use
The count of unique service levels in use for the assets that is included in the Insights area.
Number of Cisco registered Site Ids
The total number of unique Site Ids that CISCO has registered across the customers install base. This is the RMA address. And by that crucial to ensure the operation in case of an incident that triggers a hardware replacement. If changes is needed, this is done on the Cisco site, and CNS/Insights will be updated when changes are received (Next day from Cisco changes location)
Oldest asset from the Inventory in years
Age is calculated from Ship date from Cisco when this is known. If not known, it is calculated from the serial number that holds information about the production week/year. The few items that do not follow this logic, are excluded.
Total number of assets
The aggregated number of assets from CNS and the Collector, that is included in the Insights area. Refer to support slides to elaborate on that
Total number of assets impacted by LDoS
The share of the total number that is already impacted or already announced Last Date of Support. This is the final date of which a replacement unit can be requested. After this date, the equipment will be unsupported – both from a replacement but also support/software – the hardware is obsolete, and introduces an operational risk, that have to be handled on the customer side if the customer keeps the equipment in operation.
Total number of known migration products
This is the share of the ”Total number of assets impacted by LDoS” to the left where a migration product is known. The migration product is suggested from the Cisco side, and the Conscia logic ensures that we suggest the newest available in the LDoS notification range.
Total value of the know migration products
If a migration product is available, we can calculate the price. This is the total number of the known migration products = budget price. The price is CISCO list price in USD without any discounts or margins applied.
Total number of assets
The aggregated number of assets from CNS and the Collector, that is included in the Insights area. Refer to support slides to elaborate on that
Number of assets running software
This number is the share of the total number of assets, that is part of the software scope AND have returned a software version in the Collector inventory AND have a Conscia recommendation to compare against.
Total number of unique software version
This is the total number of unique software versions that the collector has returned accross all technologies. The column chart shows the same numbers slit into technologies, with the option to drill down into product families
Total number of recommended software versions
This is peer data, to match the possible number of software version to get down to. The number is the total number of unique Conscia recommended software versions across all products and technologies compared the ”Total number of unique software version” to the left.
Best practice addresses:
- The number of software versions in use in the install base and the Conscia recommended software version that fits the specific product.
- Lifecycle information on all assets, where an announcement has been published. This normally gives up to 5 years of outlook, to know how the impact will affect your install base. The application also suggests migration products and budget pricing for the new products to be able to do budget forecasting.
- Software vulnerabilities for Cisco assets sorted out to what is affecting your install base specifically, with assessment option for audit purpose.
- Other non-software-vulnerability announcements that could be relevant for the operation of the product. This could be both software and hardware related.
As Conscia Customer you can query to get all the latest changes in the install base by date range, or query by serial number, to get a specific status. This could, for example, be used in your own incident process, or as an integration solution to your own CMDB.
With the optional addition of the collector, the automation also includes updating of hostnames, IP addresses, SNMP location and actual software level of the assets. The collector is the validation of the contractual agreement is still aligned with the real world.
- Get CNS data integrated with your own business applications
- Automated Asset management linked to your CMDB
- Full transparency from vendor contract center, with daily updates
- Data is filtered to include lifecycle relevant units only
gives valuable insights into the collector findings and enables the organisation to assess the contractual agreement against the collector findings. The two sources of data give the best total view of your assets and enable discission-makers to know the exact install base on a continuous basis.
