Managing Software Assets in ITAM and SDM (Best Practices)

Products

• CA IT Asset Manager
• CA Software Asset Manager (CA SAM)
• ASSET PORTFOLIO MGMT- SERVER
• CA Service Management - Asset Portfolio Management
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

CORA handles software assets and hardware assets differently. As Service Desk does not deal with software assets, all the software assets created by UAPM should not be marked as CI and managed by UAPM only.

Environment

Release:
Component: ARGWEB

Resolution

Managing Software in ITAM and SDM

Software assets within CA IT Asset Manager and Asset Portfolio Management reflect the licenses purchased while CMDB typically captures software as discovered instances (i.e. installations). As a result of these differences, CA recommends the following for managing software assets:

• For all ITAM/APM software assets, the CI flag should not be selected (i.e. Is_CI = 0) and the 'managed by APM' flag should be selected (i.e. ufam=1).
  
  
• All CI records are created in SDM/CMDB, if existing ITAM/APM hardware assets become CIs, the selection of the CI flag (i.e. Is_CI =1) should occur within SDM/CMDB.
  
  
• If you want to prevent ITAM/APM users from making software assets CIs (i.e. Is_CI = 1), make the CI flag read-only. Please note, if you make the CI flag read-only in ITAM/APM and have the possibility of existing ITAM/APM hardware assets becoming CIs, you will need to ensure the "managed by APM" flag is turn off, so a SDM/CMDB user can select the CI flag (i.e. Is_CI = 1) within SDM/CMDB.
  
  
• For existing customers who may have ITAM/APM software assets with the CI flag selected (i.e. Is_CI = 1), a script (Unzip reset_software_assets.zip file attached) is available to remove the CI flag selection and add the "managed by APM" flag selection to all ITAM/APM software assets initially created in ITAM/AP. This script aligns with the recommendations above. Before running this script, we recommend you analyze your existing software assets to understand the impact of making these global changes to your ITAM/APM software assets.

Steps to apply the script:

1. Stop SD and UAPM
   
   
2. Backup ca_owned_resource and nr_com tables, this are the only two tables touched by the script.
   
   
3. Run the reset_softwre_assets script, update the user (ServiceDesk) if needed. See comments in script to make the user change.
   
   
4. Run coracleanup.