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I happened upon Dennis’ description of BDNA Insight, and, as Vice President of Technology at BDNA, I was very pleased by his recommendation. Given Dennis’ pedigree and experience, I see this as validation of our long held belief that IT inventory is the foundation of effective IT. Specifically, that with good IT inventory, organizations will be able to enable the processes, accelerate the projects and monitor the policies necessary to drive business value from their IT investments.

BDNA is in an interesting position. The “Big Guys” have all created large, suite-based offerings to address the weighty problems of business service management, IT asset management, IT service desk and other processes. Smaller vendors of these process solutions have developed highly focused offerings that delve deep into ITIL process automation or service management catalogs. Niche vendors have honed their tools to address specific projects and policies, such as vendor audits, consolidation/moves and virtualization.Despite their successes, all these products are predicated on successfully answering a simply stated but agonizing complex question: what do I have?

IT inventory is the dirty job of the IT industry. Counting desktops, tracking server patches, identifying printers and network gear, and measuring software compliance is not a job any of us wanted in grade school. Additionally, gathering that data is never the goal. Instead, the goal is to enable a higher process or project by feeding it comprehensive, accurate and immediate IT inventory information. Unfortunately, most vendors have not answered that basic question, which puts the broader initiative at risk.

BDNA Insight was designed from day one to solve this problem, and today, we find ourselves alone at the bottom of this value stack. BDNA Insight’s patented, non-intrusive discovery engine and unique catalog driven applications provide the foundational IT inventory required to drive business value. This is not a forum to attempt to sell you on the merits of our product. However, if you have ever struggled with capturing a comprehensive and accurate IT inventory, we would welcome the opportunity to prove to you – at no cost – that BDNA Insight is unique.

Thanks for the hat tip, Dennis. We’ll keep our eyes on your site.