#hardware inventory

This is truer now, in the era of cloud computing, mobile devices, and the Internet of Things, than ever. Companies need to have a clear, accurate, and constantly-updated inventory of their hardware assets to know what their existing resources are and how they are leveraged.

“Yet, more than 80 percent of corporate enterprises still do not have a centralized and automated way to manage the physical, operational, and financial status of their IT assets, much less the relationships that those assets have to one another”, states the Understanding inventory, configuration, and IT asset management whitepaper from HP.

The current state of affairs is even more puzzling considering the number of available hardware inventory software tools that can help any company manage its hardware assets throughout their entire lifecycle right through to retirement and disposal. The goal of this article is to serve as a starting point for anyone who would like to implement a modern hardware inventory software solution to become more efficient and more competitive on the global market.

What Is Hardware Inventory Management?

Together with software inventory management, hardware inventory management is a subset of IT asset management, and it entails the management of the physical components of computers and computer networks, such as laptops, desktops, servers, routers, hubs, peripherals, printers, scanners, etc., from acquisition through disposal.

For many companies, hardware inventory management also means the monitoring of employee-owned devices that enter and leave the company network at random times. Surveys show that around 95 percent of employees bring at least one personal device to work, and it’s in the best interest of all companies that support the bring your own device (BYOD) policy to monitor the activity of all employee-owned devices.

What Are the Advantages of Hardware Inventory Software?

With a capable hardware inventory software solution, any company can quickly see a substantial return on investment, both financially and in terms of productivity. Virtually all hardware inventory tools make it possible to create detailed hardware inventory reports that can be tremendously useful when preparing for audits or when planning hardware purchases.

Instead of tasking the IT department with the time-consuming maintenance of network hardware inventory, it’s a much better idea to let a hardware inventory tool handle everything automatically. The data generated by the hardware inventory software will speed up Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for hardware requires or incidents. They will also help the IT department keep the entire information infrastructure running smoothly at all times.

What Are the Top 5 Best Network Hardware Inventory Tools?

All hardware inventory software solutions on this list are trusted by many enterprise clients and come with a comprehensive set of features. Still, some are better than others, and this is reflected by the order of this list.

1. Network Inventory Advisor

Network Inventory Advisor is a professional and highly polished hardware and software management software that takes software usability to the next level. We believe that virtually anyone could pick up Network Inventory Advisor and, in a few minutes, create a comprehensive inventory of all hardware and software assets on the company network. That’s because Network Inventory Advisor is designed to automatically scan hundreds of computers in a matter of minutes, pooling your in-house and your clients’ networks. Best of all, Network Inventory Advisor can be tested for up to 15 days without a charge.

2. Lansweeper

Lansweeper is a capable IT inventory tool with over 300 default network reports and agent-free scanning capabilities. While the tool is considerably less user-friendly than Network Inventory Advisor, it does come with an extensive knowledge base that goes over all of its options and features. Lansweeper supports all the common IT inventory features, such as SNMP network management or automated software deployment. To enjoy everything Lansweeper has to offer, you need to purchase the Ultimate edition, which can be a substantial purchase, depending on the total number of IT assets in your possession.

3. Spiceworks Inventory

Spiceworks Inventory is an out-of-the-box asset management system compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, UPS devices, storage, and more. It supports automatic hardware asset discovery, tracking, and comes with sophisticated reporting capabilities, which allow you to create customize reports that perfectly suit your needs. The functionality of Spiceworks Inventory can be extended using various add-ons, but the hardware and software inventory software solution can do virtually anything you may want from it out of the box. Spiceworks Inventory works best when used alongside other Spiceworks products, which are intended mostly for larger enterprises.

4. Open-AudIT

Open-AudIT is a powerful, intelligent reporting framework that enables information such as software licensing, configuration changes, non-authorized devices, capacity utilization, and hardware warranty status to be extracted and explored. Open-AudIT is available in two editions: Community and Enterprise. The Community edition lacks some quite important features such as dashboard, scheduled reporting, reporting over time, advanced report filtering, exclusive reports, location mapping, scheduled discovery, and bulk upload of discovery schedule. All of these features are available in the paid Enterprise edition.

5. GLPI

GLPI can be used to build comprehensive hardware inventory databases to make the life of the IT department easier. Some of its more noteworthy features include multi-entry management, complex search module, the ability to import inventory data from a variety of sources, solution-approval tracking, customizable statistical reports, and others. GLPI is unfortunately held back by its complexity, which is only made worse by the outdated user interface.

Effective hardware inventory management with the help of a robust and well-designed hardware inventory software can save a company a considerable amount of time and money. Our growing reliance on mobile and various Internet-enabled devices makes hardware inventory management more essential than ever. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of recommendable hardware inventory software solutions on the market, each bringing something different to the tablet.

Hardware Inventory after SCCM OSD Task Sequence

Hi, I like using a lot of custom collections based on data from Hardware Inventory: Operating System Version, Hardware Manufacturer, Hardware Model, etc. However to make sure the properties are available the Hardware Inventory needs to run at least once, using this information you will be able to start the hardware inventory right after the OSD task sequence completes. We will be using the Task…