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on operations and maintenance continues to fall.
GET IT DONE RIGHT
Despite some progress, agencies have a long way to go when it
comes to FITARA. The most important thing is ensuring the foundation is in order before getting more ambitious. That means understanding all IT assets—cost, location, or potential redundancy. One agency, for example, has dozens of HR applications. And they all require enhancements, modifications, maintenance
and their own servers. That’s a foundational issue.
Part of getting the foundation right is automating manual processes. The benefits go far beyond FITARA requirements. Automation provides the necessary visibility and minimizes risk by eliminating human error. It also reduces cost and frees up IT staff time for more important work.
Retiring redundant and legacy tools is another important step. Replacing them with more modern tools can make a big difference in terms of efficiency and cost savings. Automation at a higher level, where vendors have pre-integrated critical tools, can help agencies fast- forward these initiatives.
Funding also plays an important role. By this year, agencies should finally have the funding they need to move forward with FITARA
in earnest. Budgets will always
be an issue though. If done right, these initiatives can actually be self-funding. For example, the potential for cost savings is so great
on IT asset management alone that application consolidation could almost pay for itself.
Another way to handle financial issues is partnering with an external provider. For example, HPE has an Accelerated Migration program where HPE actually buys agencies’ existing IT infrastructure and leases it back to them. This helps agencies more easily execute plans to retire and upgrade technology infrastructure. Options like these ease the financial burden, and can take the pressure off
of agencies.
CHOOSE THE RIGHT TOOLS
Once the foundation is in place, the next step is using the right tools to get the best results. Each FITARA specification may require different tools, which can make choosing,
learning and implementing each tool more difficult and time- consuming. HPE has taken another approach by bundling and integrating tools to satisfy specific FITARA requirements.
HPE’s FITARA Software
License Management Enablement package, for example, is designed to satisfy FITARA’s software
asset management and automated software license management requirements. This preconfigured set of tools helps agencies automate IT asset discovery, and helps reconcile and manage enterprise software licenses. It also has modules for centralizing contract management and procurement management.
The toolset includes HPE’s Discovery and Universal Configuration Management
SPONSORED REPORT
“By this year, agencies should finally have the funding they need to move forward with FITARA in earnest.”
The Path to FITARA Success
is Open and Agnostic
Succeeding with FITARA starts with defining a governance structure—something with which agencies still struggle. By using a pre-defined, vendor-supported open framework, agencies can eliminate much of the cost and integration problems that often occur between tools and vendors.
One of the most successful efforts in this area is the IT4IT Reference Architecture, an integrated IT management framework supported by most major IT vendors. This frame- work clearly lays out critical IT tasks with the goal of providing the kind of predictability and efficiency FITARA requires, along with the ability to adapt to the inevitable changes that will occur over time with processes, methods and technologies.
Over time, adopting an open framework like IT4IT will reduce costs, since tools are more interoperable and integrative. And every agency that adopts the framework puts more pressure on vendors to align with the standards, pushing the integration costs even lower. It will also reduce the cost of future integration and updates.