Staff&Line updates management suite

Staff&Line will this week introduce an updated version of its EasyVista integrated IT management suite, boasting a completely web-based interface and an Itil-compliant configuration management database (CMDB).

The company said EasyVista 2007 provides a comprehensive management suite comprising inventory tools, asset management, deployment, and service desk and change management functionality. The suite is modular, enabling firms that already have tools such as Centennial Discovery to use it in place of Staff &Line's inventory tool, for example.

However, the EasyVista modules are designed to work optimally together, according to the firm, and using it this way enables organisations to maintain a single database repository for all IT assets.

"The real challenge in a CMDB is filling it properly with information," said Staff&Line senior technical consultant Jon Ryman. "If discovery and asset management are from different vendors, it can be difficult to reconcile them, but no middleware is needed to get the asset info from EasyVista Discovery."

Another key change in EasyVista 2007 is a better view of hardware and software asset lifecycles. The new version can track asset changes from acquisition through to disposal because of its single overview of assets, said UK managing director Gregory LeFort.

"It helps finance to understand depreciation of assets, something that discovery tools alone can't do," he said. A new planning calendar can flag up forthcoming software licence renewal dates and help organisations plan ahead for them, he added.

The user interface in EasyVista 2007 is now completely web-based, enabling users to login from anywhere. Firms can also set up 'domains' corresponding to areas of the business, so that users only get to see information relevant to their domain.

EasyVista 2007 is licensed in two versions; EasyVista Enterprise is aimed at firms with upwards of 3,000 PCs and allows organisations access to all modules, while EasyVista Express is for mid-sized firms and does not include the CMDB. The Enterprise edition also supports Oracle or SQL, while Express runs only with SQL. License costs will vary depending upon the version and mixture of modules, Staff&Line said.