Overview

With 23,000 employees and an annual budget of over $10 billion, the State of California, Department of Transportation (Caltrans), has many of the same issues that large corporations have. Responsible for the design, construction, maintenance, and operation of the 15,000 mile California State Highway System, as well as that portion of the Interstate Highway System within the state's boundaries, Caltrans is under pressure to keep a lid on IT costs, with one method being effective asset management of their hardware and software.

Challenges

Before Caltrans started using LSVi’s EIA (Enterprise Inventory Auditor) to track their electronic assets, any comprehensive inventory of equipment needed to be performed by hand. That meant visiting the twelve districts across the entire state to audit what was installed. The timeframe for such an inventory was months, with the first data potentially out of date before the audit was complete. Inaccuracy led to potentially costly purchasing mistakes. With year 2000 readiness assessments loaming, Caltrans decided in 1998 to purchase an automated inventory tool that could help them track their computer equipment and installed software.

Solution

Caltrans selected LSVi’s Enterprise Inventory Auditor (EIA) to provide in-depth and customizable asset management and reporting. Caltrans uses EIA to keep track of the software and hardware for 26,000 computers throughout the state of California with the click of a button. What previously could take months and was subject to being outdated before it was finished, now takes less than 24 hours.

Knokke-Heist cheap hotelsEIA helps Caltrans identify the number of older computers to retire, which computers are running which software package, how many different versions of a package are located where, and more. Caltrans uses EIA to track software licenses in order to protect themselves in case of an audit and to provide the basis for purchase and upgrade decisions. They can better track and plan their equipment investments, using their historical asset data to gain more negotiating power for new software and computer contracts.

The data gathered by EIA is extracted from the EIA database and used to populate a Web page on the Caltrans Intranet. Department and district managers use the detailed reports from EIA to better manage their IT needs and expenses.

Caltrans sees tools like EIA especially important in their ability to react swiftly in the event of potential virus attacks or Trojan horses. Being able to use EIA to determine in short order exactly which desktops have a particular software installed allows Caltrans to take immediate action should a potential threat be exposed.

Benefits

• EIA save Caltrans time and money by automatically gathering and tracking electronic asset information. Manual audit costs would be very high, with a higher error rate and much longer time to completion.
• Caltrans now has accurate information on which to base purchasing decisions, allowing them to negotiate better software licensing and equipment contracts.
• EIA provides Caltrans with the ability to configure the level of auditing to be performed. This flexibility allows them to change the amount of data collected as their needs change.