Pathfinder on the track of IT assets
- 17 February 2005
A solution designed to help hospital and primary care trusts identify and maintain records of their technology assets has been launched by Stream Partners in partnership with BMC Software.
The developers say that their Pathfinder solution means staff will no longer have to scour their IT environment manually to track all hardware, software and services connected to the infrastructure.
“Pathfinder has been jointly developed to provide IT professionals in the healthcare sector with an incremental approach to understanding and meeting their specific software and hardware infrastructure needs. With Pathfinder they can identify the best technology solution to support their configuration and make the most of their current investments,” explained Stream Partners CEO, John Miller.
Pathfinder works in four stages: stage one shows all network devices regardless of geographical locality, it discovers the device configuration, the operating system and release level, the applications installed and their version numbers, disk and RAM size with detailed indication of free disk space.
Stage two builds a suggested policy for the network it has swept, highlighting and giving information about ‘hot spots’ and advising on recommended changes. Stage three maintains the policy set up in the second stage by monitoring activity on the network and bringing devices back in line if they deviate from the set policy. In the final stage a ‘service desk’ function monitors the organisation’s IT assets and centralises reporting of device issues.
Stream Partners say that having the information to centrally manage devices on the network allows organisations to better understand the performance of service level agreements and make informed decisions about new hardware.
The company told E-Health Insider that Pathfinder was a finished product with all the components fully tested and released. “We have sites that are using different stages,” a spokesman confirmed.
The developers say that their Pathfinder solution means staff will no longer have to scour their IT environment manually to track all hardware, software and services connected to the infrastructure.
“Pathfinder has been jointly developed to provide IT professionals in the healthcare sector with an incremental approach to understanding and meeting their specific software and hardware infrastructure needs. With Pathfinder they can identify the best technology solution to support their configuration and make the most of their current investments,” explained Stream Partners CEO, John Miller.
Pathfinder works in four stages: stage one shows all network devices regardless of geographical locality, it discovers the device configuration, the operating system and release level, the applications installed and their version numbers, disk and RAM size with detailed indication of free disk space.
Stage two builds a suggested policy for the network it has swept, highlighting and giving information about ‘hot spots’ and advising on recommended changes. Stage three maintains the policy set up in the second stage by monitoring activity on the network and bringing devices back in line if they deviate from the set policy. In the final stage a ‘service desk’ function monitors the organisation’s IT assets and centralises reporting of device issues.
Stream Partners say that having the information to centrally manage devices on the network allows organisations to better understand the performance of service level agreements and make informed decisions about new hardware.
The company told E-Health Insider that Pathfinder was a finished product with all the components fully tested and released. “We have sites that are using different stages,” a spokesman confirmed.
