Eracent Review
Name: Eracent ITMC
Description: Eracent's ITAM products provide a wide range of capabilities that go beyond the traditional ITAM remit, enabling customers to build a platform for IT Management. Key products that make up this platform include ITMC Discovery, Continuous License Reconciliation, ITMC Lifecycle, and IT-Pedia.
Application Category: SAM Tools, ITAM Tools
Author: AJ Witt
Summary
Eracent’s ITAM products provide a wide range of capabilities that go beyond the traditional ITAM remit, enabling customers to build a platform for IT Management. Key products that make up this platform include ITMC Discovery, Continuous License Reconciliation, ITMC Lifecycle, and IT-Pedia.
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ITAM Review Analyst Score - 75%
75%
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Customer Reviews - Customer Service - 91%
91%
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Customer Reviews - Value for Money - 87%
87%
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Customer Reviews - Customer Support - 93%
93%
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Customer Reviews - Recommend to a Friend - 96%
96%
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Customer Reviews - Overall Satisfaction - 86%
86%
Pros
- Modular approach enables companies to select just the capabilities they require
- Competitive pricing
- Platform approach
- User reviews indicate good customer service and support
- Flexible & broad Discovery & Inventory
- Partnerships with 3rd parties such as Ingram to extend capabilities
- Cost-effective IT-Pedia Product Data Library
Cons
- Less-polished UI in comparison to leading competitors
- Smaller team than competitors with limited worldwide partner relationships
- Only available as an on-premises service
- Toolset ideally needs an on-site team to maintain and configure it
Strengths
When I was tasked with conducting a Proof of Concept (POC) for an ITAM/SAM Enterprise tool, we were quickly directed to Eracent’s IT Management Center tool. The marketing and sales information available along with the support said to be provided sounded too good to be true. Well, after multiple years of utilizing the tool I can honestly say that Eracent is exactly who they say they are with a tool that works exceptionally well. Additionally, the value for the amount of money we spend is superb! If you are looking for a ITAM/SAM Enterprise tool, please strongly consider Eracent IT Management Center. I am certain you will share the same experience!
Weaknesses
There are no significant weaknesses to this tool as version enhancements are made frequently to keep up with changes in technology and within the ITAM community needs at large. Often, if you request a legitimate enhancement it will be included in the next version upgrade.
Feature requests:
As with all tools, keep driving manual tasks associated with ITAM/SAM processes and replace with advanced automation capabilities.
Strengths
- Great service
- Microsoft ELP Tool
- Easy to customize
- More robust than anyone could take full advantage of (not a bad thing)
Weaknesses
- Install/ upgrade process is messy, time-consuming and requires Eracent assistance (fully included with annual maintenance cost)
- At times buggy, but great customer service makes up for it.
Feature requests:
- Cloud (IaaS/ SaaS) usage mgmt
- More built in ELP generators for high-risk audit publishers.
- Would be AWESOME if there was better documentation, online ticketing system for support and online user community to share tips, troubleshooting, etc..
Strengths
Overall, we find this to be a very comprehensive software asset management product for entitlements acquisition and management, inventory / discovery, and automated reconciliation. There is quite a bit of flexibility in configuring the system settings, system access permissions and roles, and custom fields, to accommodate organizational requirements, even individual team requirements. Ability to schedule tasks, data imports/exports, reports, alerts, etc. is robust. Template capability for queries and reports, as well as data import/export, is substantial. Granular asset history and audit trail capabilities. The account management team is very responsive to support issues and requests
Weaknesses
Back end engineers and development support staff are occasionally slow to respond to questions and issues sent to them by the account management team – when this occurs, it delays the account management team’s ability to timely address issues.We recently encountered an issue with inventory of Microsoft MDA devices using IPv6 – this capability does not yet exist in Eracent. We were somewhat surprised, given that both MDA and IPv6 have been available for quite some time. Eracent has been quick to respond to this issue and expects to add this capability in a build update soon.
Feature requests:
None
Strengths
Eracent has an excellent user friendly interface. The full suite provides a complete solution for managing software assets and overall compliance and risk. More then just a detailed tracking tool, Eracent transforms procurements into entitlements and compares entitlements to installations. These high level roll ups provide a complete compliance picture at both department or Enterprise levels. We have successfully defended our compliance position in several external publisher audits.
Weaknesses
Eracent doesn’t offer an annual user meeting, whereby their customers could exchange ideas. Moreover, a helpdesk would be useful for addressing daily user issues.
Feature requests:
Their audit file (product catalog) needs to add more engineering applications. There user manuals need to be more user friendly.
Strengths
Provides HW, SW inventory, license reconciliation and lifecycle tracking with the ability to connect contract, procurement and user relationships to an asset. Easily customizable. Good, reliable customer service. Eracent has been very supportive of us over the last 10 years.
Weaknesses
Would like to see more obscure engineering titles added to the inventory catalog.
Feature requests:
Many of the new features found in version 10 (ITMC) of the Lifecycle manager module, e.g. dashboards, more extensive reporting options will address current needs.
Strengths
Feature rich, customization, and world class support team. Coming off of CA and Clientele, we moved to ITMC about 2 years ago and we have already experienced a huge saving in just the software usage metering feature alone, as well as the End User Request Portal which for us, was the clincher in purchasing this product. So far the biggest payoff has been with the vendor’s ability to customize the tool for our business’s needs. In addition, with Eracent, you get a dedicated team of experts and you keep the same team who helped to get you there. That’s a huge bonus.
Weaknesses
Lack of documentation for the product. One of the areas we struggled with early on was simply gaining familiarity with the product since it has the ability to touch so many aspects of your business (financial planning, budgeting, warehousing, asset tracking, software usage, network discovery, EU request portal, on and on…) it can be confusing for the administration team to get started out of the gate. However with the products ability to lock down any feature or view for the EU community, you’re able to keep those users from being overwhelmed.
Feature requests:
The product is already loaded with more features then my team is able to leverage at this time.
Strengths
Eracent has a very comprehensive agent for discovery of both hardware and software. We rely on the agent to provide us with the information needed to manage our physical and virtual assets on a daily basis, as well as during software vendor audits. The robust Lifecycle Management capabilities of Eracent allow us to quickly respond to internal and external audits quickly and confidently.
Weaknesses
Eracent continues to enhance and improve the UI for the Software License Entitlement and Reconciliation portion of their product. The recently added CLR (Continuous License Reconciliation) feature provides detailed software license reconciliation data as well as high level graphical summaries. We look forward to the future enhancements that Eracent has on their roadmap.
Feature requests:
Common reporting interface between Discovery and Lifecycle.
Analyst Review
Eracent are a US-based ITAM & IT Management platform tool provider with almost 20 years experience in the enterprise ITAM market. They provide a range of products that when used together constitute a platform for IT Management providing full coverage of the IT Asset lifecycle and beyond.
Capabilities are split into the following areas:
ITMC – IT Management Center – provides cross-platform Discovery & Inventory & software & server utilisation measurement. This is available for desktops, servers, datacenters, mobile devices, and cloud deployments
CLR – Continuous License Reconciliation – provides software reconciliation and optimisation capabilities. The Base service can be enhanced with add-on modules for Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Engineering applications
Integration Services: EDE – Eracent Data Extractors (EDE) connect to third-party discovery tools for importation of data, and enrichment and normalisation of existing data
IT-Pedia – IT-Pedia is a cloud service designed to provide a comprehensive IT Product Data Library.
AppStore Plus: – provides automated employee self-service for the Request, Approval, and Provisioning ITAM lifecycle stages.
Summary:
Eracent’s strength is in their experience in this field, coupled with their willingness to partner with 3rd parties to provide additional functionality to their customers. Their solutions are modular, flexible, and comprehensive. They go beyond the core SAM or ITAM use case to provide additional capabilities such as Dependency Mapping, Enterprise Mobility Management, and Employee App Stores. In this regard they are well-placed to compete with larger organisations who are focused on the entire IT Management space. The ITAM Review see ITAM as a part of a platform as being a growing trend. Whilst initially focused on the US market, recent years have seen Eracent expand their global reach with a large R&D & Support office in Warsaw, Poland.
Company Details
Headquarters:
P.O. Box 647
519 Easton Road
Riegelsville, PA 18077, USA
USA
Company Metrics
- Founded: 2000
- Location: Pennsylvania, USA
- Territories Served: Worldwide
- Legal Status: Private Company
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