Show HN: Simple IT Asset Management (opens in new tab)

Each organisation have their own rules about the data they want to track, so being able to customise the fields is a major requirement.

Also, you have to provide at least a way to generate asset tags/reference following some customisable numbering rules.

Then there is the bigger issue that Asset management usually doesn't stand on its own: it's usually tied up to financial reporting (what needs to be replaced for the next budget, depreciation, etc), issue tracking (what went wrong which each equipment), HR (to whom the equipment has been allocated to), security (where is the equipment, is it patched and up-to-date, ...).

So Asset management tools end-up being part of a larger system, and they need that flexibility. Being able to import/export data to CSV is nice, but if you are left to do everything else in other tools, then you are not making it worthwhile for someone to pay for what amounts to a flat list of items.

Data As iamdave pointed out, asset collection is also a major issue: most Asset Management tools rely on some network discovery and/or collection service that must be installed on each machine.

For instance, SpiceWorks[1] is free and it's a pretty good tool that does most of what's required for a medium sized company. Then you have Open Source tools like GPLi[2] and OCS[3] and others[4] that have been around for a while and provide pretty good coverage of IT Admin needs in terms of Asset Management.

So while a good start, if you want people to pay for your service, you'll need to provide something that is more accessible/more complete/better in some metric than what is already available for free.

If I were you, I'd make everything free, then add advanced features that people may want to pay, including custom development for enterprise customers who always have special needs.

[1]:http://www.spiceworks.com/

[2]:http://www.glpi-project.org/

[3]:http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org/

[4]:http://www.open-source-guide.com/en/Solutions/Infrastructure...

http://tumblr.github.io/collins/

Also does this integrate with any accounting software such as Great Plains? Tamit is a several million piece of crap asset and po management system that is not impossible to create a better version of. Look at both of these for ideas on how to grow your product.

For example, I don't immediately care about PO date/owners. My PMO does, but when I think asset management, I want facts. What's the IP address of that one node? Where is it located? Last known status (up, offline, maintenance)?

Is there anything by way of discovering devices? Will this tool let me scan devices on a LAN or a I relegated to just entering line items into the webforms? If it's the latter, then there isn't much improvement over the 'spreadsheet' problem.

This is just my constructive feedback having gone from startup to enterprise and everywhere in between at the senior level of IT Operations, but many small shops have SysAdmins doing more than waiting for something to break to sit and key every asset (especially networked) into a tool that isn't giving them beneficial information about said assets.

It just doesn't feel like there's any benefit to using this over Excel given the demo.

Find a niche that you can sell into... That's way more important than the software.

thanks again guys. this was truly helpful

What is more wanted for a tool like this is integration with in house systems.

I like the effort, but is a really uphill in this niche.