LANDesk Extends Management Reach

According to Toby Martin, director of product management for LANDesk, following the advent of virtualization in the data center, IT organizations are having difficulty tracking software licenses as application workloads are dynamically spun up on any number of virtual machines.

LANDesk Asset Lifecycle Manager 4.0, says Martin, includes connectors to virtual machine software from VMware that allows customers to extend the asset management software usually associated with managing client systems to servers. In addition, the LANDesk asset management software can be integrated with VMware’s V-Center management system.

Martin says that due to fears of software audits, many IT customers now routinely over-provision software licenses in their server environments. By giving IT organizations a tool that manages the software license process, customers can now save on those licensing costs while also closing the “chasm” between their server and desktop asset management practices.

As part of an effort to also close the gap between asset management and application management software, Martin notes that LANDesk software can be integrated with other management tools via either an API or scripting languages that leverage Web services.

LANDesk was a unit of Avocent after being acquired in 2006. Avocent in turn was acquired by Emerson late last year, making LANDesk a unit of Emerson.