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08 January 2009

IT service management specialist Quintica has signed a master distributorship agreement with South African asset management software developer WebINTELLECT. In terms of the agreement, Quintica will take the company’s ITAM asset management solution (CORTM) to market in Africa and the Middle East through the establishment of a reseller channel to market.

According to Dan van der Westhuizen, General Manager Sales and Marketing at Quintica, the company had sought an asset management solution congruent with its Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) approach to service management. “Companies today are under severe pressure to manage their costs; asset management has come into vogue as a highly relevant solution set which can identify and potentially reduce the costs of IT assets, in particular software licensing,” he says

Van der Westhuizen briefly explains that companies may find themselves over‐licensed, and hence paying more than they should be for software, or under‐licensed, and hence open to legal or other punitive action. “Either case can cost companies many hundreds of thousands of Rands – or more,” he points out.

Poena le Roux, WebINTELLECT CEO, says the company has achieved substantial success with its ITAM solution with blue‐chip South African organisations. “In looking to take the product further into the market, we required a distributor and channel structure which would focus on market development and growth while we can focus our efforts on product and technology development. With its proven capabilities in the IT Service Management field, Quintica is an ideal partner.

Furthermore, it has additional reach owing to its Middle Eastern presence and client base.” Le Roux adds that the solution is offered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis, which requires specific expertise from distribution and reseller partners. “ITAM is provided on the basis that clients can access the components or services that they need on a month‐to‐month basis. This is highly advantageous as it means no capital expenditure and the ability to pay only for those services that are required.

 “However, providing and managing such a solution is a somewhat specialist field, hence the selection of a service management company to take it to market.” Continuing, van der Westhuizen says the market for IT asset management is maturing. “With many of our existing customers asking for these types of solutions, we were pleased to enter into discussions with WebINTELLECT; it’s ITAM product offers unique advantages, not the least of which is that as a locally developed solution, it is far more affordable than many competing products.”

While the solution is more affordable, it is no means short on features which deliver the value which companies seek from IT asset management. Van der Westhuizen notes that ITAM performs the ‘usual’ features associated with such solutions, such as the establishment and population of a Configuration Management database and the discovery and creation of the full inventory of IT hardware and software assets. “From a competitive point of view, it offers some unique aspects such as an asset inventory from an IT perspective which also factors in the financial lifecycle of that asset. The procurement lifecycle is incorporated, while ITAM embodies governance principles and procedures in accordance with regulations such as Basel II, ISO and Sarbanes‐Oxley,” he says.

With the management of the carbon footprint of IT equipment of growing importance, the solution even provides for environmental responsibility reporting. It also allows for the management of non networked assets through bar‐coding and or RFID tags.

“While CORTM is a complete suite of solutions, it is also modular, providing companies with the flexibility to introduce IT asset management into their environment at their own pace,” van der Westhuizen concludes.