BDNA Trolls IT Environments to Identify Waste

BDNA, an IT discovery and IT asset management software vendor, has come out with a catalog of IT assets called Technopedia. This is a wikipedia-like listing of all major hardware and software products commonly used in business, with their specifications. For now, the list is updated by BDNA, but the company says it will broaden its editorial panel to include customers and eventually others in the technology community.

The value of such a list is that banks can compare the technology they have in-house with the latest and most efficient equipment and tools out there. The software can be used with BDNA's IT discovery tool (which scopes out an IT environment and inventories all hardware and software therein) or with a third-party IT discovery tool, for instance from Tideway or BMC. Then it compares the tools in use against newer technologies cataloged in Technopedia to see where it might make sense to upgrade to a new server, storage unit or software program that's more efficient or higher performing. It also tries to find servers that have been decommissioned, software that's used by fewer people than it's licensed for, old servers drawing excessive amounts of electricity, and other causes of waste. "We're trying to cure IT of the disease of waste," says Ido Sarig, BDNA's chief marketing officer. Customers could also use the software to perform what-if analyses, e.g. how much would a bank reduce power consumption by going from desktops to netbooks?