M.Video completed upgrade of management of program assets

On March 16, 2015 it became known of project completion of creation of an effective management system for licenses in network of home appliances and electronics of M.Video. The integrator of a management system for program assets of SAM is Software Asset Management Comparex company.

Project Tasks

As a part of the customer's IT complex about 10 thousand different systems located at the central office of the company on remote platforms — shops and warehouses, number more than 360. More than 90% are integrated in the corporate domain organized on the basis of the Active Directory.

"long ago proved M.Video as dynamically developing retail chain stores specializing in sale of the advanced electronics. And to us it is very important that jobs of our employees, and them today more than 10 thousand, were equipped state-of-the-art, including the software, - Sergey Sergeyev, the Head of Department of information systems and TO of M.Video company noted. – The SAM project allowed us to carry out detailed inventory of the available program assets and to make a choice for benefit of those which really are necessary for us for successful business".

The important place in a total amount of software used in M.Video is taken by different products of Microsoft. It is licensed within the contract Enterprise Agreement that allows the company to simplify accounting of licensing rights on software of vendor and to standardize a set of the used software.

Project Progress

The SAM project in M.Video company began at the beginning of last summer according to the offer of COMPAREX company, the global LSP-Microsoft partner. A project objective - complex check and inventory of the software of Microsoft used by M.Video company, check of its license purity, efficiency analysis of use of software.

M.Video, 2013

At the first stage of the project it was necessary to prepare a complex of the documents confirming legitimacy of use of software:

• relevant license and accounting documents,
• unloading of information from a personal account of the user in the system of Microsoft is carried out.

There came queue of the automated inventory of software set on the servers and workstations entering IT infrastructure M.Video. Specialized software tools were for this purpose used: Microsoft SCCM and MAP Toolkit for collection of information about the software tools set on all computers of the organization.

"Usually technical inventory of software in the organization does not cause problems. I will not tell that the solution of this task in M.Video company was much more difficult, than usually, but the scale of IT infrastructure of the company added it complexity and responsibility. We should get access and to the computers located at the central office of the company and to workstations and servers installed in all outlets in all territory of the country, and these are thousands of systems and all time zones" — Alexey Shurov, the product manager on SAM of Comparex company told.

The project was completed by the analysis of the acquired information and preparation of recommendations.

Project Results

It became known that a number of employees of the company whose work is connected with business trips is a little used in work by mobile means. It is recommended to them to purchase tablets on the platform Microsoft Windows 8.1.

Inventory of software helped to solve a problem of use of outdated software. The analysis of infrastructure allowed to define accurately number of the Windows XP operating systems which support is already stopped.

In three months of the SAM project in M.Video the status of infrastructure of the customer is completely inventoried and analyzed. The company received recommendations, and for optimization of structure of the software, and for systematic purchases of software, and for upgrade of a corporate IT system.