The Syncfish integration between Lansweeper & ServiceNow Helps Itron to Maintain Visibility of Their IT Estate
About Itron
Based in Washington, U.S., Itron is a technology company that enables utilities and cities to safely, securely and reliably deliver critical water and energy infrastructure services to communities in more than 100 countries.
A large organization with 20 offices worldwide, Itron has been a Lansweeper customer since 2021 as its primary IT asset discovery tool and uses it to scan roughly 32,000 hardware and software assets. “Prior to implementing Lansweeper, we had no centralized asset discovery process in place,” said Jason Loo, IT solution delivery specialist at Itron, whose team is responsible for evaluating the organization’s business needs and determining how IT can support those needs with software hardware and infrastructure solutions.
“Today we use Lansweeper to discover all of the assets we have in our environment, from end user devices, to laptops, desktop printers and monitors, as well as infrastructure assets such as servers, network switches, VMware infrastructure, even phones. It’s great to have total visibility across our environment.”
Importing Lansweeper Data into ServiceNow
However, Itron had another challenge to solve: they needed a way to sync Lansweeper data with their CMDB tool, ServiceNow. “Importing Lansweeper data into ServiceNow would enable us to manage our technology assets across the entire asset lifecycle using a single source of truth,” Loo said. A colleague of Loo’s suggested using CI Synchronizer from Lansweeper Alliance Partner Syncfish.
CI Synchronizer provides out-of-the-box mappings for more than 30 Lansweeper asset types mapped to equivalent CMDB CI classes. It also provides out-of-the-box mappings for over 15 sets of CI related lists, automatically derived from Lansweeper asset data, and over 80 possible CI-to-CI relationships automatically derived and set within the CMDB.
By merging all of the asset discovery data in one place, the Syncfish integration between Lansweeper and ServiceNow enables Itron to maintain a single system of record for technology asset data, eliminating data silos and inconsistencies that can hamper the IT team’s ability to manage the infrastructure effectively.
According to Edwin Tobia, Regional IT Ops Manager for North America, getting buy-in for implementing the solution was easy – a PoC and demo were all that was needed to demonstrate its power and effectiveness. Importantly, the team was able to get the solution up and running quickly. ” The integration between Lansweeper and ServiceNow using CI Synchronizer was fast and easy to deploy, and within a couple of hours, a full data sync was in process,” he said.
Lansweeper and Servicenow Integration Demo
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With Lansweeper and ServiceNow working together, Itron’s IT team now has an accurate IT asset inventory at all times. “We have a documented lifecycle management process for different groups within ServiceNow, and different teams are benefiting from having a central CMDB,” Loo said.
Access to Lansweeper data enables effective IT Asset Management (ITAM) to reduce waste associated with idle or damaged IT assets, while improving cybersecurity and budget forecasting. It also improves Software Asset Management (SAM), which is essential for understanding the current state of deployed software, managing under- and overutilized entitlements, and planning for software updates and rollouts. Additionally, SecOps and IT Operations teams can leverage Lansweeper data to proactively address vulnerabilities and security risks before they lead to serious issues.
Comprehensive and accurate CMDB data is also essential for complying with ITIL/ITSM processes. Unplanned outages are less likely if change requests are linked to accurate IT asset data via automatically maintained CIs and their upstream/downstream relationships. When Loo and his team make a change to a server or schedule downtime, CI Synchronizer maps the relationships between the IT asset and business applications, and updates the configurations automatically.
CI Synchronizer
“Previously, different teams were managing different aspects of the infrastructure, and their systems didn’t always communicate with each other,” Loo said. “CI Synchronizer helps to streamline the change management process, saving us time and reducing risk of misconfigurations. What’s more, our response times have improved, enhancing customer satisfaction. ”
The integration between Lansweeper, CI Synchronization and ServiceNow has also helped the team improve compliance. The CMDB Health Dashboard displays the relationships between the business services and IT assets, helping them maintain an accurate record. “Our team can see immediately which assets are not in compliance and take rapid action,” he said.
“Lansweeper and CI Synchronizer act as a risk mitigation solution while providing a central source of truth and a central CMDB that everyone can trust.”
According to Loo, the team at Syncfish has been extremely responsive, providing support whenever needed as Itron implemented and ramped up with the solution. “They have taken our feedback and implemented feature improvements well within a reasonable time to meet our needs,” he said. “It’s been awesome working with them.”
A Critical IT Challenge, Solved
The integration between Lansweeper and ServiceNow solved a critical challenge for Itron – creating a single source of truth of IT data to inform decisions around configuration and change management, IT compliance and cybersecurity – which had not been possible for 15+ years. “Now with our CMDB fully populated with accurate data from Lansweeper, we can finally clean up and validate what we have in our environment, ensure everything is in compliance, and maintain complete visibility across our IT infrastructure,” Loo said.
Lansweeper and Servicenow Integration Demo
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