We are pleased to announce that the next release of Asset InsightŪ and Enterprise InsightŪ will be shipping to customers on current maintenance beginning June 1st, 2003 (April 1, 2003 in USA).

You will receive an invitation from us soon to a "What's New" webcast where you will receive more information and have an opportunity to ask Tangram experts questions about the release, but below is a brief description of what you can expect in AI V5.0 and EI V4.0.

A unified Asset Insight/Enterprise Insight solution

- our new web-based Intellimatcher tool links Asset Insight and Enterprise Insight asset information, providing a single asset management solution without requiring any importing or exporting of data.

Oracle Support

- Both Asset Insight and Enterprise Insight will support Oracle versions 8.1.7 and 9i only.

Web-based Reporter for Asset Insight and Enterprise Insight

- This replaces Asset Insight's Windows-based Report Clerk and Auditor and web-based eViewer, as well as Enterprise Insight's Report Agent. Both Asset Insight and Enterprise Insight will now use the Reporter to view their asset data.

- Ad hoc reporting is now supported, a function previously available only in the Windows-based Viewer.

- All reports, both current and historical are created and run from a single application.

- Users can now create reports using Boolean logic and more complex queries.

- Users can now sort reports using Folders that are password protected.

- Reports can now be created as Active Reports. An Active Report is executed on a regular interval or at a specified time. The results are stored in the database and specified recipients are emailed a web link to view the results.

- Security is administered through our new Tangram Access Control System (TACS), allowing administrators to grant various levels of access to specific users. TACS is described in more detail below.

Web-based Guru for Asset Insight and Enterprise Insight

- The Guru is fully web-based, allowing users to retrieve detailed inventory information about a specific asset.

- The results are displayed in an on-screen report.

- Search capabilities have been added to the Guru with which users can locate and view assets that have specified attributes.

- Like it's predecessor, the Guru can also be invoked by clicking on a specific asset in a report generated by the Reporter.

- Security is administered through our new Tangram Access Control System (TACS), allowing administrators to grant various levels of access to specific users. TACS is described in more detail below.

Tangram Access Control System (TACS) web-based security for Asset Insight and Enterprise Insight

- TACS is an application for managing user access to information stored in the asset repository.

- TACS allows for finer control of the data users are allowed to see, replacing the security process formerly provided by Asset Insight's Window's-based Administrator tool and Enterprise Insight's previous security methodology.

- Administrators can centrally administer each user's security access to:

    limit information that users can read from or write to the data repository;

    manage which web applications (Reporter, Guru, etc) that the user can access;

    designate which reports the user can run

- TACS has a role-based access control security model, which means that instead of directly graning permissions to a user, a user is granted roles that have defined permissions. This makes it easy to change permissions for an entire group in just a few clicks.

- TACS will give you a more granular approach to your security, while giving you more ease of administration at the same time.

Network Monitor for Asset Insight

- Network Monitor will automatically detect and retrieve basic information about all devices attached to a network - PCs, servers, hubs, routers, switches, etc.

- Network Monitor works by monitoring the communications packets sent from one device to another across the network. It observes and records the network device and network protocol identification from these packets, but does not record or use the content of the packets.

- The data that Network Monitor collects can be used to monitor the rollout of the Asset Insight client across the computers in the network as well as help administrators keep abreast of equipment that is added to the network.

Improved Infrastructure Subsystem (ISS) in Asset Insight

- Due to the addition of the Network Monitor technology, ISS is now easier to administer and use.

- All network-attached devices will be automatically detected and reported, thus eliminating the need for network scans to detect SNMP devices.

- MIB-II data will be gathered for all SNMP-enabled assets, then ISS can use this basic data as a template for performing more detailed discovery on selected SNMP-enabled devices.

- This new methodology reduces the administrative work previously required to manage network discovery.

- Because Network Monitor is passive in its collection of network data, impact on the network is negligible compared to the ISS Scanner.

New Hardware Discovery for Asset Insight

- Monitor Serial Number

- USB-connected Devices

- Video Cards on Win32 and Macintosh machines

Central Administration of Asset Insight User Data

- Web-based User Data Editor allows administrators to make corrections to user data directly into the repository.

- A web-based interview panel is also now available.

- When using this web-based interview method, data is entered directly into the repository, it is no longer stored locally until inventory.

Consolidation of Win32 Discovery for Asset Insight

- Asset Insight now utilizes a single set of discovery modules for all 32-bit Windows platforms (i.e. Windows 95 and higher)

- This means you will have a single install package and fewer discovery modules to manage

- This also will ensure that you will be able to track any 32-bit operating system that Microsoft releases in the future as soon as it shows up in your enterprise.