N2002 Tutorial 5 - Asset Mgmt - Paper final

Categorizing Computing Assets According toCommunication Patterns1 2Dieter Gantenbein , Luca Deri1IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, 8803 Rueschlikon, Switzerlanddga@zurich.ibm.com, http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~dga/2NETikos S.p.A., Via Matteucci 34/b, 56124, Pisa, Italyderi@ntop.org, http://luca.ntop.org/Abstract. In today’s dynamic information society, organizations criticallydepend on the underlying computing infrastructure. Tracking computingdevices as assets and their usage helps in the provision and maintenance of anefficient, optimized service. A precise understanding of the operationalinfrastructure and its users also plays a key role during the negotiation ofoutsourcing contracts and for planning mergers and acquisitions. Building anaccurate inventory of computing assets is especially difficult in unknownheterogeneous systems and networking environments without prior deviceinstrumentation. User mobility and mobile, not-always-signed-on, computingdevices add to the challenge. We propose to complement basic network-baseddiscovery techniques with the combined log information from network andapplication servers to compute an aggregate picture of assets, and to categorizetheir usage with data-mining techniques according to detected communicationpatterns.Keywords. Network and System Management, Inventory and AssetManagement, IT Audit, Due Diligence, Data Mining, and OLAP.1 Computing Infrastructure as a Critical Business Resource1Modern e-business ...