em·pow·er

/?m?pou(?)r/

make (someone) stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their rights.

This week, Shavlik introduced a new product called Empower. Empower is a cloud-based add-on to Shavlik Protect that offers additional hardware and software asset management and visibility. Empower as a software product may not help you to be more confident in controlling your personal life, but it will give you confidence in your IT career as you gain more power over the hardware and software assets in your organization.

With Empower, you will be given view of your organization’s assets and associated user data to help you troubleshoot configuration and security issues. Empower is currently available to Shavlik Protect customers in a limited beta.

Here are some things you can expect with Empower:

  • Cloud interface – Simple dashboards, reports, and user-centered views offer insight into the users, hardware, and software in your organization.
  • Asset discovery – Discover and upload hardware and software information from each device on your network or network segment.
  • Warranty information – Download information directly from your vendors and associate it with devices to receive better service and cost-savings.
  • Multi-platform support – Supports Windows desktops, laptops, and tablets as well as Mac OS X.
  • Configuration drift – Obtain time-based views to visualize a sequence of events on each device and use this information to troubleshoot hardware configuration issues.

As a cloud application, Empower allows you to view your data wherever you are, providing a quick view of pressing issues in your organization. View configuration drift, outdated anti-virus, devices with new or outdated software, expiring passwords, warranties and other configuration or security issues that will impact individual computers or your entire organization.

Empower also gives you the power of a user-centered interface by viewing not just devices, but also the users those devices are assigned to. Most users have more than a single device and now you can view them all to help you troubleshoot efficiently.

A device timeline allows you to see a chronological view of device reboots, application installs and uninstalls, and memory changes.

Now that I’ve piqued your interest, are you ready to try it out? View more information about Empower on the Shavlik website and please feel free to register for the beta. Getting started is extremely quick-and-easy and once you are accepted into the program you will be able to immediately populate the Empower database with your organization’s information, and begin scanning assets in real time across whatever portion of your network you designate.

We are very interested in your feedback through this beta phase. Empower is just getting started and we are aggressively working toward a more complete product and getting features in place for something very special down the road!

Now is the time for you to join Empower!