"For the first time, BDNA has provided the Navy with real-time visibility into all of the IT assets existing on its networks-and BDNA did it with zero implementation risk. Now internal discussions between operations, finance and procurement are based on a common baseline of empirical data, instead of opinions, hypotheses or assertions. This will have a huge impact on IT productivity and result in hundreds of millions of dollars in savings."

The Challenge
Few of the world's top enterprises run an IT operation as vast and complex as that of the U.S. Navy. Operating hundreds of locations, the Navy has an IT budget of six billion dollars; this technology is constantly changing to meet the rapidly-evolving needs of its high command. The Navy faces a variety of strategic technology initiatives:

• Adopt a new approach to asset governance. To reduce IT capital expenditures, the Navy is looking for a low-cost, automated way to rejuvenate its asset management methods.
• Improve vendor management. The Navy cannot often leverage its buying power across the entire organization because of a lack of solid IT-utilization data spanning its numerous locations. It wants to change that.
• Rationalize organization-wide decisions. The Navy attempted to fund a server consolidation effort in 2005. However, without the appropriate organization-wide utilization data to prove the need for the project, it was not approved. This example represents just one of the many cases in which, because of government funding requirements, the Navy needs to provide a solid financial imperative for its projects.
• Identify rogue assets. Because of the decentralized nature of the Navy's organization, many unapproved and uncontracted IT assets are living on the network, jeopardizing compliance and security. The Navy needs to deal with the rogues.

The Solution
The Navy partnered with BDNA to deploy the BDNA software suite to meet its asset inventory goals.

• BDNA Insight collects configuration information about all network resources-hardware and software-in a secure and non-invasive manner.
• BDNA Analyze leverages the asset inventory data collected by BDNA Insight into decision power for IT managers. Hard numbers on which technology assets are used by which sites, departments and divisions help commanders add, subtract or redeploy resources as needed.

The Results
The Navy has been extremely satisfied with the initial results from BDNA.

• A foundation for next-generation IT-asset governance. After a deployment that took 30 minutes and actionable information about approximately 400,000 IT assets in 60 business days, BDNA continues to provide Navy leaders with a complete inventory of all networked assets, updated on a near real-time basis.
• Ammunition for vendor audits. Real asset utilization data gives the Navy the backup needed to renegotiate purchase, service and support contracts across the organization.
• Asset optimization capability. Analysis of all components of asset ownership-utilization, standards compliance, obsolescence exposure-are collected and can be examined from both a functional and financial perspective. BDNA data provides quantitative evidence of the business case for a variety of initiatives, including the server consolidation project.
• Tighter compliance and network security. BDNA Insight and BDNA Analyze identified 800 instances of a database product not approved for use on the network. The Navy can now determine whether these products should be officially purchased or removed.