1.31.17 Asignet Technology FAQ & Vendor Assurance Summary
- 1. 1 | P a g e Asignet’s Patended Solution Frequently Asked Questions Version 1.31.17 - CONFIDENTAIL -
- 2. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 2 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL Index Sections Asignet’s Patended Solution & Background Components to the Asignet Solution Key Benefits How does the platform work What is the end result Ins & Outs of the solution What is Wayfast What is iRouting Typical FAQs
- 3. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 3 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL Asignet´s Patended Solution What are the main components of Asignet’s patented solution? Technology Expense Management (TEM/WEM) Connects services, devices and people through automation Inventory Management & Integration Discover and track physical assets in your environment, define relationships between assets, tie together business entities, processes and services, identify impact of processes and services upon the business, ITIL-based processes Utilization Reporting Gives organizations information on how, where and how much their resources were used Vendor Web Portal Automation Discovers and tracks vendor billing, inventory and contract information Vendor Web Portal Provisioning (MACD) and Tracking Automated workflows instruct the Asignet’s patented solution to preform MACD activates that are completely integrated to the inventory process Automated Email and Web Parsing Capabilities The Asignet’s patented solution allows for the downloading and parsing of all invoices including language and currency conversion Integrated Business Intelligence Integration to Microsoft’s Power BI
- 4. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 4 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL What are the key benefits? Reduction of IT & telecom expense Gain employee productivity and efficiency Ensure 100% IT & telecom contract compliance Inventory – linking the circuit identified to the billing identifier Provisioning automation both internal and external Enhanced International Capabilities Enhanced Mobile Capabilities Greater Audit Capabilities 100% accurate asset inventory Creating a single system of record for IT & Telecom (CMBD) Streamline existing IT & Telecom business processes through our workflow engine. Optimize your existing IT & telecom investment Eliminates operational risk by stopping uncontrolled access to corporate systems Implement and manage your entire mobile strategy within a single system Realize 100% of your VoIP investment through our patented intelligent routing solution Realize Indirect savings
- 5. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 5 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL How does this platform work? This telecom expense management (TEM) solution is able to discover and build an extended CMBD of your infrastructure and each component of your voice, data, mobile. cloud network. It takes a clean and accurate inventory to ensure the services being paid for are actually there, working, contracted and configured correctly. How does Asignet’s patented solution manage my assets and inventory? Our technology discovers and builds your IT and Telecom assets into an OLAP cube. Our patented solution then, through multiple workflow and automation allows, for full integration to this IT and Telecom CMDB cube. This process creates a true CMDB for all IT & Telecom assets, allowing each asset to be managed through its complete lifecycle. How does Asignet’s patented solution relate to ERP? The Telecom Lifecycle Expense Management offering has created the first true ERP for IT and telecom - automating and connecting services, devices and people through business process. This leads to substantial cost savings, increased productivity and increased efficiency. How does the Asignet’s patented solution process manage my IT and telecom asset inventory CMBD? In short, the CMDB (baseline) is created, then utilizing the U.S.-patented technology platform, we create workflows and automation to maintain your CMBD updates. How does the Asignet’s patented solution automate vendor web portals? Our patented technology enables us to create custom work flows and scripts. This scripts mimic what you or I do to enter and obtain information form a vendor web portal. How does the Asignet’s patented solution provision services and perform MACD activities? Through custom work flows and scripts, the Asignet’s Patended solution navigates vendor systems allowing the automation of your MACD activities. These workflows also pull in contracted and approved cost ensuring the new services are costed correctly. Then charged back correctly.
- 6. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 6 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL How does the Asignet’s patented solution Automated Email and Web Parsing? Again, through custom work flows and scripts, the Asignet’s patented solution navigates and pulls instructed billing information from vendor web portals or emails. This information is then parsed and downloaded into our system for processing. Can the Asignet’s patented solution integrate with other systems? Yes, because the Asignet’s patented solution support SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) standards and ones that do support SOA standards not support SOA standards. What is the end result of utilizing Asignet’s patented solution? In summary, the CMDB (Baseline) is created. Then, utilizing our U.S. patented technology platform, we create workflows and automation to manage, integrate and maintain control of your entire IT and Telecom infrastructure.
- 7. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 7 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL The Ins and Outs of Asignet’s patented solution How does onboarding and off-boarding work? This is a powerful business solution that fully automates the on- and off-boarding HR processes. The solution works by triggering a series of workflows that automates both the approval and provisioning/de-provisioning of employees and their associated assets. What about incident management? The service management platform utilizes multiple tools to monitor, create, diagnose and solve incidents, which are created based on the true IT & Telecom CMDB inventory. The system automatically routes the information (incidents) through a series of workflows. Changes to the CMBD are made through our automated patented process. What kind of help desk is offered? The service desk is based on a multi-channel help desk platform that meets both technical and non-technical user needs. Our service deck solution can be accessed through many different sources (Self-service portal, calls, emails, SMS and chat). The Service Desk Agents can then execute automated workflow transactions through our patented Robot t echnology. What is the Service Catalog? Our Service Catalog is a Self-Service Portal that shows a profiled and available view of IT and Telecom assets and services. It provides both users and administrators a clear understanding of what assets and services are available based on predefined business rules (polices) and an automated way to provisions these assets. What professional services are offered? Implementation services Telecom Billing Contract and Inventory compliance Billing consolidation and portal set-up and malignance services What is the first step in the CMBD process? First, we incorporate the buildings/locations onto the extended CMDB.
- 8. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 8 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL How do you handle fixed, mobile billing and associated contacts? We automate vendor portals to convert and process invoices broken down by voice, data, mobile and cloud. Then we associate each invoice to the corresponding contract and location. All this billing data is normalized and further broken down by circuit, circuit component, line item, type of service and location. Then it associates to its corresponding network device. How are routers utilized? We incorporate the routers’ configuration and SNMP usage to its specific circuit, creating a real- time inventory. We also associate the routers to the buildings and carrier invoices specifically to their associated circuits. Each Router is scanned to obtain their configuration: configured bandwidths, qualities, uses, connections and its IP + Mac address active ranks. We then incorporate the Switches and associate to each router through their IP addresses. How is PBX utilized? We incorporate the PBX, IP or Legacy and then we proceed to scan them. Why are communications costs increasing as today’s networks become more sophisticated? Networks are becoming more sophisticated and geographic dispersion merely exacerbates the problem. Multiple vendors and services make it more difficult to control and to understand what you are paying for. Manual administration of your network, specifically your voice infrastructure, prevents a centralized and accurate exploitation of your resources, and there is a lack of integration between the infrastructure, inventories and billed services. How do you incorporate and inventory all hardware? With different protocols and processes we obtain for each user its PC, serial number, hardware components, installed software, and usage of that software. Likewise, we collect the information from other hardware connected to the network without a user (ex, printer). With different protocols and processes we incorporate other hardware that does not present Login events. They are linked to the ports they belong.
- 9. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 9 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL How do you locate users? Each User identifies its physical work position in some of the buildings and the internal telephone number that belongs to him or her. Using the Human Resources or LDAPs data base, we identify each user with their personal profile. What is Wayfast? Asignet’s Wayfast is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) platform allowing for the creation of dynamic workflows and business application both web and mobile. Designed to guarantee the full cycle of these workflows and application enabling both business users of IT and telecom staff to maximize their respective projects. WayFast aPaaS (Application Platform as a Service) is the core of our technology enabling the creation of BPM, web and mobile applications 10 times faster than the traditional development. A graphic interface of Wayfast allows for seamless integration with any other Application either by SOA interfaces or Legacy thanks to its Patented Integration Engine. What does Wayfast do? It executes automated actions created through work flows on the customer’s devices or service platforms, applications, devices, web service portals, not only the ones that support SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) standards, but ones that do not support SOA standards. It also tracks and registrars any move, add or changes to all assists tracked by Asignet. It also works as our discovery tool building the extended CMBD and tracking any changes to the extended CMDB. Who is Wayfast designed for? Wayfast is designed for both IT and telecom business owners. Why should business owners choose Wayfast? Wayfast gives business users tools that enable them to quickly create forms and business workflows without any programming skills. IT staff can enhance this initial process version by adding complex integration functions and/or transforming the web form into a sophisticated web or mobile tools. Is Wayfast adaptable? Wayfast integrates with any other application either by a SOA interface or a Legacy interface thanks to its Patented Integration Engine (US PAT 7702773).
- 10. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 10 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL How does Wayfast help business owners understand their needs? Wayfast has a prototyping module that helps the user to rapidly understand their needs. How does the deployment of Wayfast work? Wayfast offers accurate and fast process development with 1/10th development time, 100 percent definition process traceability and low implementation costs. How do you build workflows with Wayfast? Wayfast is simple because you can build your workflows and applications with almost zero lines of code. Wayfast enables you to customize your workflows and create specific reporting based on your IT and Telecom infrastructure business requirements. What are the main attributes of Wayfast? Wayfast is made up of a development tool, a workflow engine and an automation robot. How is Wayfast integrated? With Wayfast’s exclusive integration engine, one can integrate without limits, be they technologies or applications with SOA or SOA-less interfaces. Its powerful prototyping engine allows users to see their needs quickly reflected in the system, thus simplifying the process of understanding and identifying the need.
- 11. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 11 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL What is iRouting What is the premise of iRouting? The problem in telecom is that the small details of spending represent millions of small pieces to be analyzed. To be able to do this we built a set of tools to automatically diagnose, identify opportunities and execute action plans by: Integrating the whole network inventories Mapping each billing item and the traffic with the infrastructure Defining rules to ensure that every call will route automatically to the least cost route Turning manually configuration into systems routines performed by a Robot Measuring the amount of traffic from the reality without projections leveraging the capacity of the IP network. How does iRouting work? iRouting automatically analyzes the information looking for the least cost route. Our patented solution reconfigures your IP Network to ensure least cost routing and contract compliance. You obtain 100 percent of potential savings, representing up to a 60% cost reduction. How does iRouting cut costs? Asignet Intelligent Routing updates inventories, measures network usage and automates settings. This process allows for maintaining routing tables along with updates. Bottom line: your voice spending is always optimized. It discovers all your IT and Telecommunications assets in one extended CMDB cube incorporating billing, network hardware, contracts and utilization.
- 12. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 12 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL Typical FAQs The following are typical FAQs that are often asked from most IT Departments, again if your specific question is not answered, please contact your Asignet Representative/Contact… Q -Where are your data centers located? A - We have two options, depending on our client’s requirements; Amazon Web Services or Azure. Q - What encryption is used for the stored telco passwords (eg: Verizon etc.)? A- They’re stored using 3DES encryption. Q - Do they conduct penetration/vulnerability tests regularly? A - Yes, at least once a year. Q – Is the encryption form “key and certificate”? A - Yes, all data exchanged is encrypted by HTTPS/SSL while in transit. Q - Does the Asignet Team have access to our passwords? A - Vendor passwords are managed via workflows where either customer employees or vendor employees can set this information. Access to vendor portals is then managed by automated processes that does not expose passwords to the Asignet Team. The following are screen shots of this Glassbox Vendor Portal process. Q - What is the centralized log management platform? A - Check_MK/Nagios.
- 13. Asignet´s Patented Solution - FAQS 13 | P a g e CONFIDENTIAL Q - How many Asignet users have access to our database/data via their database roles or through applications? A- No one has direct access to customer data. In case access is needed for troubleshooting, it is submitted via workflow and held for approval. Q – How is data transferred? A – All data transfer will be made through HTTPS protocol. Q – What security standards do you follow? A – ISO27002 Q – How often do you execute patching? A – We do this monthly. Q – Do you have a firewall between sensitive & non-sensitive networks, and if so, how often are the rules reevaluated? A- Yes, at a minimum yearly. Q – How often is our data backed up? A – Daily, backup stored in AWS S3. Q – How is client data segmented? A – Each client holds its own isolated database schema. Q – What methods are used to maintain Separation of Duties (SOD)? A – We use GRC governance tools to monitor SOD.