The initial three products in the suite will rely on CA's common management database, which the company is using to integrate the components of the Unicenter Release 11 software that it detailed at the CA World conference in Las Vegas two months ago.

The Asset Management r11 suite being announced today includes revised versions of CA's Unicenter Asset Management, Asset Portfolio Management and Asset Intelligence tools. Supported functions include discovery and inventorying of IT equipment, software license management and vendor management, according to CA officials.

In the future, the company will add other products for software distribution and patch management, said Allan Andersen, director of product management at CA.

Harry Butler, solutions center manager at EFW Inc., an electronics supplier in Fort Worth, Texas, beta-tested the Asset Management suite and has begun implementing it. Butler said the new tools are more sophisticated than previous versions were. For example, he can track new laptops when they arrive at EFW's loading dock via bar codes and assign usernames, passwords and some applications to them days before the machines reach end users.

"In the past, I had to keep a manual spreadsheet with the laptops on the dock, and it would be a while before the machine was finally on the network and [recognized] in the inventory," Butler said. "This allows me to have more knowledge of my operation."