Keep it as simple as possible, but not any simpler. - Albert Einstein
All concepts used here will be familiar to you, and there are few. ITScope is designed as a multi-purpose tool, and it is streamlined for quick seamless application in even the largest distributed organizations.
At the core is the generic all-purpose Portfolio. It is the same as a container, but the focus is not on 'warehousing', but on managing how your IT environment changes.
The Portfolio contains the IT products you are interested in. A product reference will link you to
A portfolio gives you the numbers that are relevant to managing resources, capacity and level of service. The data for these aggregates come either from the vendor, or you enter them. For example, ITScope has the power usage of a certain server model. Based on the number of servers in the portfolio, it will keep score of the totals for you. You can also enter capacity thresholds for the portfolio for comparison.
For example, your portfolio is designated as a server rack. As products, you add six server blades from the vendor's catalogue in one of the standard configurations. ITScope will add up the total consumption of these six servers based on manufacturer specifications. Balanced against the capacity of the rack, you will also know your unused resources, for the next time a project makes that buy-or-share call.
Thirdly, you can add portfolios to other portfolios and nest them up to 16 levels deep, which then looks like a tree structure. To continue the example above: You could create a portfolio for the aisle the rack is in, another one for the floor, the building, the site. You can also drill into more detail, capturing each server as a portfolio of its own, with individual motherboard, cpus, harddrives and peripherals, as well as cots applications and software components.
With the simple mouse-click, you select any branch of the portfolio tree to see aggregates for this level, ie the power consumption for a server, the rack, the floor or the site. Another feature is the ability to change perspective: You can select a product and see all portfolio instances it is deployed in, which greatly simplifies for example licensing- and support management. Or you can evaluate different configurations to see what works best.
Portfolios can also be used to plan future scenarios and plan alternatives, by modifying an existing layout according to the planned changes.