Technopedia Catalog

HHS has a business requirement to identify its legacy IT -- software and hardware products that are nearing or past end-of-life or obsolescence -- in order to prepare plans for modernization and acquisitions to support those plans. The HHS Enterprise Architecture (HHS EA) team within the HHS Office of the CIO (OCIO) has enabled OpDivs and StaffDivs to identify legacy IT by incorporating Flexera's Technopedia catalog of IT software and hardware into the HHS IT System inventory tool, EANow. The Technopedia catalog contains records for approximately 1.5 million software products and 2.5 million hardware products, providing life cycle data indicating whether products are 1) Generally Available, 2) at End-of-Life or End-of-Support, or 3) Obsolete. OpDiv and StaffDiv EA teams can use the catalog's life cycle data to determine which software and hardware products require modernization. The catalog is updated periodically to reflect changes in support from manufacturers. HHS EA maintained a subscription to the Technopedia catalog through September 2022. This acquisition will restore that subscription and enhance the catalog with a "normalize" function, which groups like products together despite small variations in names and/or version numbers. The Flexera Data Platform subscription includes the following: Technopedia, Normalization, Five Enriched Content Packages, and ServiceNow Integration to support 2500 servers and 7500 devices. Technopedia is required because EANow has been coded to work with the Technopedia catalog. Changing to a similar catalog would require a separate development contract and increased costs to re-code the application. Technopedia is also required because of the unique comprehensiveness of its catalog. Using a competitor's less-comprehensive database raises the risk that an obsolete technology could go unnoticed, thereby leaving potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities unaddressed.