Visibility into containers for better cost and risk management

IT and Engineering leaders are transitioning from virtual machines (think VMware) to container technology to:

• Build new, distributed applications
• Lift and shift large enterprise applications
• Refactor legacy applications

Benefits from adopting container technologies include:

• Faster software delivery
• Streamlined application lifecycle management
• Ability to move legacy applications to modern architectures

Containers are an exciting new technology, but increased adoption brings risk to IT. Most ITAM teams have established processes in place for virtualized technologies. However, the majority lack visibility into how and where containers are being used. This means IT and ITAM teams are unable to forecast the costs of applications running inside containers or the risks associated with their use.

The new container visibility feature available on Snow Atlas offers details on how many containers are used and how long they have been running, with a view on Microsoft^®, Oracle and Red Hat containerized applications in this first release. Container visibility is available for Kubernetes environments running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure^® environments.

As detailed in the below screenshots, ITAM professionals will be able to:

• Discover hosts, nodes and container instances running in Kubernetes in Amazon EKS and in Azure AKS
• Discover and normalize standard Microsoft and Oracle containers
• Identify the number of containers running licensable Microsoft and Oracle software
• Identify the number of (virtual) resources that have been assigned to a container and match the relationship between container and host/node

Click here to register your interest in our free beta program for container visibility.

Agentless billing visibility of Azure and AWS consumption

One of the biggest pain points we hear from ITAM professionals is how to start proactively managing cloud costs. For ITAM teams seeking more control over cloud spend, Snow recommends focusing on how much your organization is spending in the cloud and understanding what is getting purchased with that spend.

To make it easier for ITAM teams to gather public cloud spend data, Snow is launching agentless billing visibility of Azure and AWS. This functionality gives ITAM teams a spend snapshot across AWS and Azure in the terminology and views used by IT asset managers. With this new service — available to all Snow Atlas customers — ITAM teams have improved views of their organization’s spend profile in public cloud, natively within their SAM tool. By building this feature natively within the SAM solution, Snow is empowering ITAM teams to drive conversations about spend optimization with cloud stakeholders and FinOps teams.

This is our first iteration in providing comprehensive visibility to cloud license usage that complements our leading capabilities for SaaS visibility. As shown in the below screenshot, ITAM and SAM leaders can slice and dice public cloud consumption to identify spending patterns. Starting with a complete view of expenses, you can pick date ranges, apply filters and group data based on resource group, cost category or region. Short term or even one day spikes in public cloud expenses can be identified and addressed.

Finally, the ability to save customized views enables teams to continuously stay on top of public cloud expenses.

This new feature is released in beta and is free for customers to trial. We’re excited to get your feedback on how to iterate and improve this capability.

For organizations with more mature cloud practices as well as FinOps or cloud operations practitioners, Snow Cloud Cost powered by Anodot provides greater depth of visibility, insights and analysis on public cloud spend, controls for budget management and spend allocation, detection of anomalies and recommendations for optimizing spend.

Expanded support to reduce S/4HANA migration risks

With mainstream support for the ECC platform ending in 2027 and core SAP^® products being optimized for the SAP HANA database, the question is not “if” your organization will transfer to S/4HANA, but when and how.

For organizations embarking on a migration to S/4HANA, six critical questions you need to answer are:

1. How many SAP licenses will I need in the future?
2. What types of licenses will I need?
3. Do I have special agreements that I want to keep?
4. Should I opt for a contract or product conversion?
5. Am I prepared for measurement based on authorizations?
6. How should I license digital access?

“Gartner estimates that over 16,000 SAP Business Suite clients have yet to buy and implement SAP S/4HANA licenses before support is discontinued in 2030.”²

To support these challenges, we’ve enhanced Snow Optimizer for SAP^® Software with the addition of a new module, Snow License Intelligence, which offers:

• Out-of-the-box rulesets for simulating S/4HANA licensing scenarios, including more than 200,000 SAP transactions analyzed and assigned to SAP user types and >70 rules for both usage- and authorization-based licensing
• Continual maintenance to match SAP’s evolving licensing scenarios
• Easy customization to customer-specific situations and licenses
• Fast implementation for new projects and M&A
• Automation enabling reduced resources for SAP license management
• License management best practices

Use asset data to build a more sustainable enterprise

Finally, Snow is announcing a new service that will support organizations with their sustainability goals.

Our solution uses your existing Snow data to create a customized sustainability report including:

• Certified sustainable laptop and desktop analysis: Get insight into the number of certified sustainable laptops and desktops in your organization to support certification analysis and sustainability goals
• Server migration to the cloud carbon impact: Evaluate the estimated reduction in CO2 emissions your organization may be able to make when moving on-premises servers to the cloud
• Device carbon calculator: Assess device energy efficiencies and associated carbon emissions to drive more energy-efficient procurement choices.

Customers are already realizing significant value and impact for their sustainability initiatives. In just 9 months of using these customized sustainability reports, one of our largest customers increased their number of TCO-certified laptops from 25% to 61%, and their number of TCO-certified desktops from 8% to 54%.

Gain visibility and act on intelligence

With a large degree of uncertainty in the broader macroeconomic environment, ITAM professionals need to focus on optimizing costs, negotiating better renewals and improving operational efficiency.

The latest releases from Snow give ITAM teams the data they need to see the software, container and cloud services running in their environment. These new capabilities also provide the intelligence to make actionable decisions and recommendations based on that information to improve their business.

At Snow, we not only empower organizations with a complete picture of their technology environment but provide the intelligence to take meaningful action. This perspective is a powerful agent of business agility and resilience.

Request a demo to see how these new features can help your organization today and into the future.

<sub>1 Gartner.  “CTOs’ Guide to Containers and Kubernetes — Answering the Top 10 FAQs.”  Published 31 May 2022.  Arun Chandrasekaran, Wataru Katsurashima.

2 Gartner.  “Offering Managers Insight: Opportunities in the SAP S/4HANA and RISE with SAP Market.”  13 April 2022.  Fabio Di Capua.</sub>

The post What’s New at Snow: ITAM Solutions for Rising Cloud Costs, Visibility Into Containers and Asset Data That Drives Sustainability Initiatives appeared first on Snow Software.

Visibility and insights for intelligent decision-making 

The next-generation Snow Atlas platform delivers complete visibility of your IT landscape from on-premises to cloud, SaaS and beyond. With Snow Atlas, you can effectively manage costs, reduce risk and achieve agility. It also makes it easier to see all your SaaS applications and the complexities that often come with them. As Al describes, customers install Snow Atlas agents to see all applications in use, how people use them, what hardware there is and what software users are deploying. With Snow Atlas, you gain the most accurate inventory of technology assets. 

Snow Atlas then applies a layer of intelligence to that data, normalizes it and delivers a complete picture of what’s going on. It gathers data from your entire inventory, makes sense of it and provides the insights IT needs to mitigate business risks and speed up better decision-making. Because IT has plenty on their plate already, Snow Atlas does all of this in one, intuitive dashboard. 

What’s different about Snow Atlas

Before Al joined Snow Software, he was a Snow customer. He found reliance on Technology Intelligence from Snow very beneficial. It provided more insight than he and his team could otherwise piece together on their own. They quickly saw what people were using (not just what they paid for), spotted risks and solved compliance issues. 

Now at Snow, Al considers Snow Atlas very straightforward to set up and use. As he says in the video, the platform provides IT with visibility, manageability and crucial insights. He stresses how badly they’re needed for better decision-making and a faster time to value. 

Gaining Technology Intelligence with Snow Atlas, today and tomorrow

As you’ll see on our website, Snow Atlas fits today’s needs with features such as support for common SSO technologies. It also successfully positions organizations for the future in multiple ways. For example, the platform’s advanced features include automated monitoring/alert capabilities, creating and configuring inventory agents and intuitive self-service user management. Our cloud-native also ensures that you’ll always be on the latest release without intensive upgrades. Along with these features, the Technology Intelligence obtained through Snow Atlas will allow you to better understand your IT estate, stay aligned with your business goals and progress on your plans for continued innovation. 

Gain more expert CIO perspective in other posts from this series. They include Al’s insights on how to start an ITAM practice, technology visibility, how to free up funds for innovation and maximizing cloud investments with FinOps. 

The post CIO Perspective Series: Gaining Technology Intelligence with Snow Atlas appeared first on Snow Software.