With the latest release of Snow Commander, we are thrilled to announce Bring You Own License (BYOL) optimization, an industry-first for cloud management platforms. Featured in our recent product announcement, Snow Commander 8.3 empowers you to maximize cloud license savings with Azure Hybrid Benefit and Amazon Web Services (AWS) BYOL. These new features are also the first time Snow has brought together cloud management and software asset management capabilities to support complete technology intelligence.

Optimizing cloud spend has never been more critical. Microsoft’s last quarterly earnings report showed 47% year-over-year growth for Azure. It’s impressive to see any company, let alone one as large as Microsoft, grow a 10-year-old multi-billion-dollar product line this fast. That means IT organizations are increasing their cloud spend at a time when budgets are coming under increased scrutiny.

Programs like Azure Hybrid Benefit, which promise up to 40% savings, provide novel ways to reduce your cloud spend. With Commander’s new BYOL functionality, you can fully leverage these opportunities to realize the full value of your current licenses.

The first step in taking advantage of BYOL is knowing what licenses you have. Our cloud management platform gives you complete visibility of Windows Server and SQL Server licensing so you can see which licenses are unused and could be applied to your AWS or Azure environments to reap massive savings.

But even with visibility of all your licenses, asset managers trying to take advantage of BYOL struggle with the following challenges:

• Too much effort required to investigate, apply and manage a program
• Lack of tools to map licenses owned to licenses in use in the cloud
• Risk of non-compliance and fines for incorrect use of perpetual licenses in the cloud
• Cloud teams are unaware of which Microsoft licenses the organization already owns

Maximize Azure Hybrid Benefit

Implementing a cloud BYOL initiative may be difficult, but there are significant cost savings that could be derived from it. For example, Microsoft is incentivizing Azure adoption to the tune of up to 40% savings if you migrate on-prem workloads (and Window Server/SQL Server licenses). Further, they claim that Azure is five times cheaper than AWS for Windows Server and SQL Server if you take advantage of hybrid benefit, reservation pricing and extended security updates.

But how do you take advantage of these programs?

With the introduction of Snow Commander’s BYOL Optimization Reports, you can safely maximize your Azure cloud savings by:

• Understanding your current Azure Hybrid Benefit savings
• Identifying which Azure VMs and SQL Server workloads are set to pay-as-you-go
• Supporting scripts that can automate the activation/deactivation of Azure Hybrid Benefit
• Leveraging Snow license data to understand which unused licenses can be moved to Azure

Minimize AWS BYOL risk

BYOL is not limited to Azure. It is also possible to leverage these licenses in AWS so that you are not double paying for Windows Server licenses. Microsoft made a bold move at the end of 2019 to prevent BYOL of newly purchases licenses to the cloud. Many organizations are concerned about complying with

Microsoft when bringing licenses to their AWS environments. No organization wants to get caught violating these policies.

However, if you own millions in perpetual Microsoft licenses that you acquired before this mandate, then you could be saving big in your AWS environment.

With this initial release of BYOL optimization, we are making it easier than ever to detect non-compliance with Windows Server deployments in AWS. The AWS BYOL report will notify you of all cases where the tenancy is not set properly (i.e., the user did not specify a dedicated server), which could lead to a costly violation of Microsoft policies.

This is just the beginning

For many large organizations, cloud migration is a journey and there could be a decade’s worth of savings if BYOL is used effectively. No matter where you stand, our goal is to help you maximize your technology investments and find the optimal balance between licensing spend and usage. Start your free trial of Snow Commander today to increase savings and minimize risk.

To understand the full benefits of a cloud management platform, use our Hybrid Cloud Management Cost Saving Calculator to see how much you can save both in the cloud and on-prem.

The post Maximize Your Cloud Savings with Commander 8.3 appeared first on Snow Software.

A few years ago, the team at Gartner came up with a useful framework designed to help IT asset managers compare different Software Asset Management tools based on “six critical activities” of SAM. Known as the DINROS framework, it outlined the following activities:

Discovery: the act of interrogating TCP/IP networks to identify network-attached physical and virtualized platforms upon which software executes

Inventory: the process of capturing platform configuration information and extracting a complete list of all its software.

Normalize: the consolidation of discovered inventory datasets to remove duplicated or conflicting information

Reconcile: to harmonize contract, purchase and entitlement information with normalized inventory data in order to establish an effective license position

Optimize: the process reducing the number, type and expense of licenses needed and in use, as appropriate

Share: the process of sharing information with multiple stakeholders via a central asset management repository and reporting

It’s a framework that we’ve encouraged clients and prospects to follow in order to understand current SAM capabilities and use as a baseline to plan improvements. And it’s a framework we had in mind last year when Snow made the decision to extend technology intelligence across the cloud and bolster our Cloud Management capabilities with the acquisition of Embotics and introduction of Snow Commander.

But, did you know that DINROS also applies to IT infrastructure?

Having complete discovery and inventory of on-premises and cloud infrastructure helps IT know where assets are and how much they are spending on resources. End to end tagging gives you the ability to normalize and reconcile assets to individual business units and teams, improving spend and user behavior. Optimizing on-premise and cloud infrastructure spend is a top priority and we believe the most effective way to do this is through automation & self-service user experiences.

There’s a ton of value in infrastructure & operations (I&O) teams using a cloud management platform, such as Snow Commander, to automate the lifecycle & cost management of infrastructure resources. SAM managers can then work with I&O teams to extract cloud asset information to improve overall visibility into the estate. With visibility of both on-premise and cloud resources you can run a better software asset management program and take full advantage of cloud savings like Azure’s Hybrid Use Benefit.

Getting started

So, if you want to introduce Snow Commander to your Infrastructure & Operations teammates a good place to start is to calculate how much unnecessary spend you could eliminate. Using our Hybrid Cloud Management Cost Savings Calculator you can find your total savings across cloud or on-premises.

Or, if they’re ready to jump right in, let them try it themselves with a 7-day free trial.

The post What DINROS Means for Cloud Management appeared first on Snow Software.