• Customer: Investec
• Industry: Financial Services
• Location: South Africa
• Employees: 8,300+
• Products: Snow Spend Optimizer (End User Computing, Datacenter, and SaaS) and Snow ITSM Enhancer – Delivered on Snow Atlas

Featured Results

• 15% expected cost reduction on Adobe licenses
• 12% expected cost reduction on Microsoft licenses
• 200 hours saved on operational management annually

Challenges and Opportunities

Founded in 1974, Investec has grown from a small finance firm into an international bank and wealth management group, with more than 8,300 employees and total assets of £58 billion. The bank focuses on core markets in South Africa and the United Kingdom. It also maintains a presence in the Channel Islands, Ireland, Switzerland, India, the United States and the Far East.

Investec fosters an entrepreneurial spirit and a culture which drives innovative thinking among employees to ensure that clients receive the best possible service. Every day, teams from multiple departments and geographies collaborate by using an extensive ecosystem of digital applications, including specialist finance, document management and creative design solutions. Managing this growing software landscape, though, was proving difficult.

Chris Sines, Head of Software Asset Management at Investec, explains: “In the days when we installed applications on individual workstations, it was relatively easy to track our software assets. But with the growth of the cloud subscription model, we have lost our oversight and control over the applications that departments and employees are using. With limited visibility into our software usage, we could be paying for underutilized and even unused licenses, while simultaneously exposing the business to risk with unknown app installations.”

Investec’s previous SAM solution also offered limited capabilities. Preparing software audits involved manually comparing and checking data from multiple sources in a slow, painstaking process. As a result, timely, accurate information was rarely available to IT leaders to guide better decision making when negotiating with vendors.

Chris Sines adds: “We also lacked a native reporting function in our old solution. To get round this, we engaged external consultants to create dashboards and other visualizations. While this gave us some insights into our software assets, it was a complex and costly way to operate.”

The Snow Solution

Investec searched for a solution that would provide full visibility into its software as a service (SaaS) investments, along with sophisticated integration and reporting functionality. During the initial research and discovery phase, the bank consulted independent analysts to identify leading SAM vendors. Then, Investec ran a detailed proof of concept (PoC) to assess the capabilities of three potential options before deciding to deploy Snow Atlas.

Pardon Chauke, Snow Application Owner at Investec, explains: “All three vendors promised their solution would uncover our entire software landscape. But as we pushed them further, it soon became clear that only Snow Software could meet our requirements. Snow Atlas could discover our full SaaS usage, what functionality the service provides and give us insights into who last logged in and how long they used the solutions for.”

To implement Snow Atlas and ensure a smooth transition from the previous software management tool, Investec worked closely with Snow Software to create a comprehensive migration plan. Snow deployed and configured the solution. They also trained users and completed the full process in just four months.

With Snow Atlas in place, Investec has a clear picture of its entire software landscape, including its Microsoft 365, and Adobe Creative Cloud deployments. Full integration between the Snow Atlas configuration management database, Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft 365 and VMware vCenter enables Investec to monitor its assets via a single, centralized portal with intuitive dashboards that provide data on usage and spending.

“Working with Snow was phenomenal. Moving from one enterprise software asset management platform to another was a complex project, and we certainly needed some assistance,” comments Chauke. “Snow provided real expertise throughout the deployment, answering all our questions and always making themselves available to help. Going live in four months was a great result.”

Impact and Results

The adoption of Snow Atlas has been an immediate success for Investec. With full visibility into its cloud and on-premises software assets, the bank now has the detailed insights it needs to optimize its future licensing spend. For example, Investec quickly discovered that employees often required multiple Microsoft, Adobe, and Dropbox licenses for a one-off project requirement and subsequently left them unused.

“Snow Atlas pinpoints those areas where we are paying for subscriptions that are not being used, either because employees have left Investec or because we are seeing low adoption,” adds Nathan Snyman, Microsoft Software Asset Manager. “Thanks to Snow, we will be able to reduce our Adobe footprint and costs by 15 percent, and our spend with Microsoft by 12 percent, when we come to renew licenses.”

Using Snow Atlas has also helped Investec to strengthen its security posture. Mpho Raphunga, the Software Asset Manager who works closely with their Information Security team, explains:

“We discovered that staff were using many freeware
applications, which potentially could create serious security issues. Using data from Snow Atlas to complement the view of our SaaS sprawl helped us to mitigate our threat exposure.”

Mpho Raphunga, Software Asset Manager, Investec

In addition, Investec has dramatically simplified and accelerated the process for preparing software audit reports. The bank can pull in-depth reports from Snow Atlas at any point, eliminating the need for time-consuming and complex
manual working, as well as eliminating the expense of external consultants.

“We can now provide business stakeholders with comprehensive, accurate and timely information on our software assets, including our SaaS investments,” adds Sines. “This in-depth data will help IT leaders to make smarter decisions about our future licensing strategy.”

Sines concludes:

“Snow Atlas gives us the ability to manage and optimize our software assets in granular detail, especially our SaaS investments. We are still in the early days of the partnership with Snow, but it has already made a huge impact in helping us to right-size our software environment, cut risk and reduce our costs. We’re looking forward to the next stage of the journey.”

Chris Sines, Head of Software Asset Management at Investec

The post Investec appeared first on Snow Software.

• Customer: Max Life Insurance
• Industry: Insurance
• Employees: 15,000+
• Devices: 7,000+
• Products: Snow Spend Optimizer for End User Computing and Datacenter

Featured Results

• 10% reduction across the top five enterprise software expenses
• 100% proactive compliance achieved with managed software publishers by Silver Leaf Solutions
• Simplifies internal software auditing processes, enabling teams to move from annual to quarterly audits without additional resource costs

Challenges and Opportunities

Compared with many other nations, consumers in India represent a very high-growth insurance market. The global COVID-19 pandemic seems to have played a significant galvanizing role, as more people seek insurance policies to safeguard their health, property and businesses.

For leading insurers like Max Life, the opportunities to help more citizens and businesses across India prompted the company
to increase its support for new policies. To release budget that could be directed to developing new insurance policies, Max Life looked for operational savings across its organization.

With more than 15,000 employees at Max Life, cloud services, IT infrastructure and software licenses contribute to a large proportion of the company’s annual spend, making it a natural target for cost reduction initiatives.

Suhail Ghai, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Max Life Insurance, outlines the challenge:

“As a large organization we rely on a wide variety of software and services to support our daily operations, encompassing everything from Microsoft 365 and Zoom, to server virtualization technologies, and our Oracle databases. Each software and cloud service comes with varying license types and unique terms of service. With tens of thousands of users in our software estate, keeping track of each license agreement was a complex and time-consuming task.”

Suhail Ghai, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Max Life Insurance

Software asset managers at Max Life tracked the license lifecycle for all procured software using spreadsheets. This cumbersome, manual approach was labor-intensive and prone to human error. As vendors changed from device-based to user-based licensing, Max Life struggled to map current usage and often overbought new subscriptions — exactly the kind of expense the company wanted to avoid.

Ghai continues: “A clear and detailed picture of our software investment and the licenses associated with those was important to ensure compliance with the terms of services set by original equipment manufacturers. Besides, it was vital to optimize our spend on new licenses and mitigate time-consuming manual work in software audits essential for compliance.”

The Snow Solution

Max Life formed a working group of its major stakeholders, including teams from hardware asset management, software asset management, end-user computing, datacenter management, risk management, and security and audit.

Ghai explains, “After reviewing a variety of asset management software, we all agreed that Snow Software offered the most user-friendly and feature-rich solution. Max Life was truly impressed with the level of insight Snow provided into our license portfolio, giving a complete view of our software, cloud and hardware assets, along with the associated license agreements and application usage metrics.”

He continues, “Additionally, we deployed the Snow inventory solution, which makes auditing the licenses and governing all assets fast, simple and efficient. We also deployed the Oracle management offering from Snow, included as part of Spend Optimizer for Datacenter. These Snow solutions greatly enhanced the transparency of our software license agreements.”

Max Life enlisted the support of Silver Leaf Solutions, an IT consultancy specializing in software licensing and spend optimization advisory services. Working with Silver Leaf Solutions, Max Life integrated Snow with its existing solutions, including IBM License Metric Tool, VMware, Hyper-V, Microsoft Office 365, and Zoom.

Silver Leaf Solutions provides a proactive managed service, the top 50 high-value vendors that MaxLife uses, monitored in near real-time. In addition, Silver Leaf Solutions reports regularly on a total of 700 software publishers, with around 300 contracts covering nearly 3,000 products.

Abhishek Sharma, Director & Global SAM Practice Lead at Silver Leaf Solutions, comments, “Working with MaxLife and Snow Software, we were able to complete deployment and deliver our first managed service results within just 90 days. This is a remarkable achievement, and other vendor solutions take considerably greater time and effort. With Snow solutions we can offer very fast return on investment, as well as great data accuracy and clarity.”

Impact and Results

Six months down the line, Snow solutions have enabled Max Life to achieve significant license savings across the extended enterprise. The managed service from Silver Leaf Solutions provides almost instant visibility into software usage and licensing for the top 50 vendors, enabling Max Life to maintain a current, accurate view of its spend and compliance at all times.

“Thanks to the agent-based Snow software, Max Life
can now gain visibility into software licensing in near real-time, and we are not dependent on publishers’ proprietary tools. For example, we have identified many licenses that we had already procured but not utilized.
We can now re-use for other services from our software vendors,” explains Ghai. “When you consider that we have thousands of licenses, this quickly adds up to a significant cost saving.”

The managed service from Silver Leaf Solutions uses data from the Snow solutions to automate software asset management reporting. Max Life can identify who is using which software products, compare against its own security listings, and — if necessary — block unapproved solutions. By eliminating manual processes and relying on the Silver Leaf Solutions managed service, Max Life has switched from annual to quarterly internal software audits, without increasing resource costs – greatly strengthening the company’s compliance posture.

He adds: “Gaining near-real-time visibility on which software assets are deployed, where they are provisioned, and who in Max Life is using them, means that we are much better positioned to ensure compliance with our license agreements, and to reduce the financial and reputational risk to our business.”

In addition, by strengthening its compliance posture with Snow Software, Max Life has also secured ISO certification for the smooth running of its IT systems and processes.

Ghai concludes:

“Snow Software is a real game-changer, and with the new data accuracy Max Life is much better placed to keep track of our software licenses, making sure that we purchase only the software packages that we need. The managed service from Silver Leaf Solutions helps us maximize the benefits of the Snow solutions, helping to optimize software spend. Ultimately, we will reinvest the savings into growing our operations, to help us grow the business to bring fair, affordable insurance policies to more consumers in India.”

Suhail Ghai, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Max Life Insurance

The post Max Life Insurance appeared first on Snow Software.

• Customer: SASOL
• Industry: Petrochemicals
• Location: South Africa
• Employees: 30,000
• Products: Software Asset Management, Snow Inventory Manager, Snow Software License Manager, Snow IT Service Manager Enhancer and Productivity Optimizer, Snow for Oracle, Snow for ServiceNow, and Snow Optimizer for SAP®,

Featured Results

• $34 million in savings and cost avoidance
• 30 countries managed from a single location
• 23,000 devices monitored and managed

Challenges and Opportunities

In recent years, industrial companies have focused much
more on sustainability. Take Sasol, for example. This leading petrochemical business in South Africa transformed its operations to ensure it acts responsibly toward the environment while still delivering maximum value to stakeholders.

According to Cobie Nel, Senior License and Asset Management Specialist, sustainability is a major driver for Sasol solutions that will contribute to a thriving post-pandemic planet.

“We enhanced our efforts to streamline the business and focus on areas where we believe there are good growth prospects with low risk and lower-carbon intensity.”

Cobie Nel, Senior License and Asset Management Specialist, Sasol

Knowing that operational efficiency reduces waste, cuts carbon emissions and enables environmentally aware growth, the Sasol team looked at every area of its business, including its very large IT estate, to identify opportunities for efficiency optimization.

They found a complicated situation in which each of the operating regions had different policies, processes and procedures that were not aligned to an ISO standard. Sasol Information Management had a strategic objective to reduce the operational complexity by integrating management of the inventories and configuration databases into their operational processes.

Without standardized reporting for its IT systems that support its 34,000 users across 30 countries, they couldn’t get reliable, enterprise-wide data on IT assets, utilization and compliance.

“We wanted to improve our IT efficiency, reduce software and hardware costs, and much more,” says Cobie Nel. “For example, retiring redundant, under- used and older systems would pay off for sustainability reasons, and offer significant commercial savings.”

The Snow Solution

Sasol aimed to control, plan, procure, deploy, track, maintain and retire all its global Sasol software assets from a central location. Clarity and currency of information would reduce business risk by providing verified information for license audits. They would also cut costs simultaneously by identifying and eliminating redundant software.

“Central to the process was gaining executive buy-in,” comments Cobie Nel. “By providing visibility of assets and software utilization on a global scale, we could deliver better quality management information more rapidly than before, mitigating business risk and enabling data-driven decisions.”

Sasol operates in a highly regulated industry and across many countries with varying laws and regulations, so their selection criteria had to include the ability to support policies that meet legal requirements in multiple regions. The chosen solution would also need to integrate with existing business operations and cover Sasol’s core SAP® ERP systems and its manufacturing control systems.

To deliver on its enterprise policy, Sasol selected a
full suite of SAM solutions, including Snow Asset Manager, Snow Inventory Manager, Snow Software License Manager, Snow IT Service Manager Enhancer and Productivity Optimizer, Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software, Snow for Oracle, and Snow for ServiceNow. This solution suite enables comprehensive management capabilities, from software application builds to utilization and licenses, and includes operating systems, devices, hardware configurations, and much more.

Cobie Nel continues, “The Snow solutions enable the team to become the trusted SAM capability within Sasol. For example, with Snow we can provide a single source of truth on software license information, users, and utilization. We now deliver highly reliable, scalable secure, and cost-effective SAM, and Sasol uses this data on a continual basis to manage the software asset lifecycle throughout the enterprise.”

“Combined, our enhanced software asset management project has delivered cost savings and avoidance that total more than $34 million.”

Cobie Nel, Senior Specialist, License and Asset Management

Impact and Results

With the Snow solutions in place, Cobie Nel reports impressive results: “Combined, our enhanced SAM project has delivered cost savings and avoidance that total more than $34 million. We used Snow to help rationalize and validate our licenses with multiple vendors, including Prometheus GWOS, K2, OMADA, AutoDesk, AirWatch, OpenText, Oracle, Acquire Sentinel, Cloudera, VMware, and many more.”

In addition, the team has become a key enabler for
the organization, with comprehensive management
of the software asset lifecycle, from planning through procurement to retirement. Based on accurate data, the IT team helps manage the corporation’s risk profile too, with significant reductions in contractual risk, reduced financial risk of penalties, and greater information security. At the strategic level, greater operational control cuts reputational threats, too.

Additional results included:

• Optimizing the tracking and management of software assets
• Capturing the attributes related to delivering software assets
• Obtaining a holistic view of the software asset portfolio
• Capturing and reporting costs of software assets and related services
• Providing financial and operational insight about the software asset portfolio within Sasol globally
• Cost avoidance by being able to manage software vendor environments more accurately and proactively
• The ability to procure only the licenses needed and to have information readily available to enable re-allocation of licenses where needed

Sasol experienced numerous audits over the past 2 years. During a third-party review of Sasol’s Oracle licenses’ compliance status, the Snow platform identified some potential compliance concerns for which there were these estimated cost avoidances (only in South Africa):

• Database compliance cost avoidance — $1.3 million
• Middleware compliance cost avoidance — $27.3 million

Cobie Nel concludes, “Thanks to the Snow Software suite, we provide the business with a highly reliable, scalable, secure and cost-effective SAM service. Based on the Snow solutions, the team has become a key enabler for the organization, establishing a trusted SAM capability. We deliver a single source of truth for software license information, reducing the risk of non-compliance and optimizing licensing within Sasol.”

The post Sasol appeared first on Snow Software.

• Customer: Panasonic Information Systems Company Europe, a division of Panasonic Business Support Europe GmbH, delivering IT services for the Panasonic Europe Group
• Industry: IT service provider for Panasonic in Europe
• Location: EU, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Russia
• Employees: 12,000+ employees within Panasonic in Europe
• Products: Snow Spend Optimizer, Snow Adoption Tracker

Featured Results

•  $100,000 potential Microsoft license savings
•  8,500 users to manage
•  450 unused licenses to recover
  

Challenges and Opportunities

The Panasonic business entities in Europe are part of the global Panasonic Corporation. These entities employ more than 12,000 people in the region.

Panasonic is one of the world’s largest players in the development of electronic technologies and solutions in consumer electronics, automotive and B2B worlds. Panasonic Information Systems Company Europe (PISCEU), a division of Panasonic Business Support Europe GmbH, manages the group’s IT infrastructure. 

Panasonic is a Japanese company that follows the autonomous management approach. While this strategy has proven successful, it significantly increases challenges for IT and software asset management groups. For operational tasks such as software audits, the process of gathering and validating license data proved to be enormously complex and ballasted.

Due to the organizational structure, local business units maintained their software asset records on their own and depended on spreadsheets often submitted by already very busy executives. With comprehensive audits and external consultants engaged to help at considerable expense, the business units needed a more effective solution. Even though PISCEU was as certain as it could be about license compliance, a high-profile audit resulted in significant, unplanned additional fees.

Ulf Kuetemeyer, Senior Manager of Contracting & Procurement, takes up the story: “The fees resulting from the software audit was a wake-up call across businesses of Panasonic in Europe. Over time, we had collected a sprawling mix of server, client, on-premises and cloud subscription software, running on thousands of systems, and our rather manual software asset management processes were not keeping pace. We wanted to reduce the time, effort and cost of software audits, by ensuring compliance and streamlining the software asset management process. How could we encourage the highly independent businesses to release a little of their autonomy in return for a centralized IT service offering that would improve compliance, lower costs and reduce risk?”

The Snow Solution

The central IT Services team from PISCEU reviewed software asset management solutions, focusing particularly on the ability to manage both on-premises and cloud-subscription assets, and selected the Snow SAM solution.

Thousands of users in separate business units of Panasonic in Europe were using an array of solutions, such as Adobe and Microsoft, as well as specialty vendors.

Key decision points in favor of the Snow solution were the ability to monitor in-browser software usage, and the Snow Data Intelligence Service (DIS), a vast and continuously updated catalog that includes software from the largest recognition database, which enables discovery by the SAM service.

However, some employers and employees were concerned that web-browser monitoring would collect personal usage data. As a company based in Germany, PISCEU naturally involved its Workers Councils at an early stage in the project to discuss how the Snow solution collected, stored and shared data without intruding on users’ activities as it enabled full monitoring and management of cloud subscription software used within a web browser.

“We chose the Snow SAM solution because it covers all our functionality requests, from the DIS to the management of both installed and web browser software, without compromising data privacy,” says Ulf Kuetemeyer. “For the first time, if the operating companies agreed to take up the service, we could gain clear visibility of software across the entire estate.”

“Using the new transparency delivered by the Snow Software SAM solution, we have negotiated five new framework agreements with major vendors. We can procure licenses at significant discount, assigning them to the Panasonic companies from a single pool, while ensuring compliance.”

– Ulf Kuetemeyer, Senior Manager of Contracting & Procurement, Panasonic Information Systems Company Europe 

Impact and Results

The company’s very large Microsoft Office user base offered the first significant opportunity for software optimization. The first step was to use Snow SAM tools to determine the number of licenses and, based on usage, the appropriate license type for each user.

“With Snow SAM we found we had around 450 people who did not make use of their Microsoft Office license, which alone could lead to a savings of up to a six-digit Euro figure,” remarks Ulf Kuetemeyer.

“The Snow SAM solution enables complete transparency of software usage, licensing, and deployment. We can optimize the mix of license types, quantity, and allocation based on that knowledge. For large contracts such as Microsoft and Adobe, central IT can buy licenses at volume, and if a local business reduces their user numbers, we take on the risk that we can use those spare licenses within the Panasonic group.”

“In effect,” Ulf continues, “we are offering SAM-as-a-service to the business units, showing how we can provide greater cost efficiency, reduce their risk of fees resulting from audits and optimize their software management. Using the new transparency that the Snow SAM solution delivers, we have negotiated five new framework agreements with major vendors to procure licenses at a significant discount. The ability for Panasonic companies to return licenses to the pool at any time offers them much greater flexibility, while we gain better visibility of enterprise usage to enable license optimization.” 

In addition, the IT services team has the opportunity to centrally rationalize software across the enterprise for the very first time, thanks to the Snow solution. By consolidating to standardized solutions and tools, Panasonic in Europe will look to reduce complexity, cut operational costs, and streamline business processes.

Ulf Kuetemeyer concludes, “As we prove our value with the Snow SAM-as-a-service model, more Panasonic business units are coming on board, which in turn improves our economies of scale and simultaneously enhances our compliance position. Based on the benefits of our approach, we as PISCEU plan to extend the Snow SAM solution across the enterprise, helping to further reduce risk, cut costs and optimize operations.”

The post Panasonic Information Systems Company Europe appeared first on Snow Software.

• Customer: EDEKA DIGITAL (IT service provider of the EDEKA Group)
• Industry: Technology & Services
• Location: Germany
• Employees: 400,000
• Products: Snow Optimizer for SAP® 

Featured Results

• Over €6.2 million saved in software license costs
• Significant reduction in time taken to prepare for SAP software audits
• Relevant USMM reports in a matter of minutes
• Simplifies user and IT asset management activities

Challenges and Opportunities

Founded in 1907, the EDEKA Group operates more than 11,000 retail outlets, from corner stores to hypermarkets, throughout Germany. With revenues of more than €61 billion (2020), EDEKA operates as a cooperative, with seven independent regions and a central IT organization — EDEKA Digital — that also provides financial, marketing, and technical support.

The EDEKA Group relies on SAP ERP solutions to manage its core business processes from head office to shop floor, and almost every single one of EDEKA’s 400,000 staff accesses the SAP systems daily.

Nico Fleisch, license manager at EDEKA DIGITAL, comments, “EDEKA has a mix of self-service, professional, developer and specially tailored “retail user” licenses from SAP, enabling us to provide exactly the right access rights for users, depending on their role. Managing user licenses and preparing for SAP audits presented a formidable task and engaged us more throughout the year to complete. In 2019, license costs for new user licenses had reached €7.5 million, without optimization of user licensing.”

Each EDEKA region is responsible for its own SAP infrastructure. Managing the SAP licenses for such a diverse group of supermarkets and corner stores was proving time-consuming and unreliable. “We wanted to streamline our processes and save operating costs, to provide a better service to the cooperative members and, of course, to our in-store customers,” remarks Nico Fleisch. “If we could reduce the time expended on SAP audits, devote more energy to value-adding tasks, and improve IT operational efficiency — and if we could identify SAP usage at the user level — we could align our SAP licenses more closely to individual needs, and gain significant savings.”

The EDEKA DIGITAL team looked for ways to reduce the time taken to prepare for and complete SAP license audits and reduce SAP costs by optimizing license allocations and therefore reduce the amount of user licenses to purchase.

The Snow Solution

After reviewing applications from several vendors, EDEKA DIGITAL prioritized Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software as the most effective, powerful, and configurable license management solution for SAP licenses. The EDEKA DIGITAL team invited multiple vendors to demonstrate their capabilities with pilot deployments to the EDEKA Group’s test SAP environments.

“Snow Software deployed and configured Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software in a few hours and provided comprehensive support and in-depth technical information,” explains Nico Fleisch. “The service from Snow Software was outstanding. It gave us great confidence that we could move Snow Optimizer for SAP® into production rapidly, securely and safely.

”Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software is a certified add-on for SAP ERP, running as part of the SAP environment and inheriting security, governance and control from the already deployed SAP system. As a result, transaction data analyzed by Snow Optimizer stays within the SAP landscape without external transfers or extracts. The Snow solution is deployed once, centrally, in the SAP environment and collates data from all the satellite systems into a single view.

“By deploying a single instance of Snow Optimizer for SAP®Software to our SAP system dedicated for the Central User Administration, we can view, process and manage license data from all the attached SAP solutions,” explains Nico Fleisch.

Impact and Results

With Snow for SAP® Software in place, EDEKA DIGITAL has successfully reduced the additional cost for user licenses in 2019 from €7.5 million to just €1.3 million — a saving of €6,2 million — releasing funds for the company to invest in innovation.

Nico Fleisch says, “Because Snow Optimizer for SAP®Software makes it much easier for us to track the user license types across all of our SAP instances, we were able to achieve significant savings by identifying wrongly allocated license types and optimizing the license usage across the company.

He continues: “With Snow Software offering us a nearly real-time view of our license consumption, we can constantly monitor our license allocations to ensure that we never overspend on licenses that we don’t need. What’s more, spotting and deactivating inactive user accounts now takes a matter of hours, compared to up to a month when using SAP’s built-in asset management tools.”

By gaining greater visibility into group-wide software licensing arrangements, EDEKA DIGITAL can prepare for SAP software audits much more efficiently.

“Using Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software, we can quickly and easily pull data on specific aspects of our SAP instances. For example, user license types and the quantity of license type usage, RAM used for processing SAP workloads and much more,” explains Nico Fleisch. “Previously it would take us up to a year to prepare for an SAP audit, but with Snow we can gather all of the necessary information to support an audit in less than six months —freeing up time for us to spend on value-add tasks.”

As with any large company, EDEKA has unique business processes. They initially found that some of their special requirements were not completely automated with Snow Optimizer for SAP Software, but Fleisch says that Snow developers quickly implemented their important requirements into the solution.

He concludes: “With Snow Software supporting our asset management activities, we’ve successfully optimized our IT estate and streamlined many of our internal asset management processes. In turn, these actions enable our employees to dedicate more time to delivering excellent service. They also provide significant financial savings which we can reinvest in growing EDEKA.”

The post EDEKA DIGITAL appeared first on Snow Software.

Christchurch City Council avoids spending NZ $250,000 and creates new foundation for its IT transformation within 6 months

• Customer: Christchurch City Council
• Industry: Local government
• Location: New Zealand
• Employees: 2,299
• Products: Snow Spend Optimizer, Snow Optimizer for SAP® 

Featured Stats

• NZ$250,000 cost avoidance in year one
• NZ$150,000 saving on Microsoft licenses
• 400 surplus user seats deleted
• 236 unknown SaaS applications discovered

Challenges & Opportunities

Christchurch City Council serves some 380,000 residents living in Christchurch, the largest conurbation on New Zealand’s South Island. The Council manages a budget of around NZ$1.14 billion, and is responsible for essential public services, ranging from waste and recycling to social care and mental health.

As part of their due diligence and compliance, the Council prepares an IT asset management plan every three years, which provides a comprehensive record of IT infrastructure, assets, and performance. Data from the plan is included in the financial statements the Council uses for strategy development and to assess IT efficiency.

Colin Lawrence, arriving as newly appointed team leader in the IT asset management department, realized that the Council’s IT planning processes could benefit from modernization. “In fact, the review provided very little visibility of our systems. Data was collected, correlated, and aggregated manually over six months, with the Council’s service management tool used as the repository for asset data. This way of working severely limited our ability to make useful recommendations to the Council about how we operated, our costs and how we could become more effective.”

Significantly, the Council lacked the ability to measure IT consumption. Assets — servers, systems and software — could be purchased and remain unused, or perhaps be present on the Council balance sheet long after end of life. Additionally, IT services were charged to Council departments at a flat per-user rate, regardless of the services provisioned. Employees who barely opened their email inboxes had the same IT overhead cost as dataintensive office-based users, obscuring the true cost of each department’s operations.

“We managed to produce the review in around six months, using some neat workarounds to interrogate systems,” says Colin Lawrence. “In the process, we were able to demonstrate what could be done with up-todate, validated data — for example, reflecting correct asset depreciation rates in the balance sheet, and understanding IT consumption at the user level. We showed what could be achieved if we implemented true asset management capabilities, using best-practice tools and processes, and we started to search for possible solutions.”

Solution

The Council requested its IT advisory partners — Gartner, InfoTech, and ITAM Review — to contribute to an extensive review of IT asset management solutions and complete an internal evaluation of both software and systems integrators.

Colin Lawrence confirms, “Christchurch City Council chose Snow Software based on its extensive product capabilities, the excellent range of connectors to third-party software and the ability to replace manual systems with streamlined, automated processes.”

For the Council, implementing Snow products would also require some degree of cultural change, moving from an uncontrolled environment to full visibility of assets, users and consumption. The IT team spent time explaining the potential impacts and benefits to department heads, such as cost analysis that would help them with operational planning, and enhanced security for the Council by removing unauthorized software and older, more vulnerable devices.

“Unlike many IT deployments that took several years, we completed the Snow rollout within just months and immediately started producing results, just before our (NZ) second Covid pandemic lockdown,” remarks Colin Lawrence. “Snow gave us visibility into things we knew about, and revealed much more, too. For the first time, we obtained accurate totals for on-premises devices, software and cloud subscriptions, and we could see who used which software and services.”

As a first step, the Council deployed Snow to create a “trueup,” a validated inventory of systems, users and processors for all Microsoft software. As people switched from office to working at home during the early stages of the pandemic, the Council experienced significant changes to usage patterns and behaviors.

“Prior to 2020, we believed that we could remove 400 seats from our enterprise license agreement. Once implemented, Snow confirmed those assumptions. As the pandemic lockdowns tightened, the true-up showed a steep rise in demand for Microsoft Office, moving from a low of around 2,100 to a high of 2,400,” comments Lawrence. “The essential element is that Snow automatically collects software asset and consumption data to give you the ability to understand your environment. Based on current, authenticated data, Snow enables you to adjust operations and licensing for the maximum possible benefit, while fully achieving your organization’s aims.”

Lawrence also affirms, “We work with Snow as partners and we’ve built a partnership that benefits us both, giving prestige to our organizations and providing a credible example of how Snow delivers results. Everybody from Snow was very helpful and insightful, following up on all our requests, and keen to work with us.”

Impact & Results

Christchurch City Council has recorded immediate and impressive results from its Snow deployment, as Lawrence elaborates: “In the first year, data from Snow enabled the Council to remodel our Microsoft licenses to match user needs more accurately, avoiding costs of NZ$250,000.”

With much greater control and visibility over its extensive IT landscape, the Council was able to assign Microsoft licenses at the appropriate level to each user. In some cases, they reverted to lower-cost options for users who did not need the full Office suite.

“Using the Snow solutions, we found 236 cloud-based applications that both we and the department heads simply didn’t know about, and we even discovered users with illicit gaming software. With Snow, we gain real-time insight into our security risks, software consumption and asset inventory to help the Council make better strategic decisions in support of service delivery,” comments Lawrence. “Snow helps us give people the right tools for the right reasons for the right job.”

From the initial successes with Snow, the Council has expanded its ambitions to include its core SAP applications, with Snow Optimizer for SAP®. This will allow the Council to collect and analyze SAP license data, automate license management and renewal, and ensure full compliance while minimizing licenses deployed.

Additionally, Snow solutions are enabling organization-wide IT lifecycle maintenance, retiring out-of-date and unused software, and confirming responsible end-life device disposal. As well as meeting recycling and environmental objectives, the Council now has a balance sheet that truly reflects its IT assets, and the Snow data enables executives and political leaders to make solid operational and strategic IT decisions.

As the Council transforms from on-premises to cloud solutions, there will be a unique impact on its Microsoft Office licenses. Rather than employing a one-size-fits-all approach, the Council will use Snow products and examine application consumption at the user level to choose the optimal license mix that is both cost-efficient and offers the greatest utility for everyone.

Lawrence concludes, “Christchurch City Council is transforming to a modern, streamlined IT architecture, where we can assign IT cost and allocate investments according to assets and consumption, and plan business strategy based on validated, current data. Snow software gives us the core understanding of what we have and how we use it, helps us to invest in the flexibility and mobility of our workforce and ultimately enables us to deliver better services at lower cost to Christchurch.”

The post Christchurch City Council appeared first on Snow Software.

Maynilad saves upwards of several hundred thousand US dollars on SAP license costs using Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software

• Customer: Maynilad Water Services, Inc.
• Industry: Utilities
• Location: Philippines
• Employees: 2,200
• Products: Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software

Featured Stats

• Several $100,000 license costs saved
• 2,700+ licenses identified with 100% accuracy
• SAP audit successfully defended

Challenges & Opportunities

Maynilad Water Services, Inc. (Maynilad) is the water and wastewater services provider for the 17 cities and municipalities that comprise the West Zone of the Greater Manila Area. It is the largest water concessionaire in the Philippines in terms of customer base, currently serving more than 9.8 million customers. Some 2,200 staff at Maynilad rely on SAP® software, paid for on a per-user license basis, to manage essential water and wastewater services.

The sister company of Maynilad extended an Unlimited During Deployment (UDD) licensing scheme to them, enabling fixed fee payments, regardless of actual usage, for a set period.

The UDD approach eliminates the need to monitor and manage SAP licensing, and provides significant flexibility and unlimited usage when companies are in transition or transformation. Compared with the commonly known per-user licensing, UDD delivers this agility at a premium fee.

Korina Monoso, IT operations head of Maynilad, elaborates: “Maynilad maintained both direct licensing and the UDD model. To reduce costs and complexity, we wanted to move all users into the main Maynilad agreement when the UDD license came to its end. But manually tracking and consolidating SAP licenses during this transitional period was challenging and time-consuming. In addition, keeping track of our SAP software usage was difficult.”

Part of the UDD agreement includes an SAP audit to assess software usage. SAP uses this audit for license fee renewal negotiations. “The UDD pre-termination audit was challenging. It was where we really found Snow software useful. We used it for license usage clean-up, and for the audit results finalization. It also firmed up the correct license count. Coming up with a complete count during audit closing is important because it sets the final license count that we shall have moving forward. As a result, we were able to avoid additional count beyond the set baseline, which could have cost us extra charges and result in audit compliance risk,” notes Monoso.

Solution

Maynilad realized that it needed validated data showing current SAP licensing and usage for both direct and indirect usage scenarios to successfully mitigate the risk of fee increases. With many geographically dispersed users, manual surveys would be inefficient and unreliable; thus, the team looked for an intelligent tool to extract and analyze information automatically.

“Maynilad selected Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software because it is quick to implement and easy to configure, without impacting SAP,” reports Monoso. “Both SAP and KPMG certify Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software, and it is a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader, which confirmed our choice.”

Maynilad deployed Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software to build a full picture of its direct and indirect licensing position, including SAP BusinessObjects. With the assistance of a specialist Snow consultant, the company transferred all SAP software asset management capabilities to its SAP Basis and functional teams, concluding with presentations of results to senior management.

“The Snow consultancy helped us to clarify our license position before the audit process commenced, with guidance on the right areas to focus on and the level of detail required,” says Monoso. “Post-delivery, we continue to receive great support from Snow in terms of additional references, and upcoming licensing schemes that may be more cost-effective for Maynilad.”

When the UDD agreement ended, SAP completed its software audit, and the results were compared with reports from Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software to identify discrepancies and discover the root causes. Monoso comments, “In the short-term, Snow Optimizer helped us rationalize and clean up our SAP license allocations. Subsequently, during the audit process, we used the data from Snow Optimizer to establish the correct usage, reduce liabilities and negotiate the best possible outcome for our company.”

Impact & Results

Moving on from the expiration of the UDD, Maynilad now operates Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software as its standard SAP license management solution. Each month, the company reports on SAP access and user privileges, manages its internal audit processes, and establishes its current license position.

“A clear understanding of our SAP environment enabled us to negotiate the right deal with SAP. Based on the validated data provided by Snow Optimizer, Maynilad was able to avoid several hundred thousand USD in potential audit exposure compared with an unmanaged UDD license,” says Maynilad CIO Francisco Castillo.

For example, the company can now monitor license usage and status across all SAP platforms/products. The solution allows automatic cross referencing, ensuring non-duplicity of accounts. In many cases, Maynilad can maintain an optimized number of licenses assigned with the appropriate and most cost-effective license type.

One specific illustration is how Maynilad uses Snow Optimizer to rationalize its SAP BusinessObjects licenses. SAP BOBJ licenses were matched against ECC Professional, which is instantaneous using Snow. Aligned with SAP’s changing license metric scheme, this solution helps Maynilad adapt almost immediately.

“With our previous processes, simply discovering the users and extracting the data from different systems would take more than five hours, followed by manual comparison in Excel worksheets. With Snow Optimizer we can extract reports quickly, advise our CIO, and make fact-based decisions to optimize our SAP licenses,” says Monoso.

Castillo concludes, “Like many other companies, we are very budget-conscious, particularly during the economic uncertainty caused by the global pandemic. Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software gave us the confidence to defend our SAP audit successfully, ensuring we run the most cost-effective licensing regime, and allowing us to deliver operational excellence to our more than 9.8 million customers.”

The post Maynilad Water Services, Inc. appeared first on Snow Software.

Syntegon discovers 6-digit euro amount in software license savings with Snow Software

• Customer: Syntegon Technology
• Industry: Industrial products (processing and packaging technology)
• Location: Germany
• Employees: 6,000
• Products: Snow Spend Optimizer for SaaS, Datacenter and End-User Computing

Featured Stats

• Saved 6-digit euro amount in 2020 software license costs
• Strengthens software license compliance position for Syntegon
• Simplifies deactivation of unused applications and user profiles

Challenges & Opportunities

If you’ve ever received an injection from your doctor, there’s a high chance that the medicine you received was transported in a hermetically sealed and, sterile, Syntegon container. With a presence in over 15 countries and 1,700 patented inventions, Syntegon Technology is a world-leading producer of processing and packaging technology for the pharmaceutical and food industries.

In 2020, Syntegon embarked on an ambitious business transformation project, aiming to cut costs, improve efficiency, and enhance profitability. With over 6,000 employees relying on 6,500 workstations, 3,000 mobile devices, and 700 servers, software licenses form a substantial proportion of their annual spend.

Ulrich Koch, License Manager at Syntegon, explains, “As well as enterprise applications from Microsoft, Oracle and SAP®, we also use a great deal of specialist engineering software, including EPLAN, AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Wonderware and much more. Each application comes with its own unique license agreement and terms of service, which makes managing our license portfolio and ensuring compliance with usage terms a tremendously complex task.”

Ulrich Koch continues, “With a savings target of middle-6-digit euro amount in mind, we looked for the best way to consolidate all of our asset management activities into a single platform, to help our IT teams to work even more productively, optimize our software licenses, and increase license compliance.”

Solution

To find the right asset management solutions for its needs, Syntegon selected solutions from two vendors and tested them both in proof-of-concept exercises. Snow Software came out as the clear winner — outperforming on every front.

“During the proof of concept, we discovered that Snow would enable us to monitor at least 95 percent of our installed applications, whereas the other vendor would only cover 40 percent,” explains Koch.

He adds: “Based on the excellent performance of Snow and the fact that it could help us to manage our entire license portfolio, not just enterprise application licenses, selecting Snow Software was a natural choice.” To ensure best practices and maximize the benefits of Snow solutions, Syntegon engaged Snow premier partner SoftwareONE to host Snow and manage their SaaS, datacenter and end user computing environments.

“Thanks to SoftwareONE we achieved rapid, seamless and cost-effective deployment of Snow products,” says Stefan Elling, director of IT Controlling. “In fact, we were able to get up and running without any issues, and it only required one member from our IT team to help configure the system—freeing the rest of the team to work on value-added tasks.”

Impact & Results

With Snow Software underpinning its asset management activities, Syntegon has dramatically simplified software license management and uncovered huge year-on-year savings.

“With Snow, we reduced our software licensing costs by an upper 6-digits euro figure, which was significantly more than the original 2020 target,” says Stefan Elling.

“By delivering granular insight into our software license portfolio, user types, and the key hardware metrics relevant to our usage agreements, Snow helped us to identify unnecessary and underutilized software licenses.

We are also much better equipped to ensure round-the-clock compliance with all our software license agreements with a near real-time view of installed software — making it easy to spot and deactivate unused licenses.” Impressed with its software asset management capabilities, Syntegon decided to launch a proof of concept for Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software, an SAP-certified application built to optimize and manage SAP licenses.

Frank Streichert, vice-president IT, concludes: “Snow Software is an essential asset management tool for us because it helps reduce IT operating costs and minimize business risks. By purposefully streamlining our software license management and consistently reducing expenses, we can devote more resources to developing new, innovative IT services and expanding IT service excellence. We look forward to deepening our partnership with Snow Software and see very good opportunities to leverage further potential to reduce software licensing costs.”

The post Syntegon Technology appeared first on Snow Software.

HAMK solves computer labs challenges with Snow Commander

• Customer: Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK)
• Industry: Higher Education
• Location: Finland
• Employees: 700, supporting 10,000 students
• Products: Snow Commander

Featured Stats

• 800-1,500 VMware virtual machines running, depending on course calendars
• Over 2,000 virtual machines deployed yearly
• 24×7 OnDemand deployment for students

Challenges & Opportunities

From seven campus locations in Häme region, Finland, Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK) offers 27 graduate and 10 postgraduate degree programs, delivered both in-person and online. With educational roots stretching back to 1840, the modern HAMK now specializes in research, development, and innovation, provided in diverse courses from smart, organic farming to teacher training.

Many programs include elements such as managing servers running Linux or Microsoft Windows, and virtual machine (VM) environments based on VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V. In addition, students learn about the detailed technical services and protocols that support local and wide-area networks and the internet, encouraged by hands-on experimentation.

To make this approach possible, HAMK creates VMs fully isolated both from each other and from real-world production systems. Typically, HAMK runs more than 1,000 active VMs, providing them as virtual laboratories (vLabs) for students, supported by a VMware cluster. In these safe vLab spaces, students can test their knowledge, change core system settings, and complete coursework without risk of impacting essential HAMK services.

Sami Kapanen, ICT Manager at HAMK, explains: “Managing many VMs could become a nightmare. For example, students can easily damage a VM when experimenting with it or doing some bad installations, then they would require a new VM deployed, again and again. Now, this is self-service for them.”

The HAMK team looked for ways to reduce administration overhead and simplify VM management. Further, by eliminating redundant VMs, HAMK would reduce the pressure on its IT infrastructure, and avoid unnecessary capacity investments.

Solution

HAMK selected Snow Commander, a platform-neutral solution designed to provide integrated, cost-effective management of hybrid cloud environments.

“The key driver for choosing Snow Commander was that we could quickly and easily implement a self-service model for students, reducing our workload while enhancing the delivery of VMs for the study programs,” comments Sami Kapanen. “Importantly, Snow Commander provides self-service capabilities, enabling students to request and delete old VMs and create new VMs, which offers them the greatest possible flexibility and also cuts administration tasks for the IT team.”

Snow Commander enables a single interface for managing Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware VMs, as well as a host of related services such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes and more.

Using Snow Commander, HAMK students log into a VMware vSphere cluster and order VMs for their courses. To ensure that redundant images do not consume valuable storage space, all VMs are created with a default lifetime—although this can be extended if appropriate. If a student’s vLab is damaged or corrupted, they can use Snow Commander to delete it and order a new VM immediately—all available remotely, to enable online and on-campus learning.

Impact & Results

HAMK now relies on Snow Commander to provide integrated management of all the VMs in the vLabs workspace, as Sami Kapanen reports: “Currently, we have more than 1,400 VMs provisioned in the VMware vSphere cluster. Without Snow Commander, all this would be a nightmare to manage; it would require a lot of scripting and manual labor, and change requests would be handled as ServiceDesk tickets during office hours, absorbing IT team time and potentially delaying response. Snow Commander enables simplified, centralized, VM management that cuts HAMK’s IT administration workload, while ensuring service provisioning and capacity are optimized for efficiency, capability, and service.”

Sami Kapanen concludes, “With Snow Commander, students can handle VM management themselves— anytime, anywhere—an valuable capability, especially during the COVID-19 lockdowns. In addition, Snow Commander provides comprehensive monitoring and reporting for the vLabs and VMware vSphere environments, which means we can plan capacity and provisioning as cost-effectively as possible, while maintaining operational and educational excellence.”

The post HAMK Häme University of Applied Sciences appeared first on Snow Software.

Telkomsel reduces 10% on Oracle software costs within the first month, cuts risk and enhances service continuity with Snow Software Asset Management

• Customer: Telkomsel
• Industry: Telecommunications
• Employees: Over 5,000
• Location: Indonesia
• Products: Snow Spend Optimizer, Data Intelligence Service, End-User Computing

Featured Stats

• Potential 10% cut in Oracle software license costs
• $74,000 a year potential saving on Microsoft subscriptions
• 90% reduction in time taken to collect license data
• Identified over $740,000 potential cost avoidance in Oracle license compliance

Challenges & Opportunities

PT Telekomunikasi Selular, known as Telkomsel, is one of Indonesia’s leading digital telecommunications providers. Based in Jakarta and employing more than 5,000 people, Telkomsel serves around 170 million customers with a variety of pre-paid and post-paid SIM cards, including the hugely popular Telkomsel PraBayar and Telkomsel Halo brands.

Like many large organizations, Telkomsel constantly seeks to optimize operational efficiency. With a significant budget assigned to software, the Telkomsel IT team is always looking for ways to enhance administration and streamline management processes wherever possible.

Torang Hasudungan Sitorus, Vice President, IT Quality Assurance and Service Management, explains, “For example, vendor software audits took considerable time to resolve, and Telkomsel lacked the data to prove its usage or reduce its license fees. Similarly, the team was unable to locate outdated software that might expose us to security risks, or eliminate software that was not actually in use.”

He continues, “When we investigated further, we realized that the twin root causes were reliance on manual processes, and the lack of a single, trusted view of software in use across the business. We looked for a way to improve our audit compliance, enhance security, monitor utilization, and cut costs.”

Solution

To gain integrated control of its software estate, Telkomsel chose Snow’s comprehensive Software Asset Management (SAM) solution which will help them manage their data center and end user on-premises and Microsoft 365 environments. We completed a comprehensive technical POC of the Snow Platform to ensure that it was able to address all our technical and business requirements. In addition, having Snow a local team in Indonesia along with the strong partner relationship that Snow had with our incumbent technology partner, Astra Graphia Information Technology, made Snow the most suited SAM partner to work with. The IT Operations team owned the project, supported by the Security, Infrastructure, Development, and Asset Management teams for implementation.

As a first step, Telkomsel implemented the Snow SAM Platform, which collects detailed information on installed software, including licenses, versioning, computer specifications, users, and period of use. In parallel, Telkomsel deployed discovery tools to create a database of physical and virtual machines, including storage, switches, servers, blades, and PCs—as well as IP addresses and operating systems.

“The Snow solutions automatically created a database encompassing more than 5,000 servers and 5,000 end-user devices. Snow SAM provides our team, our stakeholders, and our organization with a central view and complete visibility of all our assets in one place, which immediately removed the root causes of our earlier challenges,” reports Torang Hasudungan Sitorus.

“For the first time, we had the validated data to reduce the risks of an audit or a compliance violation, manage and streamline software licenses from a single place, and optimize budgeting and spending on software licenses at the enterprise level.” Going forward we look to expand the Snow footprint to cover more EUC and Servers as well as looking at optimizing over software vendors like SAP”.

Impact & Results

With Snow SAM in full operation, Torang Hasudungan Sitorus describes outstanding results: “Telkomsel achieved a 10% reduction in software license spending, with a 90% reduction in time to collect data, and highest level of accuracy in calculation of software utilization data.”

He continues, “Snow’s Software Asset Management helped us to reduce software expenses by identifying and reclaiming unused licenses. For example, optimization of our Microsoft subscriptions has saved us a potential $74,000 a year.”

As well as achieving impressive business metrics, Telkomsel has gained control of its software estate. For example, the IT team uses the solution to manage service continuity for critical applications by ensuring licenses are renewed, and to track and blacklist unsecured software. With full visibility of equipment and software, Telkomsel can delete applications with poor security standards, prevent malware, remove network scanning tools, and mitigate business risk.

In addition, the information presented by Snow SAM enables Telkomsel to monitor consumption of applications, allowing optimization of metered licensing contracts, and to use that data to plan license renewals and contract negotiations.

Torang Hasudungan Sitorus concludes, “Software Asset Management (SAM) from Snow has improved audit compliance and risk avoidance, enhanced security compliance, and cut software license costs. As part of our drive to operational efficiency and excellence, Snow SAM optimizes software management across the entire organization, and helps Telkomsel deliver a great user experience to employees, stakeholders, and customers.”

The post Telkomsel appeared first on Snow Software.