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Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO)

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Company Background

Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) is the operator of Olkiluoto nuclear power plant on the Gulf of Bothnia in Finland. TVO produces one-sixth of all the electricity consumed in Finland, a figure that is expected to jump to a third after completion of a new-generation third unit, OL3. The operator is majority-owned by Finland’s second largest energy company, Pohjolan Voima Oy.

Challenges

Snow’s Contribution

TVO implemented the Snow Platform in 2015. The company did not have a Software Asset Management (SAM) solution to establish its licensing position, but research into the vendor space revealed that the functionalities of Snow extended much beyond that. TVO is now compliant with its software Enterprise Agreements, and uses data out of Snow to optimize its license estate. TVO is in the process of migrating to Windows 10, and Snow is being used to identify compliant machines for upgrading. Insight from Snow will be the springboard from which to standardize and rationalize the large software estate as part of the migration. Other benefits that were not envisaged originally is a charge-back structure and blacklisting, especially of unauthorized video conferencing software.

 

Business Benefits and ROI

SAM Hero

Jouni Karkulahti, IT Specialist, says:

“We are a small team so the time-savings we gained with Snow are very helpful. Also, I have to mention the installation process. That was so smooth, it was simply incredible.” 

Main case study

‘It was some kind of amazing experience’

IN 2015, TVO started researching the market for Software Asset Management solutions. “The main reason was to get our licenses in some kind of order,” explains Karkulahti, “because we had all Excel sheets, and license codes hidden in our emails, so it was quite difficult to manage our assets.”

The vendor exploration soon revealed that Snow’s SAM Platform was “much more than a license assessment solution”, and this was important to Karkulahti, who wanted to automate the software delivery process within TVO. 

The company implemented Snow License Manager, Software Recognition Service, Snow Inventory and Snow Automation Platform. Karkulahti flags up ease of implementation as one of the attractions of Snow’s solutions. “We time-framed the installation project for three days,” he says. “After a day and a half, we just wondered: ‘What are we going to do now?’ It was easy-going and smooth. Everything worked really well. It was an amazing experience.”

Upgrades for Snow License Manager and Snow Automation Platform earlier this year were similarly pain-free.

Visibility brings savings

TVO is leveraging Snow to optimize its license estate; Karkulahti cites a typical desktop application as an example. “We look for usage and if a user hasn’t used an application for 90 days we uninstall it.” This process has been automated in Snow. “Re-assignment is also automated,” Karkulahti continues, “and that means we haven’t had to buy any new licenses for that application for over a year.” 

The other licensing discrepancy that Snow revealed was Adobe Acrobat Pro, where the number of licenses exceeded the company-wide installations. “We uninstalled unused applications and didn’t  have to purchase any more licenses. That’s one big saving for us,” Karkulahti says. 

Upgrade rights visible in Snow are also leading to savings, in particular for a project application where the difference between an upgrade and a brand-new license runs to $1,000.

Automation saves time

An even bigger win from Karkulahti’s point of view is the automation of TVO’s software delivery service. His IT team is small, so the time saved with Snow Automation Platform is boosting productivity. “Before Snow, someone would send an email, we’d check the license status, and then add the computer to SCCM. To install a typical desktop application it would take an hour-and-a-half if everything worked perfectly. Now, if a user enters his request in the Snow Automation Platform marketplace and the product owner approves it, it takes as little as half an hour.”

With a few hundred requests coming in each month, TVO saves a minimum of 100 man/hours a month, valuable time that can be spent on other digital transformation projects, such as the migration to Windows 10.

TVO is using Snow to scan its machines for compatibility with Windows 10. “We have a lot of computers that need to be replaced as part of the migration. That’s one big help for us.”

Migrations are a great opportunity to do some ‘spring-cleaning’ of duplicate software, and get rid of version bloat. Karkulahti now has the visibility to make the most of his migration and rationalize his estate of 1,000+ applications.

Cost transparency

The tradition in TVO is that business units are responsible for their own procurement – a fragmentation of responsibility that did not make company-wide SAM any easier. Snow is now joining the dots. “For example,” says Karkulahti, “our change management and development teams use their own software and everything related to that. They built their licensing programs themselves, but we are getting those entitlements into Snow.”

Having Snow as a single source of truth saves time and tightens compliance. “We now have a place where we can work out which business unit has what and uses what, instead of getting everything from different sources,” says Karkulahti.

Every business unit has its own service platform, and every license purchase can be traced back – and charged back – to the right department. As Karkulahti puts it: “We now have a price tag for everything.”

All about Snow

Company-wide, the feedback about Snow has been very positive – especially as concerns the direct experience Karkulahti’s co-workers have with the Platform. “Software requests used to involve many emails forwards and backwards, and waiting for approval every step of the way. It’s so much more straightforward now.”

Karkulahti’s next target for automation is onboarding.  At the moment, his team gets the information from HR, they have to manually go in, create the new member of staff into an Active Directory group, create his or her profile and finally add the applications he or she needs. “It all takes time,” says Karkulahti, “a lot more than you realize. We really noticed that when we automated our software delivery.” 

In the near future, TVO will use Snow Automation Platform to speed up onboarding. “A manager will be able to go in and say: ‘I’ve got a new person’, tick a few boxes and then in the background it will all happen by itself. Incredible.”

Karkulahti was quick to notice that the capabilities of Snow went far beyond the immediate reasons for making the investment. As he continues to develop TVO’s license management and ensure compliance, he will use Snow’s full range of functionalities to make his team and the company as a whole more productive.