Mature organizations are excited about the multitude of ways they can help their organizations with the intelligence they have on their technology assets. Here are a few examples:

• Understanding how technology is actually being used so they can buy the right amount of licenses
• Reporting on application versions to identify devices that need to be updated
• Determining where there are overlapping technologies used in the organization and where some applications and costs can be eliminated
• Finding applications that are end-of-life or soon to be deprecated
• Identifying applications in use that haven’t been vetted by security
• Quickly reporting on effective license position

Less mature organizations understand the potential value of their IT asset database but find getting other departments to leverage their data repository is like pulling teeth.

The least mature organizations are typically using an ITAM tool for one use case. These organizations don’t have a good owner of the tool (it’s often someone’s part-time job) and resulting data. The potential for using this data set never sees the light of day.

“Data and analytics leaders who share data externally generate three times more measurable economic benefit than those who do not.”

data sharing is a key digital transformation capability by Gartner^®

6 ways to advocate for your data

So, how should less mature organizations advocate for their data? Here are a few tips:

• Communicate the quality of your data. How is the data collected, how often, how is it normalized, and enriched? How will you validate the data accuracy?
• Understand the process others are using for capturing data today. It is possible your colleagues are ignoring you because they think they already have the answers? Have a sit down and get a detailed understanding of how they capture the IT data to do their jobs. It’s likely they are doing a lot of manual work or have big gaps in their data that you could help them with.
• Use tools for sharing data already familiar to the organization. Many of our customers feed their IT asset data into their analytics tool of choice (PowerBI, Tableau, etc.) where most in the organization already have access. The other benefit of this approach is users can join technology data with other datasets to solve additional problems (e.g. reporting on sustainability initiatives, etc.).
• Leverage AI. With generative AI technologies, there are now more ways to further democratize data insights. Now, your colleagues can simply ask your dataset questions like, “Are there any inactive computers in our inventory?” Or, “How many new servers have been discovered in the last 90 days compared to the prior 90 days?” You can experiment with these sorts of innovations with Snow Copilot, an AI assistant, that will allow customers to query their details on Software Asset Management (SAM) computer data securely, receiving insights and conversational responses directly within the Snow Atlas platform.
• Make data actionable. Provide the data in a format that can be used by your stakeholders. For instance, it would be best to provide data via API if your stakeholder is planning to use this information in automating processes.
• Leverage forums owned by your leadership. Your leadership likely has an all-hands meeting, newsletter, or some other kind of forum where you can communicate the rich dataset your organization has, its accuracy and some examples of how it could be leveraged by various stakeholders. Involve your leadership to understand what they think are the most impactful use cases you should pursue with others in the organization.

You can learn more about how other customers are using Technology Intelligence and the benefits they are realizing through our case studies.

The post How to Advocate for Your Data appeared first on Snow Software.

At Snow Software, we have long pioneered solutions that enable organizations to identify and take advantage of cost savings, mitigate risk, and drive innovation forward. That’s why we are excited to preview Snow Copilot, our first AI-enabled assistant designed to help tackle the biggest challenges facing IT Asset Management (ITAM) and FinOps practices. This is a major milestone for our innovation initiatives running at Snow Labs.

Let’s walk through Snow Copilot, Snow Labs’ vision, its groundbreaking offerings, and more insights into this exciting new chapter at Snow.

The need for Snow Labs

If you’re not already aware, Snow Labs is an innovation incubator that brings together Snow customers and product experts to address the evolving challenges faced by organizations today, and solved by Technology Intelligence (the ability to understand and manage all technology).

This gives us an opportunity to investigate the most complex problems our customers face and utilize the changing technology landscape to find potential solutions. While Snow already drives innovation within its standard product roadmap, an innovation incubator like Snow Labs empowers us to advance in areas outside our roadmap. These include:

• Moving beyond “safe” innovation where we have a good handle on viability and feasibility and trialing higher risk and more uncertain solutions and technologies
• Explicitly investing in taking risks to create new and innovative solutions for our customers and partners
• Functioning outside Snow standard structured Engineering and Product Development processes to quickly create prototypes, Minimum Viable Products (MVP), and test new capabilities before they are moved into the main portfolio
• Gathering customer feedback at MVP stages to create the ability to fail quickly or to advance products into production

For the past 25 years, Snow has been on a mission to provide strategic insights and drive positive business outcomes from technology asset data. Snow Labs is the next step in our journey, aimed at fostering experimentation and rapid prototyping with transformative technologies like generative AI, which help our customers harness their data effectively.

Snow Labs innovating with AI

Organizations are constantly inundated with vast amounts of data, but IT leaders struggle to make sense of it and act upon it effectively. Despite advancements in self-service dashboards and APIs, many technologies fail to integrate essential data silos across the organization. This integration challenge is one reason why senior decision-makers continue to report difficulties in gaining complete visibility over their entire IT estate.

Using generative AI capabilities, our Snow Labs team looked at how we could:

• Democratize data insights
• Lower the barriers to accessing valuable information
• Provide a better understanding of technology asset data
• Categorize data for context
• Offer fine-tuned, real-world recommendations based on proprietary data

The first of these capabilities is Snow Copilot, an AI assistant, currently in beta, that at launch will allow customers to query their details on Software Asset Management (SAM) computer data securely, receiving insights and conversational responses directly within the Snow Atlas platform. Snow Copilot leverages Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service for generating responses. We know security is at the forefront of our customers’ minds, and with Snow Copilot, your data stays securely within your own environment, ensuring data privacy and integrity.

We specifically chose the name Copilot because it means an assistant that works alongside you, a term that originated from the aviation industry. In AI, copilot is being adopted more to understand data, handle tasks like writing or coding, and add context in “natural language”. An AI assistant can help advance IT stakeholders’ understanding around technology asset data, particularly those without technical expertise.

Snow Copilot makes it possible to chat with your data. You ask questions and Snow Copilot delivers the answer in natural language removing the need for you to export the computer data set into PowerBI or Excel then formulating an answer yourself or scouring through hundreds of rows within our data set.

Other upcoming AI-powered capabilities from Snow Labs include:

• Machine Learning Entitlement Ingestion Service: This service will simplify software entitlement uploads with automated invoice processing powered by machine learning, making data more comprehensive and improving the insights users gain from Snow Atlas. It addresses a challenging issue where organizations are not uploading invoices and entitlements, thus exposing themselves to licensing and compliance risks. 
  
• Enhanced Data Intelligence Service (DIS) Dataset with OpenAI: This service will augment SaaS descriptions in the Snow DIS with deeper description detail, categories, functions, etc. AI brings substantial data enrichment to existing datasets and provide our customers with transformative insights. This enhancement will lead to greater data accuracy, consistency and normalization.

More advanced experiments from Snow Labs include:

• Fine-Tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) on Snow’s proprietary data: Providing customers with personalized licensing recommendations to make more informed decisions regarding their technology assets.

The future of Snow Labs

Snow Labs allows us to move swiftly to bring innovative capabilities to the industry and transform the way businesses interact with their data. The introduction of Snow Copilot and other AI-enabled capabilities will empower IT leaders to make data-driven decisions, maximize their IT investments, and mitigate compliance risks.

Snow Labs’ commitment to democratizing data insights and its pioneering approach to Technology Intelligence ensure that businesses can stay at the cutting edge of innovation. Snow Labs is set to break new ground and our journey is just beginning!

Snow Copilot is available for current Snow Atlas customers who apply for the beta program. You can also ask your Snow Account Manager for more information. Watch Snow Copilot in action and read more details in our press release.

The post Unlocking the Potential of Technology Data With Snow Labs and Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Snow Software.

To do this, Snow commissioned a report surveying IT decision-makers. This year, we polled 800 leaders in the US, UK, Germany and Australia. What we found in our 2024 IT Priorities Report is both expected and surprising if we consider the events of the year.  

Let’s take a look. 

Further economic uncertainty reins

The last few years have been marked by constant economic uncertainty – so it’s understandable that many organizations continued to focus on cost savings initiatives. This year, we saw a pretty marked shift in the number of companies that took wide, sweeping cost-cutting steps, including the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce and more.

Despite these significant cost reduction measures – or the year of efficiency as Mark Zuckerberg declared it for Meta, at least – there was a flicker of optimism in the form of artificial intelligence.

As such, IT leaders said that their top three priorities in 2023 were AI, reducing security risks and reducing IT costs. In fact, most IT leaders also believe these priorities will carry over into 2024.

What was surprising about the rise of AI within IT leaders’ agendas was the confidence surrounding it.

Eighty-two percent said they are completely prepared to leverage generative AI. That’s a pretty significant percentage considering that we are still in the early stages of AI use cases and benefits. It does indicate the promise of AI, but the extreme confidence is something worth watching, especially with the likely additional regulation around the world, such as the recent US executive order on AI or the EU AI Act, which seeks to provide a framework for regulating AI in Europe.

The findings – and external data – also suggest that much of AI use today is within the current technology stack and is likely being used for productivity and efficiency gains. Seventy-five percent also said they increased spend on security tools in 2023, and this may be to counter uncertain risks surrounding AI.

However, what’s clear is navigating uncertainty caused by the global macroeconomic climate is a priority and an ongoing reality for the foreseeable future. And AI is providing a bit of sunshine amongst a somewhat dreary forecast.

Data’s new normal moment

In past years, we’ve asked IT leaders about their relationship with data. Being able to source the right data at the right time can make or break organizations, providing competitive advantages, indications on buying behaviors and more. However, many organizations are drowning in data, in some form or fashion.

We asked IT leaders about this – and in 2023, the number has decreased significantly. Forty-six percent said they were overwhelmed by their data, which is a 14-point decrease from 2022 and 26-point drop from 2021.

What’s happening? Have we really solved our data deluge problem?

While we didn’t specifically ask IT leaders what has changed, we can take some educated guesses. One of which is that most of our technology from public cloud to SaaS and more includes data dashboards that provide near real-time updates. We have become used to receiving data in more digestible ways – and even if those are not always presented to us in an actionable format, we know how to navigate some of what we receive.

However, there’s a bit of a warning here that we should consider.

Using dashboards provided by our technology vendors is one way to consume data about the integrity of our programs or ROI of our tools. PowerBI for example, provides ways to pull subsets of data into something more understandable. But this isn’t a long-term solution.

Bringing together data and making it actionable should be the ultimate goal.

The introduction of generative AI within our IT landscapes will likely create further complexity and exacerbate an already tenuous situation we have with our data. Not to mention the source and reliability of that data. It’s essential that we don’t go back to being overwhelmed, but rather we learn from history and prepare for future data challenges and possibilities. Swimming in vast amounts of data – and navigating exponential complexity around that data – will be the new normal.

Visibility remains elusive

We talk about complexity quite often here at Snow. That’s because we’ve seen A LOT of it across our customers’ environments – and we regularly see tech vendors introducing further complexity from pricing increases, new AI integrations, licensing updates and more.

This complexity and the effects of it are part of the reason why we are so passionate about the need for comprehensive visibility – and the need for a less siloed, more platform-based approach, which is another key growth area in this year’s report.

88% of IT leaders reported moving towards platforms and away from point tools.

2024 it priorities report

According to this year’s survey, visibility is an area that needs much more work. Sixty-seven percent of IT leaders said they know their business units are buying more cloud and SaaS than they are aware of. There also is no one clear issue driving this lack of visibility within their organizations.

Considering the priorities around reducing risk and identifying cost savings, it seems like tackling visibility issues is intrinsically linked. Establishing a foundation of visibility is essential for every organization. But it is especially important for those organizations that are looking to dive deeper into AI.

72% of IT leaders anticipate increasing spend on emerging technology applications like artificial intelligence in the next two to three years.

2024 it priorities report

As we close out yet another year, there is so much we can learn from this in retrospective. The question is whether we take those learnings and apply them to 2024. Many of the findings from this year’s IT Priorities Report indicate to us that organizations still need visibility across their entire technology environment and actionable insights that can help them address their priorities for the coming year including the use of AI, reduction of security risks and reduction of IT costs.

If the only constant is change, then we should prepare to be increasingly agile and ensure we fundamentally understand how to get the most out of our technology investments. It may be the difference between a good company – and a great company.

To read more about this year’s findings or hear what is on the minds of IT leaders, download the 2024 IT Priorities Report.

The post Innovation and Adaptation: Are You Ready for What’s in Store for 2024? appeared first on Snow Software.

In this month’s innovation blog, we’ll show you how we’re bringing Technology Intelligence to life through a selection of new and enhanced portfolio capabilities Snow introduced to the market during the first three quarters of 2023. These product capabilities provide a quick glimpse into innovations in the areas of:

• Creating IT asset visibility across the enterprise
• Public cloud visibility and cost optimization
• Working with ITAM partners

Innovation area: Enterprise-wide asset visibility, insights and risk mitigation

ITAM usage and spend optimization is Snow’s flagship domain, and we continue to offer significant new and enhanced capabilities here—especially on Snow Atlas, our cloud-native platform. The following is just a small taste of what we’ve been up to with our ITAM offerings so far in 2023.

ITAM for end-user computing

Container visibility now illuminates previous blind spots in your commercial software compliance position

Containers are isolated and dynamic environments. This makes gathering information about how they are being used or the software and applications residing in them extremely inefficient using technologies such as agents. As a result, software asset managers risk having a real blind spot in calculating their effective compliance position for commercial applications running in these environments.

To help software asset management (SAM) pros mitigate this risk, Snow Spend Optimizer on Snow Atlas provides visibility to software running in Kubernetes environments by:

• Scanning the container environment to identify commercial products that need a license. This entails scanning for commercial applications in standard, non-modified containers for Microsoft, RedHat and Oracle.
• Providing details on what license type is required for compliance. SAM pros need historical insight on when applications were deployed (start/end times) within containerized environments in order to know when a compliance vulnerability may have originated.

Currently supported environments: Kubernetes on-premises, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Google Kubernetes Service and OpenShift.

SaaS management

Early this year, we announced the launch of Snow SaaS Management. As SaaS expenditures continue to accelerate and decentralize, so do the costs and risks associated with shadow SaaS. ChatGPT is no exception, as we highlight below.

Manage SaaS risks by discovering usage of AI tools like ChatGPT

AI tools such as ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in 2023, and our customers are rightly concerned about the use of such technology in their organizations. Earlier this year, Snow highlighted the opportunities and risks associated with these large language model tools.

To help customers mitigate such risks, Snow added a new category—artificial intelligence—to our list of application types, so that customers can quickly identify when these tools are being used. From there, they can identify who is using these tools and remediate as needed.

Our browser-based discovery of SaaS usage makes it uniquely positioned to provide data on free and trial software such as ChatGPT. Unlike other SaaS management solutions that rely primarily on expense data to determine which SaaS applications might be in use, our discovery methodology quickly and automatically identifies usage of ChatGPT and similar AI applications.

For a deep dive into this topic, view our on-demand webinar to better understand how ChatGPT and tools like it could potentially impact your organization and what you can do about it.

Datacenter computing

Oracle: Triple verification of Snow gives customers increased control, speed and efficiency

When data regarding Oracle product deployment and usage must be identified in an organization’s IT environment (such as for a software audit or advisory project), Oracle uses their own in-house tooling to gather this data, which most often happens via their own License Management Services (LMS) consultants. This is an on-site process where Oracle LMS personnel run tooling scripts manually, server by server. This complex process impacts customer access to their production systems, possibly during office hours, which could require the alignment of several teams across many regions and time zones.

As an alternative, Oracle awards qualifying third-party vendors with official verification status to access Oracle deployment and usage data themselves. However, Oracle sets the bar extremely high for their verified third-party tool vendors because these vendors’ solutions must provide information that Oracle themselves will accept.

Snow Software is one of only a handful of global vendors verified for all three programs set up by Oracle:

• Oracle Database and Database Options
• Oracle Fusion Middleware
• Java SE

While Snow reached the first verification milestone in 2022, we’ve added the second and third in 2023.

So, what benefits and business value do these Oracle verifications give Snow customers?

• Complete visibility: Detection and reporting on exactly which Oracle features and functionality are switched on and being used.
• Increased control: Customers can get this data whenever they want (not being at the mercy of a scheduled Oracle LMS visit, with its resulting downtime).
• Greater speed and efficiency: From the Snow product interface, the verified data is speedily exported in the Oracle-verified format for the entire datacenter with the literal click of a button.
• License optimization incentive when preparing for audit/advisory projects: Customers get chances to oversee and optimize their Oracle estate as often as they prefer prior to a compelling Oracle event.

For more information on these Oracle management capabilities from Snow, check out the videos below.

Innovation area: Cloud management capabilities

Many new and improved cloud financial management capabilities have been added in 2023, including managing OpEx charge rates over time, Kubernetes cluster asset cost visibility, new cost & usage explorer dashboard, managing Azure costs with our virtual machines usage dashboard, and more. Let’s highlight a few enhancements for managing your AWS spend.

Snow Cloud Cost: New S3 recommendations for better cost efficiency

Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service) is among the most extensively used AWS services. Recent enhancements to the Snow Cloud Cost recommendations engine for Amazon S3 include:

• S3 multipart uploads: Identifies unfinished S3 multipart uploads that are still incurring storage costs and consuming your space. This recommendation allows you to decide if you’d like it to be completed or cleaned up.
• S3 versioning: Identifies S3 buckets that have versioning enabled but do not have lifecycle rules defined to manage older version of your files. This helps you to implement lifecycle rules to expire or transition older version of files to reduce storage costs.
• S3 storage class: Identifies S3 buckets that are currently using the standard storage class or low-access storage class. This enables you to migrate data to more cost effective storage classes such as intelligent tiering for infrequently accessed data.

Innovation area: Partner management capabilities

Our new and improved Snow Partner Program went live mid-year in 2023. To provide context, the Snow partner ecosystem comprises a diverse array of resellers, managed service providers (MSP), global systems integrators, independent software vendors and more. These partners enhance and scale our offerings to customers around the world. Some quick examples of the ways that Snow has supported our partner ecosystem with new and enhanced portfolio capabilities this year include improved Snow Atlas partner console customer environment visibility & security, faster troubleshooting of customers’ IT environments and support for customer cloud cost optimization. Let’s expand on this partner support by rounding off this Technology Intelligence roundup through a closer look at the following two capabilities.

Managed service providers: Improved protection and service through customer system access

For Snow partners who manage their customers’ SAM environments (customers buy through a partner and grant full access to the partner), administrators can now very quickly see the specific customer systems they can sign into and access.

MSP administrators with such full control can also extend or prevent access to other users, allowing partners to identify gaps in servicing their customers, as well as prevent any unauthorized access to the customer systems.

Customer application management: Improved security and cost optimization

From the Customers overview page, Snow partners are now able to compare and prioritize high-value metrics across all their customers’ applications.

For example, they can quickly identify customers whose IT environments contain a specific number of installed yet prohibited (aka “denied”) applications. In the same way, partners can easily see which customers have applications with the following support statuses: end of support (EOS), end of extended support (EOES) or end of life (EOL).

As you can see in the bottom part of the screenshot above, the partner drills into the customer environment in question to then carry out established policies for handling these risky applications (in this example, 50 installations on Acrobat Professional 2017 reached EOS over a year ago).

And when it comes to optimizing application costs, Snow partners can also use these same views to immediately identify and uncover details regarding customers’ used and unused applications, acting accordingly to handle non-optimized applications or remove wasted software spend.

What’s next?

We have more product updates and innovations coming. Subscribe to our blog, so you don’t miss a thing.

Not a customer yet? Schedule a demo of Snow to see the power of Technology Intelligence.

The post What’s New at Snow Software: 2023 Technology Intelligence Roundup appeared first on Snow Software.

Cutting-edge anomaly detection (public beta)

With Snow Cloud Cost, now you can uncover hidden cost inefficiencies and optimize financial performance. The anomaly detection capability marks a significant advancement in cost data analysis and financial management. By automating the detection of cost irregularities, you can:

• Proactively identify inefficiencies
• Prevent revenue leakage
• Unlock opportunities for cost optimization

The anomaly detection monitoring provides an overview of anomalies and anomaly alerts, enabling users to view historical alerts/anomalies and trends, in addition to exporting the data into CSV.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Prometheus agent (public beta)

The Prometheus agent will enable us to ingest metrics from your Kubernetes clusters more efficiently and will only scrape metrics from a predefined set provided as part of the installation. The agent can be further customized according to your individual business requirements.

• The agent queries the data on an hourly basis by default (the interval is configurable).
• Queries execute in batches and aggregate the hourly metrics data.
• The agent can query data for multiple clusters from a single Prometheus or Thanos agent.

It’s now easier to track Kubernetes waste

Kubernetes (K8s) is an important area of focus for cloud financial management, and we’re committed to delivering best-in-class K8s FinOps features. Recent enhancements include:

• AWS, Azure, K8s cost & usage explorers: The cost breakdown table now displays CPU actual/waste and a memory actual/waste breakdown.
• AWS, GCP, Azure, K8s cost & usage Explorers: CPU/memory request metric has been replaced with the CPU/memory waste metric.
• AWS, K8s cost & usage explorers: Cost breakdown table data can be grouped by node group level.

Microsoft Azure virtual machine and storage cost breakdown report

Gain a comprehensive view of your Azure costs by seeing the total virtual machine (VM) cost and storage cost in a single dashboard. This holistic approach allows you to evaluate the overall impact of VMs and storage on your cloud expenses, enabling better cost optimization strategies.

Container visibility now available on Snow Atlas

Containers are isolated environments, which makes gathering information about how they’re being used or the software and applications residing in them extremely inefficient using traditional technologies (agents). As a result, software asset managers have a blind spot in calculating their effective compliance position for commercial applications running in these environments.

To help software asset management (SAM) pros solve this challenge, Snow released a new feature in Snow Spend Optimizer on Snow Atlas that provides visibility to software running in Kubernetes environments. Current supported environments include Kubernetes on-premises, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Google Kubernetes Service & OpenShift. 

The container visibility feature:

• Scans the container environment to identify if there are commercial products that need a license. This feature scans for commercial applications in standard containers for Microsoft, RedHat and Oracle. A standard container is a container that has been acquired from a repository of these vendors and has not been modified after that.
• Provides details on what kind of license is required to be compliant. SAM pros need some historical insight on when applications were deployed (start/end times) within containerized environments, so they know exactly when a compliance vulnerability may have started.

Snow Atlas webpage UI and performance updates

We recently released updates to the Snow Atlas pages for inventoried computers, the identified applications and license management. The new pages are fast, responsive and dynamically scalable for various screen sizes. Our performance tests show that search time has improved to find applications in just one second.

Improved Snow Atlas navigation

We love to hear from our customers and to learn  ways to improve our products. One piece of feedback we received from several customers was that moving the secondary menu to the left side led to some space constraints. To address this issue, we’ve made the secondary menu collapsible. This update is available to all Snow Atlas customers.

Managed service partners (MSPs) can see and control access to Snow Atlas

For Snow partners who manage their customers’ SAM environments (customers buy through a partner and grant full access to the partner), our latest release allows partner administrators to see which of their customer systems they can sign into and access.

For these MSP administrators with full control, they can also extend or prevent access to other users. These latest features allow partners to identify gaps in servicing their customers as well as prevent any unauthorized access to the customer systems.

What’s next?

The What’s New section on the Snow Atlas homepage will now include Snow Atlas release notes, so you can always stay on top of the latest innovations. We have more product updates and innovations coming across Snow, so be sure to subscribe to our blog, so you don’t miss a thing.

Not a customer yet? Schedule a demo of Snow to see the power of Technology Intelligence.

The post What’s New at Snow Software: July 2023 appeared first on Snow Software.

As Snow demonstrates the power of Technology Intelligence to the market, we want to ensure our partner ecosystem is empowered to address the ever-increasing challenges our customers face like swelling costs, impending risk and proof of value – as well as capitalizing on new market opportunities. 

Which is why, this week, we are excited to announce that we’ve officially launched our new and improved Snow Partner Program. Our teams at Snow have put a lot of work, research, feedback and heart into this new program. The program was developed to ensure partners had a modern, merit-based system that would fuel further growth of their businesses as their relationships with Snow deepen. 

Intelligence is at the heart of what we do at Snow. We believe Technology Intelligence – the ability to understand and manage all technology – can bring together vast and disparate amounts of critical technology asset data. When brought together in one unified view, organizations have endless possibilities with the insights gained and value derived. Ultimately, organizations can make better business decisions with Snow.  

Now more than ever, organizations are looking for trusted advisors to help them address their biggest pain points and drive lasting value, as customers are facing new IT complexities and turbulent market conditions. 

At Snow, we have a compelling platform in Snow Atlas, a comprehensive set of products and services and one of the largest databases of software and cloud services information to help customers get the most of their technology asset data.  

We believe partners play a critical role in our work to help global organizations make better decisions and drive positive business outcomes.  

Let us take you through the new Partner Program and why we established the structure the way we have. 

Intelligence by Design: The Snow Partner Program 

To ensure our partners grow and succeed with Snow, we’ve focused our program in several core areas:  

• Value: The new program offers a level playing field for all partners, providing further support and opportunities to ensure value is delivered to joint customers. We are invested in empowering our partners by offering access to new discount structures, training, certifications, sales shadowing opportunities and more. 

In addition, with a new look and extensive new backend capabilities, SnowHow – our new partner portal – will improve partner experience and drive ease of doing business. SnowHow is one centralized place for everything related to Snow (including deal registration, Snow Globe, Snow Academy and Support). 

• Transparency: We believe partners deserve an open and honest dialog with their vendors, which is why we are enabling every partner with real-time information on where they stand in the program, beginning with new Partner Scorecards. Our commitment to transparency will also include new systems to engage in two-way dialogue, so partners know what to expect from Snow and can discover new opportunities to strengthen their business. 

• Rewards: Incentives can be incredibly motivating, but they don’t always address the actions taken at every step of a successful customer experience. We want to change this by introducing a new rewards program which recognizes individuals within partner organizations, providing points not just for connecting Snow with new customers but for advancing a positive customer experience, building market awareness, completing certifications and more.  

• Training and Certifications: Continuous learning and development are essential in our market, which is why we’re making our eLearning portal – Snow Academy – free for all of our partners. We’re also launching a series of new Sales and Pre-Sales content to ensure partners feel confident in delivering Snow solutions to our mutual customers. 

There is so much more that we’ve adapted for our new program to allow our partners to unlock new areas of opportunity for their businesses and better serve customers and the market.  

As Technology Intelligence unlocks new opportunities and insights for our customers, we felt it only fitting that our new and improved Partner Program follow suit. We’re excited to get this program off the ground and look forward to sharing more updates as our partners get familiar with the new model. We consider our partner ecosystem an extension of our teams and feel confident that our new program will create lasting success for our partners, customers and Snow.  

We’re truly a dynamic team that is passionate about propelling our customers to new heights. You can learn more about the new and improved Partner Program here.

The post Bolstering the Foundations for Success with the New and Improved Snow Partner Program appeared first on Snow Software.

What is Technology Intelligence?

Technology Intelligence is the ability to understand and manage all your technology. Only by having a complete picture of all the technology investments across your organization can you ensure that your technology is delivering value. This intelligence is fundamental to making more data-driven decisions about your technology, allowing business and IT leaders to use these insights across strategic initiatives, whether driving growth, fostering innovation or fortifying resilience. Technology Intelligence helps organizations move from silos to collaboration, addressing complexity and creating simplicity.

Our 2023 submissions

Customers were recognized in nine categories across the full range of technology intelligence. Organizations of all sizes, in all industries and across all geographies were encouraged to apply. We selected the award winners based on the quality of submission and tangible detail provided, demonstrable metrics against the award categories, and the business outcomes achieved. 

The categories and winners

Impact of the Year:  Organizations that deliver multifaceted value and elevate their business utilizing one or more of the solutions offered by Snow. 

• Winner: 
  • Target (Australia) 
  • Morrisons PLC (UK) 
  • Xylem, Inc. (US) 

• Honorable Mention: 
  • JG Summit Holdings (Philippines) 

Transformation of the Year:  Recognizes organizational excellence and programs that raised the bar on best practices for collaboration and globalization of Technology Intelligence. 

• Winner: 
  • Majorel (Germany) 

• Honorable Mention: 
  • Dachser (Germany) 

Cloud Excellence:  Recognizes exceptional vision in cloud cost management, cloud management or FinOps, powered by the Snow suite of cloud solutions. 

• Winner: 
  • Noventiq (Global) 

Innovation of the Year:  Recognizes organizations that achieved technical innovations, whether that was a new way to connect systems, a new way to leverage data or even helping Snow build new and better products. 

• Winner: 
  • Telkomsel (Indonesia) 

• Honorable Mention: 
  • Vodafone (UK) 

ITAM Excellence (replacing SAM Excellence from previous years):  Recognizes exceptional achievement in IT Asset Management powered by the Snow SAM solution. 

• Winner: 
  • Dart Container (US) 

• Honorable Mention: 
  • Tata Consultancy Services (India) 
  • Mphasis (India) 

SaaS Management Excellence (new):  Recognizes exceptional achievement in SaaS management powered by Snow SaaS Management. 

• Winner: 
  • Curtin University (Australia) 

• Honorable Mention: 
  • Bridge Investment Group (US) 
  • Ulster University (N. Ireland) 

Technology for Good:  An organization that has leveraged Technology Intelligence to tackle some of the most challenging issues affecting society and the planet. 

• Winner: 
  • Christchurch City Council (New Zealand) 

• Honorable Mention: 
  • Bane NOR (Norway) 
  • Mercy (US) 

Trailblazer of the Year:  Recognizes organizations new to Snow that have realized accelerated time to value on Snow Atlas. 

• Winner: 
  • Equans (Netherlands) 

Judges’ Choice:  Celebrates organizations that our judges also wanted to recognize for how they have gone above and beyond in their Technology Intelligence journey in 2023. 

• Cosentino (Spain) 
• University of Cambridge (UK) 

We’d also like to extend our appreciation to our global partners who have closely supported and collaborated with many of the award winners and honorees. The outstanding efforts of partners such as SoftwareONE, Softcat, CDW Logistics, Long View Systems, Insight, Crayon, PT Astra Graphia Information Technology, and Sistemas Informáticos Abiertos have played a pivotal role in driving these exceptional achievements.  

The best way to really understand how our products deliver results is to hear directly from our customers. At Snow, we are always delighted to hear about the incredible things our customers accomplish along with the value that our solutions deliver in helping drive real business impact and in solving real-world challenges. We hope to see an equally amazing turnout next year! For more information on this year’s award winners and categories, please visit our customer awards page. And to dive deeper into Technology Intelligence, visit our Seeing Beyond resource hub. 

The post Announcing the Winners of the 3rd Annual Technology Intelligence Awards appeared first on Snow Software.

This blog summarizes some key evaluation points, so you can choose the right cloud management tools and pricing model for your organization.

Understanding cloud management functions and tooling characteristics

Cloud management tools enable organizations to effectively manage hybrid and multicloud environments, encompassing on-premises, public cloud, and other services. These tools provide governance, lifecycle management, brokering and automation for cloud infrastructure resources across various functional areas. The seven primary functional requirements for managing cloud deployments are:

• Provisioning and orchestration
• Cost management and resource optimization
• Cloud migration, backup and disaster recovery
• Identity, security and compliance
• Monitoring and observability
• Inventory and classification
• Service enablement

Four characteristics of effective cloud management tools

When selecting a cloud management tool, consider the four following key attributes:

1. Exposure to native cloud capabilities: Ensure the tool provides access to all the necessary native cloud capabilities required by your users.
2. Only pay for what you need: Opt for a tool that offers modularity, allowing you to choose and pay for the specific functions you need, rather than a bundled package.
3. SaaS deployment option: If possible, select a tool that offers a SaaS deployment model, eliminating the need for on-premises deployment and maintenance.
4. AI and ML integration: Look for tools that effectively utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies where relevant, as this can enhance the tool’s capabilities.

What are the 6 key considerations when selecting a cloud management tool for your organization?

• Embrace cloud-native capabilities and modular design with AI/ML integration:
  • Look for tools that expose cloud-native capabilities and offer modular design, allowing you to leverage specific functions as needed.
  • Incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) capabilities can enhance the tool’s effectiveness.
• Evaluate cloud provider offerings:
  • Assess the tooling options available from your selected cloud providers. Many cloud vendors offer their own management tools that seamlessly integrate with their platforms. Choosing such tools can facilitate integration and potentially save costs.
• Assess your organization’s need for internal resources to operationalize the tooling:
  • Assess whether the tooling can be effectively managed by your internal resources or if external assistance is needed.
• Weigh “lift and shift” needs for the migration of workloads from on-premises to the cloud:
  • Consider the resources required to operationalize the tooling. If you plan to migrate existing workloads, look for tools that can assist with planning and moving virtual machines at scale.
• Consider SaaS management requirements:
  • Historically, the two tooling markets (i.e. IaaS/PaaS management and SaaS management) have been separated, but vendors are increasingly starting to combine the two in a unified IT asset management offering. SaaS management is the practice of managing SaaS applications to effectively improve security and optimize costs. Evaluate the tool’s potential capabilities for SaaS management, especially if it aligns with your business needs.
• Normalize pricing models:
  • During the evaluation process, ensure that you understand and normalize the pricing models of different vendors, as there may be variations. This will help you make accurate cost comparisons and avoid unexpected/hidden costs.

Considering your entire organization’s requirements and future plans

Before exploring third-party solutions, assess your organization’s requirements and evaluate the capabilities provided by your strategic cloud partners. The following questions will help guide your evaluation:

Cloud environment: Determine whether you operate in a single cloud or multicloud environment and consider future plans. Native tooling may be more suitable for a single cloud, while multicloud environments might benefit from third-party tools.

On-premises environment: Assess the size and significance of your on-premises environment. If you intend to utilize the same tooling as your cloud environment, native cloud tooling may present challenges.

Workload migration: If you plan to migrate workloads between cloud and/or on-premises environments, a third-party tool can help abstract complexities and bridge differences.

To learn more about reimagining your cloud management processes and tooling, download our in-depth guide.

The post How to Choose the Right Cloud Management Tool for Your Organization appeared first on Snow Software.

While we talk extensively about the best SaaS management practices, you simply may not realize where you’re introducing trouble into your current processes. In fact, the most commonly employed SaaS management methods often present the biggest struggles along the way. By learning from these four common pitfalls, you can pave the way for a smoother and more successful SaaS management journey.

Using internal surveys

Let’s start with one of the more straightforward and basic methods organizations employ to uncover SaaS in their IT environment – an internal survey. When you want to know what SaaS applications your employees are using, why not just ask them? 

Unfortunately, this method falls short for a number of reasons. First, the results of the survey are likely to be inaccurate and incomplete, because some percentage of employees simply won’t respond. Of those who do, it’s unlikely they’ll provide a comprehensive account of all the SaaS applications they’re using either due to honest oversights or to a reluctance to list apps they have a hunch would not be approved for internal use. 

Secondly, employees are prone to overstate the value an app provides. No one wants to admit to wasting company resources, so the natural inclination is to ascribe value to a purchase even when that value may not be there. 

Finally, even if it were possible to gather a perfect account of all SaaS apps in your environment via this method, it would be out of date the moment the survey was complete thanks to the decentralized and often spontaneous nature of SaaS procurement. Today’s survey won’t capture the additional waste, sprawl and risk that will be added to your environment tomorrow.

Creating spreadsheets

Tracking and managing SaaS apps via spreadsheets has been the fallback for many organizations for as long as SaaS apps have been around. While certainly better than doing nothing at all, spreadsheets are notoriously tedious and difficult to manage when dealing with dozens, if not hundreds, of SaaS apps each with their own pricing, usage terms, start and end dates and internal ownership. 

Like surveys, spreadsheets are perpetually out of date and backward-looking. Users come and go within organizations; new SaaS apps are added while licenses for others expire. And, as with any human endeavor, spreadsheets are prone to human error in the form of mistyped entries, inadvertent omissions or other data inaccuracies. 

Relying on a CASB or network monitoring tool

As cloud adoption has continued to expand, organizations have turned to Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs) or other network monitoring tools to provide some governance and security over their cloud footprint. These tools sit between the cloud application and the user to monitor activity and enforce security policies. They can help discover SaaS applications present in the environment and shed light on who is using what. 

Relying on a CASB to monitor SaaS, however, can leave you with multiple visibility gaps, as a CASB only sees activity taking place on the corporate network. When employees are working outside the office (at home or on business travel, for example), the CASB won’t be able to track activity unless the user is on a VPN. 

CASB’s also provide no information on license terms or application costs, so getting a complete picture of your SaaS environment requires marrying multiple data sets with the information provided by the CASB, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming.

Not using the right SaaS management platform for your organization

An increasing number of organizations are using SaaS management platforms (SMPs) to get visibility into their SaaS environments and begin to eliminate waste and mitigate risks. An SMP combines in a single, unified location information the presence and usage details of an app, with additional data such as:

• License start and end dates
• License cost information
• Application type
• User department and location
• App approval status

This information is automatically updated eliminating the need to manually gather the data, like in the methods above. As apps and users come and go, the platform should reflect these changes, so you always have a real-time view of your SaaS environment. Not all SMPs are created equal, so you’ll want a platform that has the latest capabilities to keep your organization looking forward. Keep in mind, a SMP is only as powerful as the discovery methods it relies on for SaaS visibility, and many of these methods only tell a part of the story. Consider API and single sign-on connectors. APIs allow you to connect to vendor portals and bring into your SMP any license and usage data the vendor provides. SSO connectors allow you to leverage the login data maintained by your SSO platform, so you can track app usage. Both methods, however, are only good for apps you already know are in your environment. All of those unknown apps accessed and put into use without the knowledge of IT will remain unknown when relying on these discovery methods.  

Another common discovery source is financial data. This method involves connecting to your expense management tools to find the SaaS apps that have been purchased within the organization. While financial data can reveal both known and unknown applications, any free applications will escape discovery. It’s not unreasonable to assume, for example, that nearly every organization with more than a handful of employees has at least one experimenting with the free version of ChatGPT. This usage would go undetected by financial data.

There are also significant differences in the types of usage data SMPs provide. Some provide little or no data regarding when and how often an app is used, or they provide that data for only a subset of the apps discovered. Others rely on API and SSO connectors, which provide limited usage information such as logins. Without detailed usage information, including the actual hours and minutes a user spends in an application, it’s difficult to fully understand its true value and make informed optimization decisions.

How to improve your SaaS management processes with Snow Software

When it comes to discovering assets and improving SaaS management processes, you want the most comprehensive view of your SaaS environment possible. Whether it’s paid, free, or known and unknown applications, you don’t want to develop blind spots with significant costs in the form of waste or regulatory and security risks.

At Snow, we provide the most comprehensive SaaS discovery on the market, allowing you to gain complete visibility into your SaaS landscape. By accurately identifying all SaaS applications across your organization, you can eliminate shadow IT and regain control over your software environment. We couple that with the cost and usage insights you need to get the most out of your SaaS expenditures. This level of visibility and cost optimization empowers you to make informed decisions, rightsize licenses, and reduce unnecessary costs.

The post Are You Making These Common Mistakes in Your SaaS Management Practice? appeared first on Snow Software.

Understanding the risks associated with EOL assets

End-of-life assets refer to software applications that have reached their expiration date, either due to vendor discontinuation, obsolescence, or strategic changes within an organization. Ignoring these assets can lead to various risks, including security vulnerabilities. Snow products collect vulnerability data from the National Vulnerability Database and provide reports on what vulnerabilities exist in your organization, their severity and where those vulnerabilities reside. The problem with EOL applications is these assets can no longer be updated and therefore, these assets hold even greater risks. Identifying EOL applications and removing these applications from your network is critical to prevent security incidents. However, many organizations have not implemented this preventative measure.

The challenges of discovering EOL assets

Discovering EOL assets can be a complex and daunting task, especially in organizations with a large number of software applications. Several challenges may arise, such as:

• Lack of visibility: In multi-departmental setups, different teams may acquire applications independently, resulting in siloed information and limited visibility into the overall software asset landscape.
  
• Inadequate documentation: Outdated or incomplete records of software applications can make it challenging to track their lifecycle and identify EOL assets accurately.
  
• Vendor transparency: Software vendors may not always provide sufficient advance notice about discontinuations or changes in their product offerings, making it difficult for businesses to plan accordingly.

Strategies for discovering EOL assets

To build a strong software asset lifecycle management practice, here are a few strategies you can implement:

• Conduct a comprehensive software audit: Initiate a thorough audit to gain a holistic view of all the software being used within the organization. This process should include evaluating usage patterns, contract terms, renewal dates and integration dependencies.
  
• Encourage cross-department collaboration: Foster collaboration between IT, procurement, finance, and other relevant departments to ensure better communication regarding applications and their lifecycle information. This collaborative approach promotes transparency and keeps the flow of information going, so you don’t lose any valuable details.
  
• Establish regular vendor communication: Maintain open lines of communication with software vendors to stay informed about any upcoming changes, product sunsets, or end-of-life announcements. This proactive approach allows you to adapt your software asset management strategies and make informed decisions for your organization.
  
• Implement an asset retirement plan: Develop a systematic process for retiring EOL assets, including proper data backup, migration strategies and knowledge transfer. Ensure compliance with data protection and privacy regulations during the retirement process.
  
• Leverage software asset management tools: Explore software asset management technology to find the right fit for your organization’s needs. The right tools can automate the discovery process and proactively help you manage EOL assets before you end up in a vulnerable position.

Discovering EOL assets is a critical step towards maintaining an optimized and secure software landscape. By proactively identifying and managing EOL assets, organizations can reduce security risks, optimize costs and ensure seamless operations. Having the strategies above in place can help you implement proactive asset lifecycle management to drive long-term success in your software asset management journey.

How Snow Software helps you discover end-of-life assets

Snow Software can help you scan your environment to reveal:

• IT assets already at the end of life
• IT assets reaching end of life within 12 months
• How many devices are impacted
• Where these assets are located

“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.”

Colin Lawrence, christchurch city council

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