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.

Critical questions you need to address

Why is the software compliance position so critical to a successful merger or acquisition? Because ignoring a potential financial risk that could be in the millions of dollars is just bad business practice. One general counsel I interviewed shared a story of how their company had canceled an acquisition at the eleventh hour because a software non-compliance issue discovered at the target company would have made the entire deal a loss.

When your organization prepares for an acquisition, software is a critical asset to include as part of the financial considerations and especially when evaluating the risks. In researching M&A best practices, there is a glaring lack of guidance or even mention of software licensing and its impact on mergers and acquisitions.

We’re here to change that. As part of your M&A best practices make sure to ask these two key questions:

• Is the company we intend to acquire properly licensed or are we inheriting a compliance risk?
• What will the software licensing position for the new merged entity look like?

Understanding and reducing inherited risk

Prior to any merger or acquisition taking place, a company completes thorough due diligence to account for almost every input and potential impact to the profitability and thus viability for that deal to be completed. Yet very often, companies target and even complete mergers but fail to account for the software position for the acquired company. In many cases auditors come in and examine all financials, so why is software often ignored in the audit scope?

The hidden costs of a non-compliant licensing position are quickly exposed by vendor audits that are often triggered by merger and acquisition activity. Vendors know that mergers and acquisitions are easy targets for finding companies out of compliance.

You may ask… why are these such easy targets? Take a look at any one of the hundreds of license agreements your organization has, and you’ll find hundreds of different versions and levels of rights and restrictions. It’s partly because software entitlements may not always transfer and will often require a “transfer of ownership” fee. Review your own contracts and your target merger/ acquisition company’s entitlements and contracts to make sure you get a complete picture of what the costs and restrictions are for software use post-merger.

Mergers and acquisitions bring up a multitude of questions. Towards the top of that list is to get an accurate understanding of the software licensing position of the target company. In order to ensure accurate disclosure is provided by the target, you need to know the as-is state of the software licensing soon after you acquire the entity, or ideally before. This can reduce the financial burden if the acquired entity is out of license compliance and allows you to hold the sellers accountable to the disclosure schedules.

This is, of course, assuming your own house is already in order. If not, take this as an opportunity to internally determine your own software compliance position by establishing a Software Asset Management practice.

Recommendations for success

So now that you are one entity, you need to assess the landscape of what applications and cloud services are in use. Have you inherited anything that may be beneficial? A good checklist to work through looks like this:

• Optimize Your Spend

Look for common software titles across the two companies. Identify and assess who actually needs the software, how often do they use it? Do they use it to its fullest potential or do they only need a lower level subscription or license?

• Improve Efficiencies

Look for similarly functioning software titles that could be consolidated to one or at least reduced in number. It is uncanny how often a company has an “approved list” for their software or cloud usage, but has several other titles running in their environment that perform the same task (but in an unsupported or even unknown capacity).

• Identify Areas for Consolidation.

Do you have duplicate licensing? If yes, what are the licensing rules for reassigning these to employees who need them? If the licensing rules restrict immediate reassignment, what are the timeframes and rules for removing or reducing them at the next renewal cycle?

• Reconcile Software Usage With Acquired Software Licenses.

A complete SAM practice ensures you maintain governance and compliance by rationalizing the versions and licensing rights across all your software. Eliminate blind spots in your M&A IT integration strategy by gaining visibility into all the disparate software and versions running in your landscape.

Conclusion

The impact of technology on the M&A world is increasingly streamlining and optimizing not only the integration process with regards to asset inventory and consolidation of business elements but also the processes surrounding the legal elements and practices. Accuracy and diligence are critical to a successful merger or acquisition and nowhere is the gap between expectations or false hope and the reality of the situation more prevalent than when addressing the software compliance risks a target company may have.

M&A activity triggers software audits. Audits are bad enough when they are (supposedly) random and infrequent, they can be devastating if your newly formed company is targeted by multiple vendors eagerly awaiting a financial windfall at your expense.

Make software compliance risk mitigation part of your merger and acquisition due diligence to help ensure your company’s financial success. Impending merger or acquisition? Talk to Snow to learn how we can help you with your M&A due diligence.

The post Software Compliance Impacts on Mergers and Acquisitions appeared first on Snow Software.

This is a time where a new level of cost optimization, risk management and value delivery are essential, a time that calls for a new approach to managing IT.

Addressing a Changing Landscape

Over the past five to ten years, there has been a considerable shift in the way people consume technology. End users became owners of their department-level budgets and technology decisions. SaaS and cloud overtook on-premises software and hardware adoption. While CIOs and IT teams remained accountable for managing overall costs and risk, they often had limited or minimal insight into exactly what was in use at their organization.

At Snow, we understood this behavior wasn’t a passing trend – it was a fundamentally new way of working. And organizations were only going to experience more complexity and uncertainty as a result.

To meet customer needs for years ahead, Snow decided to leverage its leadership and heritage in IT asset management (ITAM) to deliver expanded value in the industry, acknowledging the areas of convergence with SaaS and cloud.

This required a two-pronged approach: both a product and company transformation. We needed to move with speed, scale and rapid innovation. Creating a strong operational foundation was essential to providing a technology solution that could address the myriad of issues in front of our customers.

Enter Technology Intelligence.

Solving the Enterprise IT Visibility Gap

Snow was founded to help organizations better understand and manage the software they had. Over the last five years, we have put Snow on course to manage all aspects of technology.

Our decision to do so reflects the challenges now facing CIOs and IT teams (and their business partners), and the lack of an out of the box solution to manage IT.

Organizations have an inherently fragmented and siloed tech stack. This creates challenges when maintaining visibility and gathering the data needed to make timely and fact-based decisions around cost, risk, security and growth.

And while visibility is the building block on which all these challenges can be addressed, it is a fundamental capability that most organizations lack.

Gaining this visibility is difficult. Most point-based tools provide depth but not breadth (and often, lack integration). Most platforms provide breadth but lack depth. And many organizations are working with a patchwork of technologies that cannot all speak to each other and are managed independently of one another. Attempting to gain visibility under these circumstances is often a losing battle for many organizations.

Enterprises are teetering on the verge of a crisis fueled by this visibility gap and an onslaught of new technologies introduced across the business.

The visibility gap leaves organizations exposed. Vendors can take advantage by constantly changing their licensing terms. SaaS applications thrive on unconstrained use permeating across their environment. And others like cybercriminals or even competitors could easily exploit these weaknesses.

We are helping companies address these problems, providing customers with the ability to better defend themselves, build further resilience and leverage new opportunities.

That’s why we have embraced what we call Technology Intelligence.

Technology Intelligence is the ability to understand and manage all technology.

All data in an enterprise sits in technology assets. However, that data is spread across siloed point tools, meaning that there isn’t a way to harness the true power of this data. Technology Intelligence breaks down these silos and delivers a foundation of comprehensive visibility across the entire IT landscape. With insights and recommendations, the ability to take action to address the biggest areas of need is possible.

At Snow, we believe there is further opportunity in Technology Intelligence beyond addressing the complex challenges of the day. Technology Intelligence, when fully realized, can impact other services that rely on technology asset data to operate efficiently.

We hear about these pain points constantly. Customers cannot get what they need out of their IT service management platform without accurate data fed into the CMDB. IT financial management tools cannot surface informative insights to impact IT financial decisions without comprehensive usage data. Fortifying security posture across an enterprise is fraught if you don’t have complete visibility and an understanding of usage across all layers of your technology landscape.

Our perspective is that Technology Intelligence will open doors for organizations. It allows businesses to really unlock the promised value of their technology investments.

This insight is mission critical. It’s not about having a single source of truth. It’s about having a way to bring together the many truths offered by your technologies – creating an intelligence layer that can act as an insights hub between your technologies to surface both the high-level and granular detail that enables decision making to deliver positive business outcome.

Having the ability to present all your technology data on a cloud-native platform – one that is easily accessible, always updated and can be shared with many stakeholders – is powerful.

And that’s why we built Snow Atlas.

A Holistic Solution Is Now a Critical Need

Based on the complexity and urgency of the issue, we fundamentally believe that the challenges of today cannot be addressed by technology designed for the era of assets not services, or solutions that solve previously siloed parts of the problem. A unified platform is required to not only address the convergence of ITAM, SaaS management and cloud management but to solve the broader set of challenges facing IT teams and business executives alike.

We also see that with the ongoing shifts in the sector from major cloud releases (ongoing deployments from AWS or Google Cloud, for example) to new regulations (such as sustainability reporting mandates for US public companies) to the ongoing generative AI revolution (from ChatGPT to Google Bard) bolsters the need for Technology Intelligence. And it reinforces our view that a platform able to sustain and thrive under continuous innovation is required.

For us, that platform is Snow Atlas.

While we made Snow Atlas generally available in July 2022, culminating years of work, we’ve rapidly started releasing new innovations specifically designed to address some of the biggest challenges organizations are facing today, especially in such a turbulent economy. We are now at a point where we’re releasing new innovations more than once a day.

You can see this in our new and improved Snow SaaS Management solution, for example, where we’ve rearchitected our product as a standalone solution delivered on Snow Atlas. As organizations attempt to grapple with their amorphous SaaS application use, visibility across the tech stack is no longer a nice to have – it’s essential. That’s why we provide the most comprehensive SaaS application discovery available and the ability to track verified usage data with precision.

And this is only the beginning.

We have many more capabilities and new products coming on Snow Atlas.

This includes work from the recent introduction of Snow Labs, our new research and development arm, where we – in partnership with our customers – formally trial new use cases and identify next-generation technologies that might impact IT leaders, quickly pivoting these solutions into products.

Organizations need a better path forward. Snow Atlas – and our work to establish the intelligence layer for all technology – will provide CIOs and IT leaders with the critical insights required to support operational, fiscal and risk-based initiatives. Initiatives that ultimately impact the direction, agility and growth of a business.

This is the power of Technology Intelligence.

This is the power of Snow. And more is yet to come!

The post Technology Intelligence Is Essential for the Future of IT appeared first on Snow Software.

Especially with the uncertain economic environment of 2023, you may not be feeling the love for your technology vendors. Grappling with complex contracts, price hikes or shifting support due to restructuring or layoffs, technology vendors are navigating a very challenging time – putting customers in an equally difficult position as you try to extract value or shift costs.

It may have you asking: Is this still love? Or do you deserve something better?

Signs of a solid relationship

When it comes to technology vendors, it can be hard to decipher what’s normal course of business and what’s not. A great customer experience is the goal for many at the end of the day, but that also needs to be balanced with expectations of what you bought versus what you have, the realistic nature of legal terms and conditions, limitations of the product or roadmap, misunderstanding of utilizing specific features, or even working with individuals that don’t necessarily characterize the company. There are plenty of moments with your tech vendors that can change your outlook on the relationship.

All that being said, how do you really know if what you have is working for you?

1. Your vendor returns your calls, emails, Slacks or support chats.
2. Your vendor follows through on commitments.
3. Your technology makes your job, projects or tasks better.
4. You can’t live without it.
5. You find yourself talking about it without being asked.
6. You see a long-term future together.
7. When you know of ways that your technology could be doing better (performance, cost, features, etc.), your vendor is open and ready to have that conversation.
8. You know how to identify the value of your tool/platform/environments – either with specific analytics that can be pulled or identified value (i.e. time saved, cost managed, support provided, enhanced abilities of team, etc.).
9. Your vendor thanks you for your commitment to the relationship and is ready to support you, even if you don’t think it’s working for you any more.

It’s time to talk

Let’s say that you recognize your relationship is anything but ideal. Or that it’s just time for a change. What are your options?

There are two factors to keep in mind when thinking of breaking up with a vendor: how long is your contract and how difficult will it be for you to get into a new relationship.

If you are one year into a three-year contract with no possible refunds, then the main objective should be to get as much value out of the existing relationship as you can.

Even with consumption-based models, there is still a contract involved with some kind of financial incentive, and it may not be worth it to break the terms of your engagement. But there are plenty of ways you could potentially see value still:

• Start a dialogue with your account team and/or ask for feedback from your network or the vendor’s customer community about the technology itself.
• Perform a retrospective by analyzing why you wanted a specific tool in the first place. Identify what went wrong and what you believe you need from the technology. Reflecting can help pinpoint where a breakdown occurred and why.
• Establish three or four realistic goals with a corresponding roadmap. This could transform your working relationship with your tech provider by giving you and your vendor a common goal. As customers, we are not always forthright with our vendors about our goals, but we should share the accountability with the vendor.
• Consider whether internal resources or barriers may be an issue in realizing the value of your tech stack and prepare a plan that could help you change this. Ask your vendor for help, as they want to see you be successful and may be able to arm you with the necessary data or insights to make a change internally.
• Evaluate a partner service could help you realize success with a certain product. Partners are influential with both vendors and implementations. They may be able to help you gain a better footing during negotiations and/or offer you a more direct line of support that you were missing.

For those who have reached their breaking point, current budgets may make it challenging for you to bring on a new vendor at this time. With cost and risk concerns top of mind for boards and executives, trying to replace a vendor may result in further scrutiny on your budgets and force you to go without any tool.

If that’s the case for your tech relationship, remember that you still have plenty of options. A contract renewal can be much easier to get approval on than procuring a brand-new tool.

1. Look for ways to optimize your costs or performance. Depending on the technology you’re working with, whether software, SaaS or cloud, there are always ways to rightsize for your needs. However, remember that you will need a complete picture of how your tool performs, who uses it and why in order to make these adjustments.
2. Voice your concerns to your vendor over your disappointment or missed performance of the solution. As a last resort, holding off on a renewal decision, even if you already know you want to renew, can elevate your concerns. But remember that this could also trigger short-term solutions from vendors, and you want to ensure that any proposal or relationship is working for your needs/goals overall.
3. Finally, don’t forget that customer success teams and service support should be fully engaged to set you up for success and can act as mediators. These organizational resources should be up to speed on any challenges or issues you are facing before you decide you want to walk away from a relationship. Escalating complaints could result in the kind of radical change necessary to change a working relationship.

If you do determine you want to bring on another vendor, make sure you are very clear about your own goals and any items that you want that you might not have been getting from your previous vendor. All of that information is important to share with any new vendors that you may be evaluating. Make a list of what you’re looking for in your next partner.

No matter what position you are in with your technology vendor these days, don’t forget to consider you and your organization’s needs. Whether or not love is in the air, technology should always bring out the best in you and your team/s.

If you’re not sure whether you’re seeing the value, reach out to our team today and we can help you assess. Watch our recent webinar to see how you can identify your biggest areas of waste among enterprise technology vendors.

The post Love Is in the Air: Signs of Healthy Relationships With Your Tech Vendors appeared first on Snow Software.

Due to the fast-paced technological development we have grown used to in IT, we have lived for some time in a disposable environment where equipment is quickly outdated and replaced in a bid to improve customer experience or outcomes. However, at some point, most of us have looked at a stack of equipment destined to be disposed of and thought of the cost. It is only a small jump to consider the cost to the environment as well. 

IT Leader Strategies for Sustainability 

A sustainable company is one which recognizes its corporate responsibility to lessen the harm it does to the environment and reduce its draw on global resources. Customers, employees and investors are increasingly looking to all companies to answer the call to action by developing their own sustainability measures, especially in the IT sphere.  

Snow Software and I have introduced a wide range of strategies such as supporting greener data centers, safely recycling endpoint devices, increasing reliance on cloud technologies and extending the life of hardware.  

Snow is not the only company recognizing the increasing importance of environmental efforts and the CIOs who embrace them. A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that many CIOs are focused on sustainability initiatives now that the relationship between digitization and carbon-based emissions is more apparent. 

In addition to the recycling of endpoint devices and the other examples listed above, these leaders’ wide-ranging efforts often include: 

• Improving data center efficiency
• Reducing electricity consumption
• Adopting technologies developed for energy optimization and waste reduction
• Increasing reliance on sustainable hardware certification programs

As CIO, I know that managing a global technology estate brings significant challenges. Prior to joining Snow, I already used their products to secure technology intelligence. I know that the insights gained through these products aid sustainability initiatives and assist those who still need to transition to a cloud computing model. Spending money on servers that are sitting and consuming power whilst being unproductive is not in the interests of business or the environment. By ensuring full visibility of the technology estate, wasted resources can be identified and eliminated.

Relocating as much as possible to the cloud (due to the greener credentials of the cloud providers vs. legacy data centers), leaves processing tasks to larger, more efficient providers. It also allows companies to run only the number of machines that they need at any one time, depending on the design. Utilizing auto-scaling technology efficiently allows a business to decrease their carbon footprint significantly and save cost.

Sustainability Certification and TCO Certified

To help ensure that we are holding ourselves to the highest standards in our hardware decisions, we at Snow Software partner with TCO Certified, the world-leading third-party sustainability certification for IT products which is independent from the IT industry and buyers. Snow products also now make use of the data that TCO Certified produces and incorporates that into the intelligence that our customers have about their technology estate, allowing them to make better decisions.  

Companies wishing to extend their corporate social responsibility beyond their own consumption can use hardware asset management tools such as those from Snow. These tools identify “end of life” assets so companies can consider how they can best utilize those assets to meet development goals, lessen waste, and reduce the global requirement for raw materials.  Donating their IT assets (after giving due regard to data removal) to charitable organizations which give individuals and communities access to basic services helps both the environment and a demographic in need.

Waste of resources, be they physical, environmental or financial, is becoming indefensible in the modern business climate. While it is certainly a challenge to find innovative ways to improve our consumption and impact on the environment, it is one that those who are in leadership roles in IT should take seriously. 

Alastair Pooley is the Chief Information Officer at Snow, where he is responsible for global IT strategy and implementation. He has presented at national and international conferences and maintains in industry-leading technical/security qualifications across AWS, Linux Professional Institute and ISC(2). Alastair also earned a BSc in Physics from the University of Warwick and was awarded an MBA from Cranfield University.

The post Sustainability and Snow: How IT Leaders Can Care for the Environment  appeared first on Snow Software.

More innovation is on the way

IT pros kept their organizations running through 2020 and into 2021, despite tremendous disruption and constant pivoting during the pandemic. According to the Snow 2022 IT Priorities Report, a survey of 1,000 IT leaders in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Australia and India, 87% of IT leaders say their organization is prepared to weather global events. More IT leaders also say they currently have an influential seat at the executive’s table, with 90% indicating that they’re a trusted advisor to the business, instead of a one-stop-shop for technology.

What’s on their plate in 2022? The answer is clear — more innovation. Of the survey respondents, 94% say innovation is a top strategic priority, and 76% say their IT budgets for emerging technologies will grow. To drive that innovation over the next five years, they plan to implement more IoT, hybrid cloud, AI, private and public cloud, machine learning, edge computing and other technologies.

Rising innovation calls for new skills

Of course, integrating more emerging technologies fuels the need for more skilled talent. Around 93% of those surveyed say that skills must evolve among their employees to best leverage these new technologies. However, according to Skillsoft’s Global Knowledge 2021 IT Skills and Salary Report, IT still faces a critical skills gap that has increased 145% since 2016.

When asked about the need for more highly skilled IT professionals, a few of our Snow Software team members underscored the unease over evolving requirements. Jesse Stockall, the chief architect at Snow, says nearly everyone has some type of cloud strategy today, so cloud architects are in great demand.

“More languages are also supported now, too. Azure and AWS developers have added more languages than they have taken away. There is more assembling rather than building from scratch. While this is okay, it does add to the complexity.”

Jesse Stockall, chief architect at Snow

With the move from traditional, primarily on-prem network security to increasingly cloud-based business, cloud security engineers play more of a role, says Jesse. Data governance and privacy professionals are another growth area he emphasizes, particularly as GDPR grows in prevalence and the volume of data in the cloud grows.

The tech landscape badly needs data scientists, too. As Snow CIO Alastair Pooley described in a recent blog post, new technology brings new data and data-driven strategies, but only after IT understands how to harness the data produced in their entire technology estate. “Understanding and processing data to make it work for the organization is key going forward,” says Becky Trevino, vice president of Snow product marketing.

“The ability to think through data, visualize it and find new insights will be expected table stakes rather than a differentiating skill set.”

Becky Trevino, Vice president of Product Marketing at Snow

Data classification, analytics, governance and security skills are also in great demand.

Developer advocates for organizations that build technology products are another employee type we will see more of in 2022. “Savvy companies are fostering community around how customers use their products today,” says Jesse. “As your ecosystem grows larger, you need to be able to support that community.”

Resolutions for change

Within all this change, there is good news. Organizations recognize their evolving needs, and they are ramping up as a result. According to the Snow IT Priorities Report, 69% say their budget for IT practitioners will increase in 2022. This increase in funding provides plenty of new opportunities. Sometimes, however, the best approach to finding the skills you need is training the people you already have.

To address the skills shortage, our team suggests institutionalizing these three approaches in 2022.

1. Fuel the flame of curiosity.

Technology and automation are changing jobs across the board, says Lizzie Burton, executive vice president of people and culture at Snow, and every human will need to “upskill” in the coming years. “The biggest challenge to this is the time it takes,” she explains. “It’s easier for people to fill their days with their to-do list rather than reflecting on what needs to be done differently. Organizations should build excitement and fuel the flame of curiosity at every stage, encouraging people to become continuous learners who constantly challenge themselves.”

2. Upskill existing employees.

Retraining and upskilling existing employees is an easier effort than searching for and hiring new employees, asserts Jesse. Investing in current employees is an important investment that builds team loyalty and it almost always costs less, too.

3. Foster willingness to accept and try new ways of doing things.

The pandemic helped create a sense of urgency to change, says Alastair. “Had a CIO suggested many such changes pre-pandemic, they likely wouldn’t have happened. Shedding legacy technology created opportunities for organizations to try new things, and IT departments now have more acceptance from leadership to take risks. People are also more adaptable.” Lean into this new willingness to try new ways of doing things. You’ll likely be surprised at how well new approaches can work.

Though we won’t likely solve the entire skills gap in 2022, the most logical place to start is by investing in your current team members who have shown such great resilience over the past two tumultuous years. You’ll foster feelings of goodwill and growth as everyone leans into lessons learned, embraces a newfound acceptance for change and ultimately makes positive steps forward.

The post Understanding and Addressing the 2022 IT Skills Gap appeared first on Snow Software.

Throughout 2021, our home and working lives continued to adapt to the pandemic. Where possible remote working remains the preferred model today and some kind of hybrid working model (part home, part office) appears to be the most likely future of work for many. Through massive change in 2020 and 2021, the Information Technology sector stepped up and adjusted to the needs of a distributed workforce with a reasonable degree of success.

According to our new 2022 IT Priorities Report which studied the changing role and expectations of today’s IT leaders, 90% say their organization is able to deal with the challenges of hybrid work efficiently and effectively. But what comes next?

At the time of the year when predictions are popular, the work we have done at Snow has allowed us to make a few of our own. Each is rooted in this new landscape and may help you fine-tune your focus.

1. Digital transformation efforts have grown in importance, but CIO’s must focus on the joint priorities of improving customer experience and fostering better data for decision making

The pandemic led to increased efforts on digital transformation, whether that was growth in e-commerce, the switch of paper to digital processes or the wholesale replacement of legacy systems. However, in 2022 there will be more focus on improving the customer experience as an attempt to differentiate from competitors and leverage this advantage. Increased digitalization will also generate far more data than organizations had from paper which has the potential to enable faster and accurate decision making in 2022.

2. Make use of the increased reliance on IT to drive further innovation and make use of the increased willingness to change

While remote work isn’t new, the pandemic greatly accelerated its adoption. Had CIOs suggested such a dramatic change to this working style pre-pandemic, they likely would have been rejected. But today, there is a real willingness to innovate, and IT professionals can take hold of this new appetite for change in 2022 to make further progress. On the vendor side, we will see more companies launch new features tailored to improving hybrid work experiences addressing the challenges of office-based staff collaborating with those who are working remotely.

3. Adopt new technologies to improve day-to-day operations and train staff with new skills to support them

IT cost reduction was of utmost importance last year as organizations worked to navigate the disrupted economy. In 2022, we will see a heightened appetite for adding emerging technologies (such as IoT, hybrid cloud and AI according to the study) and therefore, there will be an increased need for skills required to manage their success. Companies will seek employees skilled in AI and machine learning, containerization, cybersecurity and DevOps but given these are in short supplying in the market, training current staff will be crucial.

4. IT can have an impact on sustainability initiatives and it is vital that advancements be made

As new regulations arrive on legislative agendas around the world to combat the damaging effects of growing electronic waste, CIOs (and other c-suite members) are best advised to pay attention to this challenge. 2022 will see added emphasis on green computing with the vast majority of IT leaders saying it is a rising organizational IT priority, whilst accepting that their company must do a better job at driving responsible sustainability initiatives.

The last couple of years have brought unprecedented change for everyone, but especially to the Information Technology sector which has risen to meet the challenge. In the new year, leaders now have an opportunity to build on the important lessons they have learned.

As technology estates continue to evolve and multiply, it will be increasingly important for IT leaders to understand what assets they have and how they are being used. Comprehensive technology intelligence, or full visibility into their current technology investments, greatly assist the ability to make informed data-driven decisions, draw up future priorities and fuel further innovation. The best intelligence platforms also provide key control measures for managing sprawl, allowing full oversight of the evolving estate and ensure that it is as secure as possible.

The post Fine-Tuning Growth: Snow CIO’s Top 4 2022 Predictions appeared first on Snow Software.

Across Snow, Tribe members held their hands high to strike the #ChooseToChallenge pose and show commitment to calling out biases, questioning stereotypes and helping to forge an inclusive world.

As part of this year’s celebration, we want to spotlight experiences from individuals across the Snow Tribe, hear their advice and pay homage to the women who inspire and impact them most.

As a woman in technology, do you have any advice for other women looking to forge a path or strengthen their career in this industry?

“I’ve only ever worked in Tech, so interestingly it’s my full career reality. It’s a great industry, characterized by pace and change. But there has been an evolution in the culture and values of tech companies since I started back in the 1990s (for the better) and that’s been around a growing appreciation and value for difference and the importance of us all feeling like we belong. My advice is to embrace this and feel confident championing this – great companies know this is the right thing to do and battle daily to bring it to life – but it’s hard. Join your voice to the effort. If you are not being supported in your ambition to bring your whole self to work, then leave and work for a company that is willing to support you. It’s too important to compromise on this. You are too important.” -Rachel Mooney, Chief People & Culture Officer

“Augusta Ada Lovelace, a woman, was the first person to publish a computer program. Creola Katherine Johnson of NASA made early space flights possible. ENIC’s first programmers were women. Don’t listen to anyone who says you can’t do something.” – Aliisa Partio, Cybersecurity Engineer

“I think progression in any role or industry is all about taking every opportunity to learn and grow. The more you can learn about your profession, the market, your customers, their needs and the technology solutions that can support them, the more armed you are to have a point of view – and your point of view is as important as anyone else’s. So…surround yourself with great people, find a mentor or coach who inspires you, ask questions, read blogs and listen to podcasts by leaders and visionaries you respect and can learn from, and proactively seek out opportunities to develop.” -Paula Darvell, Chief Marketing Officer

“My biggest advice is to be customer-focused. If you can be known as someone who understands the customer, then there are several areas where you can add value in the business. Customer insight can take several forms. If you are strong in Salesforce, then look at patterns in Win-Loss data. If you have advanced analytical skills, you can look at patterns on the customer website via Google Analytics or utilize other software to understand product adoption rates. You can also listen in to Sales or Customer Success calls to understand why customers buy your product and what areas frustrate them in their current customer experience. Having these insights and being able to confidently articulate them can help get you that seat at the table you may be seeking.” -Becky Trevino, Vice President of Product Marketing and Operations

From your experience working with women in technology, what advice would you give your daughters if they decide to forge a path or build their career in this industry?

“I would give the same advice to my daughter as I would give to my son. This industry needs you. Everyone brings in a special perspective. Both my kids (a boy and a girl) are creative and technical at the same time. These skills are a sure-shot recipe for success.” – Abhishek Sharan, Engineering Manager

Have you faced any significant roadblocks in your career in tech and how did you overcome them?

“The first 90-days after maternity leave has been the most significant roadblock in my career. My return to work was a truly vulnerable experience. I have always been a high performer. I recall wondering how I could possibly be as good at my job after kids as I was before. How would I figure it all out? Even harder was the fact that I was re-entering the workforce as a Senior Director in a fast-changing industry. I overcame the fear and uncertainty of the experience by putting myself on the same 90-day plan that we often give new hires. I made sure to prioritize rebuilding my network. I used catch-ups with my internal network and manager to ensure I had a clear understanding of what I needed to deliver. I then built a plan for small wins across 30/60/90 days. The structure was not there to support me, but I built it myself using a framework that had helped me in the past.” – Becky Trevino, Vice President of Product Marketing and Operations

“No roadblocks as such (yet!) but I have experienced imposter syndrome on numerous occasions. When you are in situations where you find yourself wobbling take a moment to remind yourself how awesome and capable you truly are. Keep a ‘brag file’ of achievements or call up a colleague or friend for some positive feedback. The reality is rarely as scary as we create in our minds and that includes our own fear of failure!” – Daniella Coverdale, Global Director of Partner GTM

“I began my career in tech back in the 1990s when it’s fair to say that, across industries, both law and corporate policy and practice were certainly less favorable towards working women and even more so for working women with children. There has thankfully been some solid progress since then and it’s so good to see so much more inclusion, parity and legal protection in the workplace than was the case when I began my career. However, it’s definitely been a challenging journey and I’ve spoken to many women over the years who believe they’ve had to adopt a different, tougher and more forceful persona or shield at work in order to have a voice, be accepted and progress. No-one should need to do this. Find an organization where you can be your authentic self, that encourages you to flourish, speak openly, challenge without fear of retaliation or judgement, and that truly values and respects you for all you individually bring to it.” -Paula Darvell, Chief Marketing Officer

Do you have any advice on how to participate or embrace the larger community of women in tech for those that aren’t sure where to start?

“Start to talk to female colleagues, friends, family members. Networks expand way outside of work and tech is growing so rapidly you will quickly find like-minded individuals who would love to chat. Make it clear that you are looking to be a part of the narrative and are open to supporting others on their journey too.” -Daniella Coverdale, Global Director of Partner GTM

“Ask people. Start the conversation, be inclusive and don’t make assumptions about who will or will not be engaged. If someone is interested they will let you know and will respond. Its all just about creating space for people to express themselves – do that and great things emerge.” -Rachel Mooney, Chief People & Culture Officer

Perspective is power

At Snow, we believe that perspective is power. Each one of us brings a unique perspective to our Tribe, a unique perspective that is built through our experiences, our cultures, friends and families, as well as our personal and professional lives. Bringing different perspectives together supports our larger Snow values that We Grow Together, understanding that we can influence and grow as individuals, as teams and as a larger organization.

Building a culture that is inclusive and celebrates different perspectives is not as straightforward as it sounds. It requires each of us, every day, to value and contribute to an inclusive, respectful environment. To truly embrace #ChooseToChallenege, we all need to be brave and honest and commit to making the change we wish to see, because we all have a role in building an inclusive culture.

The post Snow Celebrates International Women's Day appeared first on Snow Software.

Since the onset of COVID-19 and the preceding months of constant change, I’ve noticed an uplifting constant — our partner ecosystem is teaming up with customers around the world to help them in incredible ways.

I’ve witnessed our Solutions partners working ‘hand-in-hand’ with customers to innovate and do what is needed to help them adjust to this new world. In today’s post, I will share a few examples of the agility and collaboration that has inspired us.

Enabling and empowering remote workforces

Although many organizations can support the shift to remote work, there are many questions still bubbling under the surface, especially when it comes to IT. How strong is your remote workforce’s foundation? How secure is it? What pitfalls should you guard against? And last but not least, how much does it cost? We seem to be at the beginning of a revolution around the future of the workplace, and IT teams have been forced to re-examine their plans. The rush to enable a remote workforce created a significant spike in the use of cloud applications. With the increase in cloud usage, many organizations decided to ramp up their public cloud consumption to help remote employees do their jobs effectively. Collaboration software and the hardware to make remote work more effective have become top priority for IT teams when it comes to budgeting.

But without the proper mix of tools and insights, organizations don’t have the visibility over their technology ecosystem to adjust spend and accommodate their employee’s needs. With Snow, Solutions partners are helping organizations enable and empower remote workforces while simultaneously reducing costs. Through rightsizing and reducing wasted spend on unused cloud, SaaS, and on-premises software, Snow helps organizations save and optimize IT spending.

“As organisations have implemented their Business Continuity Plans to respond to the challenges posed by the COVID19 pandemic, this has caused a significant upwards spike in the level of spend in Public Cloud environments which is forecasted to grow a further 40% growth year-on-year. This growth in cloud consumption has caused a shift from capital to operational expenditure and IT costs are now more transparent.  At a time when cashflow is restricted and the need for customers to “tighten their belts”, Senior stakeholder focus is now shifting towards how to gain control of, and optimise, cloud costs – Our Cloud Investment Management Services have never been in greater demand.”- Dan Krayenbrink, SAM Business Development Manager at Bytes Software Services

Driving cost savings with Software Asset Management

The pandemic has created global economic uncertainty and proactive organizations are preparing for a dry season ahead by identifying areas of immediate cost savings such as, delaying or cancelling new projects and purchases, or reducing or cancelling subscriptions, maintenance and support contracts for existing investments. It is essential to optimize costs and carefully select investments moving forwards to reduce risk.  But supporting a completely remote workforce has created a spike in cloud consumption costs. Solutions partners are relying on SAM, Software Asset Management, to discover all the assets in their environments, streamline and simplify licenses, and ultimately, drive technology cost savings to support this spike.

“With our SAM expertise and the right tools in use, our Softline specialists are helping customers also during the pandemic to reduce their costs for cloud based software and services by 20-40%. Having a strong partner like Snow Software and their innovative technologies at our side is essential to realize these cost savings, e.g. by monitoring and reducing unused software and services, controlling expired subscriptions and optimizing (multi) cloud environments, which is now at the top of IT leaders agendas more than ever in the current climate.” – Robert Härtwig, Director SAM & ITAM Services at Softline Solutions GmbH

Our SAM solution delivers complete visibility of your software estate, including cloud services, and can help you make informed decisions on where you’re at today and what you can do to rightsize your assets. It’s a means to maximizing your resources at a time when cutting unnecessary costs has never been more critical.

Supporting our partners

We want our Solutions partners to continue to be a pillar of stability for our customers as they adjust to this new environment. I’m especially amazed at how our partners and customers are stepping up to the current challenges and using our solutions to drive savings and shape their new IT strategies.

Thanks to the many people behind the scenes across our partners, customers and Snow who are working together to enable business continuity in so many key areas.

The post Collaborating With Solutions Partners to Drive Cost Savings appeared first on Snow Software.

At Snow, our mission is simple: deliver long-term customer value by providing complete insight and manageability across all technology. This means we’re committed to helping IT teams optimize their entire technology landscape to strategically support their organizations. As our mission has evolved and expanded over the years – from leading software asset management to providing technology intelligence across the entire IT ecosystem – it is important this new mandate is reflected across everything we do.

Today, we are proud to launch our refreshed brand. This means you will start to see our updated logo, color palette, key visual elements and new content across all of our channels. This is an exciting milestone for Snow, and we wanted to share the story behind the change and what it means for our community.  

Shifting needs

The rate of technology change continues to accelerate, fueled by both innovation and evolving business demands. We only have to consider how much has changed over the past few months as many organizations have rapidly made the move to remote working, something that would have been untenable without advances in digitalization and collaboration tools. As our experts have noted, over the past decade IT has shifted from the gatekeeper of technology to the true enabler of the workforce. With this, IT leaders have taken on a much more complex position within the organization – one where they are not only required to contribute to overall business strategy, but also manage costs, safeguard the business and leverage technology to unlock real competitive advantage. Addressing these changing needs has driven Snow’s transformation beyond traditional software asset management to technology intelligence.

Evolving Snow

Technology intelligence is at the core of what drives Snow. It brings together market-leading solutions in software, SaaS and cloud management, creating a path forward for our customers that addresses their needs today and into the future.

It starts with a fundamental understanding of how and why employees use specific technologies, along with a clear understanding of the resources an organization has across its ecosystem. By using accurate and actionable data to make informed decisions, IT teams can use these insights to create strategic advantage, propel innovation initiatives, build resilience, empower the workforce and more.

Technology intelligence is also at the core of several disciplines with similar purposes that have been coming together over the last several years – software asset management, hardware asset management, SaaS management and cloud management. Recognizing this shift and breaking down the silos between these areas has allowed us to quickly accelerate our ability to better support our customers and partners. We’re proud of the community we’ve created and to be trusted by more than 4,000 customers to drive business growth across their software, hardware, cloud and SaaS applications.

Over the past few months, we’ve also reached some huge milestones as a company, from surpassing $100 million ARR to acquiring the hybrid cloud management leader Embotics. By embracing technology intelligence, we’ve been able to significantly invest in strengthening and innovating our solution offerings – in one unified platform – enabling us to address the evolving needs of our customers around the world.

With all this transformation, we recognize that it’s the right time for our brand to also reflect our evolution, expanded capability and market relevance – and represent the potential ahead.

A new perspective

Now, more than ever, IT teams require end-to-end visibility across their IT ecosystem in order to optimize spend, maximize value, minimize risk and pivot strategy as needed.

The core of our new brand is empowering IT and business leaders with a new perspective, enabling them to understand both the granular impacts of technology and the high-level view of how it all fits together. With the right perspective, it is possible to get the timely, accurate insights needed to make confident, data-driven decisions about their technology investments. With the right perspective, organizations can make technology a catalyst for business agility. With the right perspective, anything is possible.

That is the power of perspective. That is the power of Snow.

This concept is embodied in our new logo, which builds on our heritage and beloved Snow blue with a modern twist. Our snowflake symbol is now an accent to our name, representing how we take your technology to the power of Snow by delivering the intelligence you need to manage resources and optimize performance while operating with precision and speed. The foundation for our new snowflake symbol is also a three-dimensional shape, representing the unique perspective and depth of our platform.

You will see these same ideas showcased throughout our visual language. The new brand is fresh, bold and certain. But it is also empowering, inspiring and supportive. It represents Snow’s growth and ambitious vision while remaining grounded in an unwavering commitment to our customers.

This launch is an opportunity to look back at our evolution over the past 23 years, celebrate the global community we have built today, and look forward with excitement as we deliver expanded technology intelligence in the future. We are the same Snow. Just with a brand new perspective.

The post To the Power of Snow: Introducing Our New Brand appeared first on Snow Software.