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.

Q&A with Snow

Q: As a member of the Snow Software executive team, what are your thoughts on generative AI and the impact the new technology is having on the business landscape?

Steve: The launch of generative AI has been nothing short of amazing. The industry has been looking at AI and large language models and it has been developing slowly over the last couple of years. Then in December, ChatGPT-4 is announced, and it feels like the world transformed overnight. The possibilities it delivers, the accelerated power of this technology…it’s now available to all of us and everyone can see the immediate benefits.

Al: It’s hugely exciting. There’s obviously a lot of interest in how it can make people more productive and enhance what they are able to do.

Q: When considering if AI should be brought into their own organization, where do you start?

Steve: Every organization is different and every company’s appetite for risk varies. For example, banks and healthcare organizations handle very sensitive customer information, and regulations require it to be handled in a very specific way. But if, for example, you’re a startup selling software, you may not have those same levels of responsibility. Regardless of your ability and willingness to try new technology, everyone should take a methodical, risk-based approach.

Al: Many organizations are taking the approach of ‘cautious experimentation’. You want to learn about it, try it out and even adopt it, but it’s critical that you do so in a safe way. How can you learn about it and gain the benefits without running into real problems?

Q: How has Snow brought AI into our organization? Can you describe the process?

Steve: We started by breaking down different possible AI use cases, exploring where might we use this technology and gain value. One of our use cases includes using a virtual assistant for finding information, which is relatively low-risk and likely produces good results. We also created one for content creation and one for business copilot technologies – each with slightly more risk but also their own rewards. Other use cases we’ve developed include engineering copilot technologies, where we’re looking at building source code with AI. And finally, an in-product use case.

We’ve also created a group within Snow called Snow Labs. They work in partnership with our customers to explore how new and cutting-edge technologies might be used for our products. They are a highly trained team with respect to what should be shared with various models and what shouldn’t. So, we’re blending innovation with caution.

Q: What are some of the risks being discussed at Snow and concerns that you’ve heard Snow customers express?

Al: When it comes to risk, there are many areas to consider. Think about your organization’s reputation. If you’re using AI to generate content, are you checking accuracy and quality? Sub-standard material can impact your corporate image. Copyright infringement can be both a brand reputation issue and a legal one and copyright lawsuits are already underway.

Exposing intellectual property is another risk – Samsung is the perfect example. The company banned employee use on company devices after sensitive company data was found to have been uploaded to ChatGPT. They were inadvertently publishing corporate, intellectual property by copying and pasting it into prompts.

The regulatory and legal landscapes are other important risk considerations. Data privacy laws like GDPR must be adhered to and what does that mean for public generative AI models? Hiring is another issue companies are talking about. AI tools have been known to bring bias into the process, so that’s something to watch for.

Q: How do you navigate all these risks?

Steve: How we look at AI and make it real at Snow includes setting acceptable use policies. This means we define the tools our users are okay to use. There’s something like 60 different AI models being published each month and it’s growing every day. Defining and communicating a policy on what can be used is key.

Acceptable use policies aren’t effective though without regularly monitoring what’s happening on your network. We use our own software for this – with an initiative called Snow Using Snow. We have a specific recognition algorithm for AI within Snow SaaS Management, so we can look at what’s being used, catalog the usage, and report against which tools are being used by which user. This helps us keep an eye on whether we are adhering to the acceptable use policies.  

Al: If you don’t have a software asset management or SaaS management platform that can help discover AI, your other option would be to look at your web control technology. This would help track browser usage, but with increasingly hybrid work environments, it’s obviously a lot more difficult to manage, but could at least offer you a starting point.

Q: Any final thoughts?

Steve: Despite many of the potential risks, if well navigated, the opportunities of generative AI are tremendous.

Al: It’s important to remember that despite your best efforts at limiting or banning the technology, AI is going to be used by your employees. It may very well already be in use at your organization and you are unaware of it. Be proactive, start looking at the approach like you would with any other emerging technology. Assess it. Put some controls, policies and guidelines in place and make sure you’re talking to your users.

Getting a handle on AI usage

Perspective is everything in today’s ever-changing tech landscape and you simply can’t monitor what you can’t see. Now, more than ever, IT teams and business leaders need end-to-end visibility across their ecosystems so they can minimize risk and keep their organizations secure. 

If you’re interested in taking the first step, and creating an AI Acceptable Use Policy, we’ve provided a template for free download. If you’re past policies and ready for data on AI use, request a demo now. 

The post Considering AI? Snow Leadership Suggests Cautious Experimentation 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.

Navigating product bundles

Let’s start with product bundles. SaaS providers typically have widely disparate pricing depending on which tier of service you select. When they add functionality via acquisition, that often affects how they bundle features and functions within tiers and how they price those tiers. Complete visibility into your SaaS environment is crucial to negotiate effectively with SaaS vendors and avoid overpaying for features your employees don’t need. Login or billing information isn’t enough.  

Gather data at the user level where you can discover paid as well as free applications and see which features users are accessing. A clear picture of the software you have, how your employees are using it and the value it’s providing to them is essential. You’ll be in a better position post-acquisition if a vendor presents new pricing based on new tiers and functionality. It’s easier to distinguish new capabilities that may represent a gap to be filled or features you can live without.  

Take Adobe Creative Cloud, for example. They have two main bundles — Single App, and All Apps. When an employee is using at least three apps, it generally makes sense to purchase the All Apps bundle. The cost difference between the two bundles is around $50.

Adobe may decide to bundle Figma into Adobe Creative Cloud. Let’s say that’s the case. You’re an Adobe Creative Cloud and Figma customer with employees using more than three apps on the All App bundle. You’ll get even more value from your investment and can cancel your Figma subscription. If, however, an employee is only using Figma and one additional app, the Single App license may make more sense. It’s critical to have that visibility into usage. Not only will you choose correctly for each employee, you’ll capitalize on SaaS savings after M&A events like this one.

Managing volume discounts

Most software and SaaS providers offer pricing discounts based on how many licenses you purchase. When a centralized IT department purchases all software, it’s easy enough to track purchases with each vendor and negotiate accordingly. Nowadays, that’s rarely the way things work with SaaS procurement. Business units and even individual employees are making purchasing decisions independent of IT more than ever.

When two well-established vendors like Adobe and Figma merge, you might find that you’re suddenly a much larger customer of the combined entity than you were of each vendor individually. It’s critical to have complete visibility into all SaaS in use throughout the organization when that happens. With it, you can negotiate from a position of strength and leverage your size to achieve pricing power. 

Taking advantage of competition

When one company acquires another, there are any number of ways the new, combined entity can take shape. The options range from business as usual to complete integration and everything in between. Regardless, the new, combined company will have an interest in making sure its customers use as many of its offered capabilities as possible. 

If, for example, you’re using a competitor of the acquired company, you may find there are incentives available if you switch. Once again, complete visibility into your current SaaS environment puts you into the best position to take advantage of this opportunity if it arises. 

The future of SaaS savings after M&A

To learn how Snow Software provides visibility into SaaS environments, you can review our guide to SaaS discovery methods. Interested in more? Check out how Snow addresses SaaS management to optimize software costs.

The post Adobe/Figma Merger: Three Tips for SaaS Savings After M&A 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.

While there is endless talk about the benefits of using ChatGPT, there is not as much focus on the significant security risks surrounding it for organizations. What are the dangers associated with using ChatGPT? How can your organization monitor its usage and protect itself going forward?

A silent threat: Employees may be leaking your confidential, corporate data to ChatGPT

For a chatbot like ChatGPT to generate a response, the user needs to input some kind of information. If your employees are not careful, they may input types of data that put your company at risk, such as:

• Proprietary information
• Sensitive corporate data
• Privacy-protected information
• Memos, decks, emails, PDFs and other confidential assets

Sensitive data could be incorporated into training AI models. Your information is transmitted and stored on external servers, making it impossible to retrieve and open to vulnerabilities out of your control.

OpenAI recently suffered a leak of ChatGPT users’ conversation histories, exposing vulnerabilities within their program and sparking concerns among employers who want to safeguard their data.

In one example, a doctor uploaded their patient’s name and medical condition in order to generate a prior authorization letter to the patient’s insurance company. While the physician is not being accused of a HIPAA violation, it raises concerns about the safety of privacy-protected data is when it is input into a language model.

In another example, Samsung staff leveraged ChatGPT to fix errors in some source code but leaked confidential data, including notes from meetings and performance-related data. Samsung recorded three incidents in just 20 days involving ChatGPT usage which resulted in data leaks. Businesses are racing to implement policies to limit ChatGPT usage. JPMorgan Chase has limited employees’ usage of ChatGPT due to compliance concerns. Walmart, Amazon, Microsoft, and others have also issued warnings to their staff around using such tools.

Phishing 2.0: How ChatGPT is revolutionizing the art of scamming

Other concerns have been raised about how the tool can be leveraged for nefarious use cases. To verify the authenticity of an email, most of us will look for spelling or grammatical mistakes. Hackers may use ChatGPT or another AI chatbot to write clearer phishing emails.

For example, a security researcher conducted an experiment to see if ChatGPT could generate a realistic phishing campaign. Despite the automated disclaimer at the top, ChatGPT went on to produce a very realistic phishing email in perfect English.

The implementation of an AI chatbot also allows bad actors to scale their spamming efforts since it only takes a few seconds to generate the text. While most spam is innocuous, some emails can contain malware or direct the recipient to dangerous websites.

Jailbreaking: How users are tap dancing around ChatGPT’s security guardrails

AI chatbots follow instructions or prompts from a user. Their ability to do so is what makes them so obviously useful, but it is also the thing that makes them vulnerable to malicious intentions. A user can prompt the chatbot to create instructions for making weapons, for example. With a few extra prompts, the user can direct the chatbot to bypass its safety guidelines, known as “jailbreaking”.

ChatGPT helped a user with detailed instructions on how to successfully shoplift. The AI chatbot ended the conversation with, “I hope you find the information useful and that you are able to successfully shoplift without getting caught.”

While we’ve seen many examples over the past several years of how AI models are prone to bias, this is just another reminder how AI models have very limited understanding of the real world. While AI chatbots may be capable of generating realistic human language, they make predictions based on their training data without truly understanding the consequences.

Creating chaos in just a few clicks: How users are generating ransomware code with AI chatbots

It’s quite the feat that AI chatbots can be used to debug and generate code. While there are helpful use cases for such activities, researchers have found ChatGPT could successfully write code to encrypt a system. Many ransomware attackers aren’t capable of creating their own code for attacks, so they typically purchase it on marketplaces across the dark web. With AI chatbots, any user can enter a request and generate malicious code on-demand without any previous coding expertise.

ChatGPT has guardrails built in to help avoid cybercrime, but it is reliant upon the AI model recognizing the intent behind the request. The consequences for violating OpenAI’s content policy are also not very clear, but as of yet, we haven’t seen any immediate repercussions.

Stay vigilant with Snow: How to monitor and discover ChatGPT usage

Perspective is everything in today’s ever-changing tech landscape and you simply can’t monitor what you can’t see. Now, more than ever, IT teams and business leaders need end-to-end visibility across their ecosystems so they can minimize risk and keep their organizations secure.

Because ChatGPT is currently free to use, it won’t show up on financial reports, which is a favorite SaaS app discovery source for many SaaS management platforms. Another common discovery method is to leverage SSO platforms. ChatGPT won’t show up there either. Visibility into ChatGPT usage within your organization requires surfacing data down to the user level. 

With Snow Software technology, customers can track the usage of ChatGPT in their organization. Not only can we track the usage of the ChatGPT client on computer devices, Snow can also track consumption that happens through a web browser.

With discovery data for ChatGPT showing user, device, time used and more, Snow customers can get a better understanding of how ChatGPT is being used within their organizations.

We can help you gain complete visibility of your IT landscape, from your on-premises and cloud infrastructures to SaaS applications, and beyond.

Just reach out to us for a tailored demo to address your organization’s goals – and let us help you better enable your team to monitor and manage ChatGPT.

To learn more, you can watch our on-demand webinar, “The Rise of AI Like ChatGPT: Is Your Organization Prepared?”. We explore how AI like ChatGPT could potentially impact your organization and how having total visibility into its consumption can prevent disaster and may even have a positive impact.

The post ChatGPT and Your Organization: How to Monitor Usage and Be More Aware of Security Risks 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.

You can read the full report here, but throughout the findings, we found three key actions CIOs and IT leaders should consider as they close out 2022 and prepare to start the year off right.

1. Get ahead of your priorities and stay disciplined.

With the current macroeconomic environment (rising inflation, economic uncertainty, geopolitical uncertainty, etc.), it is no surprise that the #1 IT priority for 2023 is reducing IT costs followed by delivering digital transformation and minimizing security risks. But delivering digital transformation and reducing IT costs can be conflicting actions as digital transformation and innovation often require investment and resources.

With 94% of IT leaders noting that innovation remains a top priority, and 85% of respondents saying there is an expectation to innovate faster and demonstrate ROI, CIOs are being pulled in a million directions. They are juggling many timely problems and priorities, all while ensuring they are meeting individual goals and expectations.

Want to start 2023 strong? Now is the time to hone in on what your priorities are for 2023 and specifically Q1. Between now and the end of the year, clearly define your IT priorities and ensure you and your stakeholders are aligned. IT leaders will need discipline and focus entering 2023 but that must start now to make true impact.

Here’s the full list of what those IT leaders surveyed indicated as their top priorities for 2023:

2. Figure out what you don’t know. Visibility is imperative.

At Snow, we often talk about visibility, and we often say, “You can’t protect/control what you can’t see.” Throughout the 2023 IT Priorities Report, we discuss visibility because of the huge impact it can have on IT leaders’ priorities. If controlling cost and security risks are in the top priorities of the year, IT leaders must also prioritize visibility.

In fact, 76% of survey respondents say business units are procuring far more cloud and SaaS than IT knows about. Technology procurement is no longer controlled by IT, and organizations need to embrace this reality and put into place processes to gain a line of sight into what is being added to the organization’s technology landscape. A couple of key steps are:

• Ensure it’s easy for employees to get what they need, so they  work in tandem with IT to get the tools they need for their jobs.
  • Consider easily accessible, approved-use lists and policies. Software or SaaS application portals are even better.
• Leverage technology to discover applications in use.
• Educate and collaborate with business units, so employees and department leaders understand the impact of technology procurement.

For other ideas on how to gain more visibility, check out this blog.

3. Determine what data you need and make it actionable.

We live in a data-driven age, where every aspect of a business can be tracked from how many people enter the building to how many times someone visits a particular page on the Intranet. But trying to understand blind spots due to siloed data and identify the right data are still huge challenges for IT leaders to overcome in 2023.

While 96% of IT leaders said their managers and/or direct reports have the data they need to make good business decisions, this doesn’t mean they have actionable insights to determine what to do next. In fact, nearly nine in ten (89%) IT leaders say IT must invest in tools and technologies to extract value from their data and turn it into actionable intelligence.

If you don’t have a tool to gain actionable intelligence, now is the time. Data-driven decisions will be essential for CIOs given the challenging landscape ahead.

To view the full 2023 IT Priorities Report, download it here.

Additionally, if you are like many IT leaders and facing mounting pressures to identify cost-management drivers for 2023, get a head start by:

• Registering for this free, on-demand webinar on executive challenges in 2023, cost optimization, and avoidance strategies across cloud spend, hardware, SaaS, sustainability and more.  
• Additionally, tune in to a conversation with Becky Trevino, Snow EVP of Product, and AJ Witt, ITAM Review Analyst as they discuss ways to reduce waste and increase spend efficiency in this newest podcast episode.

The post New Snow 2023 IT Priorities Report: 3 Actions CIOs Should Take Now to Prepare for the New Year 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.

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.