Why it’s important to rationalize your application portfolio

Application optimization and rationalization is defined as the effort to strategically identify business applications across an organization to determine which should be kept, replaced, retired, or consolidated. We explore the importance of this in the #DoMoreWithSnowServices series.

Jelle Wijndelts, Director of Business Consulting for Snow Software, shares why application optimization is a must for organizations planning their 2023 Software Asset Management (SAM) objectives.

Technology is continuing to become more complex with emerging cloud-based services. As we are challenged with hybrid work and a consumption economy, the expectation of technology has also increased. One thing hasn’t changed, the need for visibility to remove complexity, identify security risks and drive meaningful business decisions. 

Software as a Service (SaaS) is great for an organization that has to stay agile and responsive to their business and employee needs. However, it has also exponentially increased the number of applications that need to be managed. “Why would I need to manage them, they’re in the cloud?” I hear you ask. For starters you need to know about them, what is the application? How are you being billed? What does the application do? What are the terms and conditions that have been signed to? What are the security risks?

The current economic pressures are another reason to take hold of your software portfolio. Over the years we have seen lots of organizations with multiple different applications that do the same thing. Identifying applications that do the same function will enable you to potentially get greater volume discounts, negotiate with the different vendors, and get the best price. furthermore, reduce your internal IT support costs due to quicker time to resolution with teams only needing to support 1 or 2 products instead of 5 to 10 in some instances. 

Application optimization will lead to an reduced IT security risk and improved governance. Having various different versions of the same application installed let alone used will bring a security risk, especially if the application in questions is end of life or is going to be end of life. Optimizing your estate will allow you to reduce the, and more tightly govern, GDPR requirements. Being able to reduce your applications portfolio by 10% to 25% will greatly benefit you. Snow Software's expert consulting teams have years of experience in advising our clients on application optimization and the implementation of policy and process to maintain a lean application stack. 

Give us a call or reach out to any member of the Snow Software Tribe for more information. We would welcome an opportunity to talk with any Snow customers or prospects on how we can support your SAM ambitions or objectives. Snow Professional Services: https://lnkd.in/eJdvjaYF