Professional Services

Establishing Proactive System Monitoring

When implementing any business application, organizations need to plan for proactive system monitoring from a technology and resourcing perspective. Commonly this is overlooked, unbudgeted, and an immediate project challenge that needs resolution.

Aaron Fryer, a Senior Technical Consultant from Snow Software, describes below why system monitoring for business applications is critical, and how this should be approached for Snow Software’s Technology Intelligence Platform as part of the #DoMoreWithSnowServices series.

Like any business application, it’s important to configure proactive, and ideally automatic, monitoring for services on any appropriate application server(s). A common scenario for many Windows based applications is that an error occurs and stops Windows services from running, or when restarted these services have not automatically started as intended.

Most organizations will have a preferred monitoring tool of their choice implemented. At Snow Software we are agnostic as to what monitoring tools we work with. Whichever system monitoring tool selected should send an alert by text, email or even raise an incident ticket if an error is found. This would then align to monitoring, ITIL and IT Service Management (ITSM) best practice. Regarding Snow Software's Technology Intelligence Platform, our expert Professional Services team diligently plan and execute a monitoring strategy in close collaboration with our customers. Below is a sample of the items that should be monitored for the best user experience with our technology and many other business applications.

1. Windows Services

2. Event Viewer

3. Application & Database Log Files

4. Website Uptime

5. SSL Certificates

6. Database Stored Procedures

7. Network Traffic

8. Anti-Virus Rules

9. Security Policies & Procedures

10. User Access

Without monitoring configured, organizations run the risk to system performance, application uptime, business process, or user experience. Snow Software's Professional Services can assist with identifying what you need to monitor, and when you need to act. At Snow Software we have years of experience in both implementing and troubleshooting business applications that support Software Asset Management (SAM), IT Asset Management (ITAM) and IT Service Management (ITSM).

We’d welcome an opportunity to talk with any Snow customers or prospects on how we technically support in establishing technical processes, operations, and reporting. Snow Professional Services: https://lnkd.in/eJdvjaYF

SQL Server Licensing Summary & Guidance

Microsoft SQL Server is considered one of the most complex and expensive business applications to license. In today’s #DoMoreWithSnowServices article we look into why the product is challenging, and how Snow’s Professional Services team can help. Mike Rossouw, a Principal Licensing Consultant at Snow Software, shares the “need to know” information to get you started.

Aside from the operational risks, insufficient planning of your business licensing needs will undoubtedly expose you to legal, financial, and reputational risks. At the time of writing, there are four main editions of SQL Server available and utilized.

1.   Enterprise Edition – Commercially Available.

2.   Standard and Web Edition – Commercially Available.

3.   Express Edition – Freely Available.

4.   Developer/Compact Editions – Freely Available.

At a basic level, SQL Server is licensed on a per core basis for physical Servers (standalone), or the physical VMware ESX host (part of a cluster), then you need to license each physical processor in the server with a minimum of 4 SQL server core licenses per processor, or the total number of cores on the server, whichever is the higher of the two.

If you are licensing the virtual server, the rules are slightly different. The minimum number of cores is based around the virtual server rather than the processors. You have to license a minimum of 4 cores per Virtual Machine (VM), or the total number of cores allocated to the VM, whichever is the higher of the two. If your VM's are part of a load balanced cluster, in other words they are free to move from one physical host to another within the same cluster, then you will have to make sure that the licenses you are assigning to the VM's have active Software Assurance (SA).

SQL Server licensing starts to get even more complex when applying licenses at the cluster level with features such as DRS (VMware’s load balancing feature 'VMotion'), High availability (HA), and Disaster Recovery (DR) features such as passive failover.

We often find that companies don’t have the required in-house knowledge or resources available to effectively plan out these SQL Server requirements. This is where Snow Software’s expert Professional Services team can assist and support you to optimize your Microsoft licenses.

For more information, please contact the Snow team or visit our website from the link below.

Snow Professional Services: https://lnkd.in/eJdvjaYF

SAM/ITAM Tool Implementation Risks

A frequent question I am asked when working with Snow customers or prospects to scope or shape a project is “what are the risks and how can be mitigate these?”. As part of the #DoMoreWithSnowServices series we unpack this topic in more detail and explore common tool implementation risks.

Tom Newberry, a Senior Project Manager from Snow Software, describes a number of common risks, the importance of a strong risk mitigation strategy, and how project management can help drive customer’s business outcomes.

The reality is that you can’t manage what you don’t measure! This is a pertinent aphorism when related to project risks. All projects have risks associated with them, project risk analysis is important because it helps project stakeholders identify the weaknesses, strengths, and possible opportunities during or after completing a project. Common risks when implementing a Software Asset Management (SAM) tool, process, or service include but are not limited to the following:

1. Timelines: Unconsidered dependencies not met leading to a delay in project completion.

2. Resource Planning: Misunderstood resource requirements can lead to incorrect or insufficient resource alignment to the project. Usually, these risks relate back to either a resource capacity or a resource capability. Both factors require a detailed assessment.

3. Communication: Unclear communication or escalation paths can lead to delays in decision making and delivery of business outcomes. A clear and agreeable communication plan should be established as part of project inception to mitigate this risk.

4. Scope: You need to know what is being delivered, usually driven by a business case, and detailed requirements, or the project won’t be successful. Ensure these requirements are documented and stored centrally for ongoing project alignment and reporting of process success.

5. Cost: Will the project be of value and provide the desired Return on Investment (RoI)? How will this be tracked, measured and reported?

At Snow Software, project managers agree that to mitigate these risks, prevention is better than cure. Working with our tried and tested methodology, we create bespoke governance around each customer’s requirements to ensure synergy between all stakeholders, and a smooth progression of all agreed deliverables. Taking into consideration all potential risks from our extensive experience delivering SAM implementation and consultancy projects.

Want to know more about Snow Software’s approach to manage or deliver project success to our customers? Please contact your aligned Snow Account Manager, my expert Professional Services team, or myself for a deeper discussion.

Snow Professional Services: https://lnkd.in/eJdvjaYF

Snow’s Business Healthcheck

Did you know that Snow Software can provide a Business Health Check to help drive tool adoption, data confidence, and accelerate Return on Investment (RoI)?

Continuing the #DoMoreWithSnowServices series, Laura Kenny, Snow’s Senior Business Consultant for EMEA, articulates the purpose of a Snow Business Health Check and how it can provide insight into your Software Asset Management (SAM) practice.

The purpose of the exercise is to establish the quality of the data currently in your Snow Technology Intelligence platform. The comprehensive health check report details all the findings, identifies improvement areas where Snow Software can provide additional value to your business, prioritized recommendations, and best practice advice from Snow technology experts in all areas of your software asset management practice. Our Business Consultants each have over 10+ years industry experience, Business and IT strategy acumen, and in-depth knowledge of Snow Software Solutions. How we work with our customers?

1. Listen, collaborate and recommend.

2. Set strategic objectives and execute with measurable outcomes.

3. Ask constructive questions and provide actionable answers.

4. Imagine new possibilities and deliver unrivalled insight.

5. Embrace challenges and tackle complexity with rigor.

6. Transfer knowledge, skills and confidence, enabling efficient running and operation within your Snow environments’.

Consider the Business Health Check if you meet any of the following criteria:

1. You want to understand if your Snow solution is being used effectively.

2. The data reliability within your Snow solution is a concern.

3. You need to assess and realize business value from your software asset management investment.

Give us a call or reach out to your Snow Software Account Manager for more information. We’d welcome an opportunity to talk with any Snow customers or prospects on how we can support your ambitions or objectives.

More information on Snow's Business Health Check and our Business Consulting team can be found from the website links below.

Snow Business Health Check: https://lnkd.in/egxTVAF9

Snow Business Consulting: https://lnkd.in/erGbHjHY

Accelerating a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Project with Snow

Looking to build a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to support Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) projects and operations? According to data from Forbes, as many as 85% of CMDB projects fail. It’s vitally important to find accurate and complete data to feed a CMDB.

As part of the #DoMoreWithSnowServices series, Craig Davies, a Senior Technical Consultant for Snow Software, provides his insights below on how Snow’s expert Professional Services help ensure a successful customer CMDB integration, and accelerate customer’s ITSM projects.

With an abundance of tools, agents, and data, how does Snow Software ensure a customer's CMDB has correct information to allow you to make informed decisions?

Whether the expectation for the CMDB is to have hardware assets only, whether it might be to have software libraries, or even to just build out a catalog. Snow Software is able to provide accurate and enriched data for any requirement. Off the back of the data, workflows can be created to increase automation and optimize business processes. Thus, providing time and cost savings!

Starting the journey with a CMDB can be daunting. However, with Snow Software’s ITSM connectors, within hours you will have access to all the data you require. The ongoing integration is automated, meaning on a daily schedule the data will be refreshed/updated. Once the integration has begun all efforts can now be focused on the CMDB in well-known compatible technologies such ServiceNow, BMC or TOPdesk. For all three 3rd parties Snow Software offer certified integrations.

Snow Software is able to provide successful delivery of Snow's data into your CMDB, advise on data management, and share best practice on CMDB population via Snow data.

With full visibility of your estate already found within Snow's Technology Intelligence platform, normalized and trusted data, why not see how this can benefit your CMDB and empower your decision making!

Want more information? Please do reach out to your Snow Account Manager, myself, or our Professional Services team via the following link. https://lnkd.in/eJdvjaYF

You can also find more information on our ITSM enhancer capability and our third party integrations from our website using the following link. https://lnkd.in/evqsH4tS

Measuring success and benefit realization from a tool implementation

Before starting any project, it’s important to understand how the project will be measured and what success looks like. As part of the #DoMoreWithSnowServices series Pavi Gehlot, Head of Project Management UKIMEA, at Snow Software articulates how to measure success and benefit realization from a tool implementation.

When delivering any project, one of the key criteria any project team should be reviewing is, “are we meeting the business case?” and “how are we measuring success?”. Specifically, when you implement a tool whether it be a fully on-premise solution, hybrid (i.e., SaaS with an element of on-premise hardware), or a complete SaaS solution. Strong project management is necessary to ensure that the investment the organisation has made is realized, whether they be tangible or intangible benefits. Examples of these benefit types include, but are not limited to:

1. Resource Cost Saving (Tangible Benefit)

2. Cost Avoidance (Tangible Benefit)

3. Cost Reduction (Tangible Benefit)

4. Increased Productivity (Tangible Benefit)

5. Process Improvement (Tangible Benefit)

6. Improved User Experience (Intangible Benefit)

7. Increased Customer Satisfaction (Intangible Benefit)

8. Increased Compliance (Intangible Benefit)

9. Strategic Alignment (Intangible Benefit)

At Snow Software, we measure the benefits from our vast array of industry leading tools during the lifecycle of the project and beyond. We always see the value of strong project management from the beginning of the project, helping the customer set out their success criteria, we also closely work with the teams during the scoping and sales cycles to ensure an in-depth understanding of the customer needs. We create bespoke governance around each customer’s requirements to ensure synergy between all stakeholders and a smooth progression of all agreed deliverables. We create a cadence and communication plan for all levels of stakeholders and are continually reporting back against the plan and tracking the success criteria. 

It doesn’t stop when the project ends, the brilliant thing here at Snow Software is once your project has been delivered, many of our customers purchase our industry leading Snow Success Program (SSP), one of the benefits of this is an alignment with a dedicated Customer Success Manager. We don’t stop measuring benefits and success when the project ends. Our wonderful Customer Success Managers are here to work with the customer organisation, to ensure that as the needs of the customer change over the years, these are tracked, and success is achieved jointly. Interested on hearing more about the Snow Success Program (SSP)? Please contact any member of the Snow Software team or use the following link to our website. https://lnkd.in/eJdvjaYF

#DoMoreWithSnowServices #Day12 #SnowSoftware #ProfessionalServices #SoftwareAssetManagement #ProjectManagement #BenefitRealization

Ensuring asset visibility in a hybrid working world

The global COVID-19 pandemic has impacted and changed how many organizations now operate on a daily basis. Remote or hybrid work patterns are now normal practice for the majority. This is not likely to change in the short-term. According to a UK National Office of Statistics study, conducted in June 2021, 85% of working adults currently homeworking want to use a hybrid approach of both home and office working in future. As part of the #DoMoreWithSnowServices series we explore what Software/IT asset management challenges this shift brings, and how Snow Software can support customers to resolve these.

Anthony Yip, a Senior Technical Consultant from Snow Software, describes the major challenge faced and how our technology intelligence platform has the capability to address this.

The largest challenge organizations now face is maintaining visibility and connectivity of corporate devices. With many devices now operating outside a corporate network, unless a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel is available, how do organizations keep a track of their assets, users and consumption?

This visibility is crucial for IT security and the optimization of an organization's hardware/software spend. Snow Software’s Technology Intelligence platform has the ability, and functionality, to address this issue. Through careful technical/architectural planning, the solution can be configured to consume data from inside and outside the corporate network. This ensures ongoing accurate and frequent data without placing additional load onto an organisation VPN solution. Snow’s Professional Services can ensure that an accurate and reliable data-feed is maintained by:

1.  Validate best practice is in place for externally-facing technologies. Stay secure and connected.

2.  Verify the health of your Snow platform and validate coverage of inventory/discovery data.

3.  Design/build a secure and scalable Snow platform that aligns to the corporate IT strategy, achieving company objectives, within a hybrid working world.

Give us a call or reach out to your Account Manager for more information. We would welcome an opportunity to talk with any Snow Software customer or prospects on how we can support your ambitions or objectives. You can also find more information on Snow's Technical Consulting team via our website by using the following link. https://lnkd.in/e-ZRZi9X

Snow Software also offer an eBook regarding “ITAM Reimagined in a Hybrid World” which further explores how ITAM practitioners could support business growth in a hybrid world. To request a copy of this eBook please use the following link. https://lnkd.in/ecQ773Uy

Sustainability Reporting with Snow

Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is something that is becoming of critical importance to many organisation. Increasing we are seeing reference to sustainability objectives in customer discussions and it features prominently in most company reports. With it's growing focus and importance, we look into how Snow Software can assist as part of our #DoMoreWithSnowServices series.

Jelle Wijndelts, Snow’s Director of Business Consulting for EMEA, describes how Snow Software’s Technology Intelligence data can be leveraged to show your organizations environmental impact.

In recent years, many countries have seen dramatic shifts in the number of companies reporting on sustainability. Based on a 2020 study compiled by KPMG, 80% of organizations now publish sustainability reports. At Snow Software we have recognized the added value our data can bring to our customers for sustainability reporting. Our environmental and sustainability impact assessment takes hardware data and builds on this with the world’s most comprehensive sustainability certification data for IT products. Snow’s expertly designed assessment, by our sustainability pioneer Martin Barrett, provides the following customer benefits:

1. Valuable insights to your IT infrastructure and its current environmental footprint.

2. An assessment on the percentage of certified computers and servers.

3. A device sustainability forecast based on your hardware and certification lifecycles.

4. Materials analysis and a toxic/conflict minerals ratings by hardware manufacturer.

5. Co2 server emissions report for on premise and cloud server estate.

Leveraging Snow Software data, and access to our subject matter experts, can increase your return on investment in Snow Software technology. The data provided as part of the Snow Sustainability Assessment will also allow an initial baseline to be created and tracked against using industry standard, and expected, C-Level reporting metrics.

Want to know more or even conduct a Snow sustainability impact assessment? Contact Snow Professional Services today via your Snow Account Manager or directly via our website using the link below.

https://lnkd.in/eJdvjaYF

Lastly, if you would like more information on how "How IT Leaders Can Care for the Environment" please also take a moment to read the additional blog post from Snow Software's CIO Alastair Pooley on our website from the following link.

https://lnkd.in/eS-UqCQQ