Snow Software Launches Agentless Optimization of Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server, Expands Discovery of AI Applications and Delivers Improved Partner Capabilities on Snow Atlas

“Technology is a significant investment for most organizations, as IDC predicts IT spending will continue to increase to $3.25 trillion in 20231,” said Sanjay Castelino, Chief Product and Customer Officer at Snow. “However, it is incredibly challenging for most organizations to understand exactly what they are using and how much they are spending. That’s why we continue to develop new capabilities that create further transparency into complex IT environments. We believe organizations should be able to identify and understand not just what SaaS applications they are running, for example, but what the total monthly costs are by user. The context of these insights and the ability to immediately act on them are a powerful form of intelligence — one that positively informs strategic business decisions, creates budget predictability and demonstrates the value of an entire tech stack. That’s Technology Intelligence realized.”

FinOps and ITAM Save Costs With Agentless Azure Hybrid Benefits for Windows Server

Cloud services are increasingly consumed directly by distributed development teams, to the point that the spend on cloud has become a clearly visible line item on an organizational expense sheet. This is often exacerbated by cloud providers bundling the cost of software licenses like Windows Server and SQL Server within the rate for a virtual machine (VM) or platform service. This results in organizations purchasing software licenses twice – once for on-premises, and a second time in the cloud.

Azure Hybrid Benefit allows organizations to apply their already-purchased licenses for Windows Server to their virtual machines on Microsoft Azure, reducing the cost of that virtual machine by up to 80% over standard pay-as-you-go and reserved VM instance rates. However, many FinOps and IT Asset Management (ITAM) teams lack the knowledge or experience to take advantage of potential savings offered by the Azure Hybrid Benefit program.

• Identify Azure Hybrid Benefits — To help organizations realize the benefits of Azure Hybrid Benefits, Snow has released an industry-first agentless capability which identifies Windows Server VMs on Microsoft Azure that are eligible for the Azure Hybrid Benefit. The capability is available to all Snow Atlas customers in an open beta program and is a key next step in Snow’s mission to bridge ITAM and FinOps.

Curb SaaS Sprawl with Snow SaaS Management

Despite a year of economic uncertainty and a renewed focus on efficiency for many organizations, Gartner predicts SaaS spending will increase this year by 17.9%, totaling $197 billion2. Increased spending in SaaS also follows the news that many SaaS vendors are raising the prices of their products this year. Ultimately, these market movements suggest organizations need to be especially focused on their entire SaaS application portfolio and the overall costs, or risk overspending and uncontrolled sprawl.

Snow SaaS Management provides organizations with the ability to uncover and manage their SaaS applications, including free or unapproved applications. The fourth-generation SaaS management solution offers the most complete discovery engine available on the market. Recently announced in general availability, Snow SaaS Management contains even more new features and enhanced capabilities, such as:

• Discover use of AI applications — Track usage of generative AI applications such as ChatGPT, including consumption data on the user, the device, time in the application and more, ensuring organizations can understand when all browser-based generative AI applications are being used in their environment.
• More browser extension options with Chrome and Edge support — Additional discovery methods via the browser extension are now available on Chrome and Edge to help organizations identify unapproved or unknown applications in use.
• Deeper insights on user activity — Organizations can track total monthly costs of a user and identify the most expensive users to better manage SaaS application usage or spend with more granular insights.
• Updated dashboards — New dashboards make it easier to understand high level views of total SaaS costs, user activity, unused seats and more.

Identify Software Running Inside Containers with Snow Atlas

Gaining a unified view across container environments is incredibly difficult, yet these environments contain a wealth of detail on software and SaaS activities. Without this intelligence, organizations lack a significant amount of insight on not only what technologies are running in their IT landscape, but how much and why. That’s where Snow Atlas comes in, which includes:

• Dive deeper into containerized environments — Identify the software running in Kubernetes on-premises, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, Azure Kubernetes Service, Google Kubernetes Service and OpenShift standard containers with the new Container Visibility capability. SAM professionals can now scan containers for commercial applications like Microsoft, Red Hat and Oracle. The visibility and insights offered allow IT leaders to determine what kind of license is needed to maintain compliance with their vendor’s terms and conditions.

Bolstering Partner Capabilities for Snow Atlas

Following the launch of the new and improved Snow Partner Program, Snow has introduced a new set of capabilities for partners on the Snow Atlas platform. Snow Atlas can help partners deliver greater value to customers.

These new features offer partners even more insights and support to create centralized monitoring of customer environments with both summarized views and detailed insights. This intelligence provides partners with the opportunity to guide their customers on cost optimization and risk mitigation strategies.

• Further inventory insights — Partners can view details on inventory processing status, quarantined or inactive, computer type and device hosting information (physical, on-premises or cloud).
• Access to system data — Partners can access information on operating systems, used and unused applications, denied applications and statuses such as end of support, extended support and end of life.
• Enhanced user management — Managed service providers can now enable or disable access for users, identifying gaps in servicing and preventing any unauthorized access to customer systems.

The number of new features released on Snow Atlas exemplifies a commitment to innovation, delivered continuously to ensure improvements and updates can keep up with a constantly changing IT landscape. Since its general availability in June 2022, Snow Atlas has been adopted by more than 100 customers around the world – representing around 1.5 million devices on the platform. The popularity of Snow Atlas in addition to Snow’s on-premises offerings, is propelling the Company’s ability to help organizations effectively unlock critical business and operational insights buried within the technology stack.

To learn more about these new capabilities on Snow Atlas and how you can manage your SaaS and cloud spend, be sure to visit: https://www.snowsoftware.com/blog/whats-new-at-snow-software-september-2023/

1 Source: IDC, World Wide Black Book, April 2023

2 Source: Gartner, “Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2021-2027, 1Q23 Update” April 2023