Case study
Global mining company unearths software and SaaS savings with Flexera
At a glance
By managing their growing software and SaaS estate with Flexera, this global mining company gained greater software visibility. With it, they’re well on their way to successfully reducing costs by an eight-figure target.
The challenge
Limited visibility and costly shadow IT
Shadow IT and a growing number of user licenses were fueling costs for our customer, an anonymous global mining company. To gain control over their growing software budget and increase SaaS detection capabilities, the company upgraded Snow License Manager to Snow Atlas. “Our main driver was to get a better view of our shadow IT. Snow License Manager could detect around 7,000 SaaS titles, whereas Atlas could detect 25,000 SaaS titles,” said the company’s SAM licensing specialist.
We can see who’s been put in without authorization and take the required remediation actions.
The solution
Proactive software license management
With Snow Atlas, the company implemented named user licensing for any license controlled in an external portal, such as licenses for Autodesk and Adobe products. “This helps us identify when our service desk is being a little too helpful and dropping people into integrated active directory groups, which affects licensing and external portals. We can see who’s been put in without authorization and take the required remediation actions.”
The result
More budget control with optimized software licenses
Software rationalization work at the company is ongoing, but the savings are already evident. “We have a group going through and picking titles that stand out where we have other solutions that can do the job. We use that data and the inventory data of where it’s installed, and how often it’s used, to help identify whether it’s truly needed. We can ask, is it just a convenience product? Does something included in our Microsoft licensing provide enough functionality to remove the product without increasing Microsoft licensing?”
The Flexera team has been brilliant throughout this whole implementation. You guys have been fantastic, and I don’t think I would have survived it all without you and the benefits of your knowledge.