The IBM Apptio platform is a technology business management solution that enables organizations to make better decisions about technology investments. It connects technology spend to business value so organizations can adapt to changing market conditions.
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Snow License Manager
Score 5.7 out of 10
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Snow License Manager enables organizations to gain an accurate view of software usage and entitlements. Organizations can then dynamically reconcile these findings against license entitlements to optimize their IT environments and be audit-ready. HOW IT WORKS Snow License Manager is the central hub for the Snow Software Asset Management platform, providing a unified view of installed software, SaaS, cloud resources and hardware. With Snow License Manager, usage data is…
We use IBM Apptio exclusively for application TCO reporting. It compiles data from different sources then export to Excel to customize report for the user. Our intention is to start a TCO dashboard within IBM Apptio, so Excel is no longer required and leadership can drill down. We are also trying to fully automate our cloud billing.
I have said at a number of events that I have attended, where other suppliers have shown their latest and greatest new thing, it is the fundamentals that need to work, and need to work well, and this is what Snow License Manager does. It does not take a team of 100 staff to get the tool working or to keep the tool functioning, it works and is stable out of the box. We have learnt that putting the right processes in at the start means that Snow License Manager can do what it has been designed to do and what we have paid for it to do. Audits from vendors now days are relatively simple actions, with the Snow License Manager doing it's job we can quickly run a report and know exactly what our position is and then act accordingly, quick, simple and accurate data at your finger tips, as long as you put the work in to enter the license details etc. If Snow License Manager could invent a robot to go around the business and find all these bits of paper for us then that would be perfect.
Does very well at handling complex allocations and automation. Also great at bringing in data automatically, manipulating that data, and allowing you to feed that data into a complex model. So all the behind-the-scenes stuff works really well. It's also pretty good at visualization. It has some similar capabilities like a Power BI and Tableau, but generally provides most of the visualization technology that somebody would need with the tool.
For Validation purpose, if possible, enable the JavaScript code so we can the hide the Tab based on current period and more validation we can perform on client side.
We absolutely love it at the State of Kansas. It is very user-friendly, which helps us explain the information to those who are not as into the budgets. We consult out with Marysville, and they are super helpful in helping us with the behind the scenes stuff, like creating new tabs and uploading the reports for us to filter through. It is very simple to use and that helps us be able to teach others in our department how to use it properly.
Snow License Manager is an integrated part of our Licensing Compliance software solution. It does help us manage current license needs and actual license usage, as well as inventory shadow IT usage. The nice side effect of being able to see hardware specifications and keeping track of hardware usage by users is a bonus!
We use this currently where I work and we have the consultant Maryville helping us with our Apptio reports and data. I originally used Apptio a few years back and since then I have switched employment, and I was able to talk to the leadership team about what we did at my previous job, and now we are building the reports here at my new place of employment
We currently have the on-premise solution, which is very good indeed. If we were starting working with Snow now, we'd probably select the Atlas (SaaS) managed platform. This would reduce/remove work required to keep the Snow servers up-to-date with Windows and software updates.
I have not been directly involved with the post sales support team. However, that team has provided training materials and recommended practices that have been very helpful in coming up to speed on how to more fully use the product. My understanding from both vendor management and our upline stakeholders is that our relationship with Apptio is strong.
Is is easy to find information on their support site or to enter a support ticket. The response times are usually under a day and they don't hesitate to get into direct contact with you to solve the current issue.
Was awesome to have been taught by legendary Debbie Hagan for Cost Transparency in person. Her knowledge is extensive and she is an excellent trainer. Her years of experience really shined.
The all talented training organization crosses all the T's and dots all the I's. I am constantly learning and often refer to training documentation for post training real life issues.
Well, so far. Apptio Consulting covered specific model architecting areas particularly. Most of the heavy lifting is being done in-house with support from Apptio as it relates to tool impacts and needs. Some administrative tasks were redundant
So we've used Proven Optics, which is an add-on to ServiceNow. Well at least use it with certain customers and Nicus. Nicus is probably the biggest competitor of Apptio. The trouble with Nicus is their SQL-based ingestion process. It's a little bit more difficult. So the reason why you'd go with Apptio is that it's very easy and very intuitive to bring in new data sources and being able to model a lot of the data once it's already in the system doesn't require a lot of coding experience.
The deciding factor for the decision makers was the combination of license management and utilization statistics. Our desktop people wanted the utilization and reporting to be very granular and close to real time. Snow was purchased because they promoted their real time utilization in addition to the license management, alerting and reporting. To my knowledge, only Snow was given a proof of concept before the decision was made.
It's delivered on a lot of those, especially the relationship between IT and financing that relationship's been a bit of a rollercoaster on that journey. We've come out the other end of it, and we're all friends now, which is a good thing. So they've accepted the Apptio output and are much more involved in providing the data and helping to use the tool, which is excellent. I think one of the downsides that are probably not talked about enough is the fact that, um, once you have trained and delivered a TMB skillset within your organization, they become very good at that. So if you've got any high-performing members in that team, they become extremely valuable elsewhere. And we've unfortunately suffered the case whereby one of our highest performers was immediately then poached and went off elsewhere for a much better opportunity. So we applaud that for them, but it's really hard to train other people. It's really hard to take them up to speed, and you have to sort of go through those picks and troughs every time. So that's just life, you know.
