Snow Optimizer for SAP Software
Overall
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Customer Review - Customer Service - 84/10
10/10
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Customer Review - Value for Money - 86/10
10/10
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Customer Review - Customer Support - 83/10
10/10
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Customer Review - Recommend a Friend - 83/10
10/10
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Customer Review - Overall Satisfaction - 80/10
10/10
Submit your review for Snow Optimizer for SAP Software
Strengths
Easy to use, integrated in our SAP environment
Weaknesses
Need of basic SAP knowledge. Might need better integration with SLM.
Feature requests:
Full SLM integration
Strengths
Complete Integration within SAP and total transparency regarding usage of components which need to be monitored.
Weaknesses
Usability might be improved, but after gaining experience it is easy to use.
Feature requests:
Integration of SAP Cloud Services might be useful.
Strengths
Simple to implement and use once the basics have been learnt. Ability to run scenarios to ascertain how changing user types would impact the system (so allowing predictive work for future investments).
Weaknesses
Was previously an audit tool and presentation/reporting needs to be updated to be a management tool. Improved layout of reports would be beneficial.
Feature requests:
Integration with SLM.
Strengths
Very intuitive and responsive, integrated with SAP, straightforward to use.
Weaknesses
Requires knowledge of your SAP contracts and licenses, and also knowledge of how users are set up in your SAP systems.
Strengths
Transparency of usage
Weaknesses
Could offer greater maliability with regards to associating results with usable data instead of just reporting the number of users.
Strengths
Clear recommendations
Weaknesses
A lot of work to implement and setup
Feature requests:
A dashboard that shows key metrics like the Snowboard.
Strengths
This feedback has been collected by Martin Thompson of The ITAM Review during an onsite review with a large corporate in Switzerland. The customer said, during an independent onsite review, that the system was fast to implement, presented the results quickly and delivered a very compelling return. Savings mentioned by the customer include thousands of named user licenses, which equates to tens of millions of Euros in savings.
Weaknesses
The customer said, during an independent onsite review, that the system had a steep learning curve at the beginning. As an independent observer, I say this was to do with the complexity of SAP license types and codes rather than something Snow could overcome. The customer referred to the complex process of identifying license codes and identifying which license types they referred to.
Feature requests:
The customer said, during an independent onsite review, that they could not think of any weaknesses or recommendations for improvement. A happy customer.
Certification Report - Snow Optimizer for SAP Software
General Observations
Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software was previously certified to version 1 of this standard. It is available as a standalone product, or as an add-on to an existing Snow License Manager installation. In the latter case, data gathered by Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software is surfaced within Snow License Manager, providing a single dashboard view.
Customers note that the tool has a rapid time-to-value, once initial configuration is complete. Snow provide configuration support and it is recommended that you take up this option as much of the configuration work will be carried out by your SAP Administration (SAP BASIS) team rather than the ITAM team. Once initial configuration has been completed the system has two main user groups – SAP BASIS & the ITAM Team. As such, it is vital that you include your SAP BASIS team in product selection and configuration, in order to ensure that it meets your needs. This holds true for any SAP Management tool.
Customers report that Snow support is responsive and good, and that there is also the option to engage experts from Snow’s partner network. There is no managed service option available direct from Snow although they do provide ongoing technical consultancy in addition to standard support services. This consultancy includes baselining services and Digital Access Assessments – using the data from Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software to determine whether the digital access licensing model is better value than traditional licensing.
In the course of this certification process it has been clear that Snow continue to invest in Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software. There is a strong roadmap and new features and fixes are released frequently. Major releases are planned to update the product to the latest SAP optimisation use cases as soon as possible after they are released. The next major product update is planned for August 2020.
Overall, the tool delivers against its use case and is backed up by good support and consultancy services. It is important to note that you don’t need to have any other Snow products to deploy Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software, although it does also integrate with Snow License Manager if you have that deployed.
Assessors Recommendation
- Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software exceeds the requirements of The ITAM Review SAP License Management Standard v2.0
- Customer references verified features work in live environment as promised
- We therefore certify Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software for SAP License Management
Customer References
Reference #1 – European Supermarket
For this certification process The ITAM Review interviewed a large European Supermarket based in Germany. The interview was conducted remotely in April 2020.
This reference operates in the supermarket/retail sector with a highly distributed network in terms of retail locations and operating divisions. This requires the ability to gather data from many separate SAP systems operating under a single centralised contract. They have a SAP user base in excess of 50,000 seats and have a very mature IT Asset & Contract Management practice, the team having been established in 2010.
They use Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software as a standalone tool, with the rest of the IT Asset Management tooling from other providers. In keeping with many other organisations using this tool there are users within the IT Asset Management team and also in the SAP BASIS teams across the organisation.
They selected Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software from a long list of 8 suppliers and a shortlist of 5. Implementation across the distributed IT environment took 2 months. Within 5 months from project start, the reference was able to conduct a complete licensing measurement group-wide within just a few days.
Following implementation and completion of the initial optimisation process, the key day-to-day benefit is in user management – identifying unused licenses and allocating users to the right license. Full automation of the necessary periodic SAP LAW reports also saves considerable time (generated in seconds rather than in days).
Snow helped with implementation and provided functionality in a new version of the tool specifically requested to meet the reference customer’s need to manage their distributed SAP environment.
The reference recommends the product for any large organisation with a distributed and complex environment to manage. They also see that there would be value in the tool for smaller organisations needing to manage user accounts.
Reference #2 – United Kingdom Utility Company
The second end user customer reference for this certification process is a large Utility company based in the UK.
They have been a Snow customer since 2013/2014 and so felt that Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software was the obvious choice when looking for an SAP License Management tool. As Snow License Manager (SLM) customers they appreciate that Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software results are surfaced within SLM, providing a single view of their assets. Prior to deploying the tool, they relied on a manual tracking spreadsheet that didn’t have the required level of detail and required excessive effort to keep updated.
The primary motivators for deploying the tool were cost management and being able to extend mature Software Asset Management (SAM) processes to SAP licensing. However, on deploying the tool the customer found that they already had a reasonable grip on SAP spending and were well optimized. Despite this, they still generate value from the tool in driving continuous process improvement as it enables them to uncover holes in existing processes.
The reference customer uses Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software for annual LAW submissions with the aim of improving the time taken to make those submissions. They don’t currently have a need for the indirect/digital access capabilities so were unable to comment on those features, nor are they an S/4HANA customer.
They were happy with Snow’s onboarding support, consisting of 4 days of technical expertise for configuration and knowledge transfer. Since then they have received good support.
Overall, the reference customer primarily leverages the tool for management, control, and visibility rather than cost-saving with the biggest benefits being in the Access & Authorisations (A&A) team. The A&A team also use Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software to build new user/role profiles to ensure that the optimum license is issued to each user.
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