Snow Software launches new tech management suite

Snow Software has launched a new intelligence suite that aims to help customers deal with challenges due to growing IT operations, cloud shift and digital transformation.

According to Snow, the shift to cloud has broken down silos and enabled organizations to use a variety of software, hardware, and SaaS and IaaS platforms. This has created new challenges in tech management such as application sprawl and compliance risk.

The new product suite includes:

• Adoption Tracker: This enables users to discover, inventory and normalize digital technology assets. According to Snow, it's a hybrid approach to data that covers everything from SaaS applications to enterprise systems.
• Spend Auditor: This ensures an audit-ready organization while providing users with insight into what's driving technology spend.
• Spend Optimizer: This recommends areas to users where they can reduce spend, and it automates license reharvesting. According to Snow, it has common use cases such as virtualization rights, in addition to optimization for Windows, SAP, Office 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud.
• Productivity Optimizer: This is built on the Snow Automation Platform, and works to automate key processes and streamline workflows. It supports cloud optimization for Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure.
• Risk Monitor: This identifies potential governance and risk issues by providing insight into which applications have the largest risk of privacy, compliance and software issues.
• ITSM Enhancer: This was designed to connect and improve IT service management tools such as BMC Remedy and ServiceNow by supplementing data.

According to Snow, it created this new suite after identifying five main challenges that organizations are currently facing: lack of visibility into what and how technology is used, unanticipated cloud spending wreaking havoc on budgets, governance challenges across the entire technology stack, diver digital transformation needs around the world and customers wanting more from fewer tools.

Roger Williams, Gartner senior director analyst, said that while the launch isn't particularly unique, it is a useful tool.

"There are many vendors offering products in the marketplace to help organizations see what technology is being used, manage spending and make better use of this data for decision-making. … Organizations are certainly struggling with blind spots in their environments and operating the wide range of tools required to maximize the value they get from technology," he said. "These gaps don't go away with just a tool purchase, of course, but solutions that are more focused on specific pain points are easier to operate and can work seamlessly with other products they already use, which is a step in the right direction."