Major Bank Transforms Approach to IBM Software Asset Management and Saves $3.4M

Making sense of murky data to get the most out of investments

The lack of visibility into potential compliance issues and cost optimization opportunities for IBM software was impacting the business. As an IASP customer, the organization also needed to develop a standardized approach to effectively manage and monitor the utilization of IBM software – both to report to IBM and clarify their own usage.

Although they had Flexera (FNMS), they couldn’t make sense of the complex data and suspected it might reveal compliance concerns and opportunities for cost optimization.

Additionally, the software asset management team struggled to coordinate with multiple business units and stakeholders to track product validations and renewals making it hard to gather information. The organization was not able to fully leverage its investment in FNMS because they did not effectively manage it for monitoring license usage.

Mapping software license usage to ensure optimum renewal decisions

Anglepoint’s team of IBM experts took action to review Enterprise License Agreements entitlements and coordinate with business units to gather license usage information across the product portfolio of more than 150 IBM products.

This information was mapped in FNMS and validated to ensure the same information was reflected in the tool. The team also included recommendations for overall governance, product-specific optimization, and implementing best practices for license management in FNMS. This included a recommendation for an early renewal to be able to draw down licenses with compliance risk while also turning down subscription and support on products not in use.

They also made optimization recommendations on specific products including downgrading license editions for certain products and evaluating and discontinuing support on products that had reached end-of-life status.

Millions saved in renewals and cost avoidance through software compliance

The data analysis and recommendations were implemented through collaboration with Anglepoint which enabled the organization, as an IASP customer, to avoid compliance issues worth $2.6 million during the assessment. These recommendations included dropping products that weren’t being used from their renewal, changing license editions to better fit their needs, and designing a more strategic and early renewal process.

They further avoided $770,000 post-ELP delivery against products that were initially over-deployed and then decommissioned after assessing future roadmap. Additionally, Anglepoint identified products which were either un-used or partially used within the environment, which could potentially result in cost savings in the range of $3.4 million to the organization depending upon the inputs from product owners on future requirement. Out of the products highlighted, they have been able to realize $ 1M of cost savings in their subsequent renewal, and plan to discuss the remaining products in their upcoming renewal by end of 2023.

Ongoing maintenance and optimization:

To ensure continued maintenance and optimization, Anglepoint established a regular cadence with the customer’s point of contact. This facilitated timely discussions on next steps and tracking the actions derived from the process, enabling ongoing optimization of IBM software licenses for the IASP reporting requirements.