Company Profile
For this leading company in the automotive industry, ensuring compliance with software license agreements is a top priority. However, with a diverse and constantly changing IT environment, it was difficult for them to stay on top of subscription levels and usage. Then an unexpected audit from Red Hat landed and the lack of accurate data around their license position required expert support. Guidance from Anglepoint’s experts determined an accurate ELP and optimized their Red Hat estate, reducing their audit risk by 85%.
Caught off guard with a software audit
In 2022 the organization’s IT environment was in flux, with active servers being mischaracterized as inactive, and vice versa. The company was also in the middle of a major project to move all their virtual workloads from VMware to Nutanix hypervisors. A compliance audit request from Red Hat questioning subscription levels arrived. This required a response from the team where resources were already fully utilized with the current project and there was limited accurate data due to the constant change and easily accessible contract information. They needed support from trusted experts to determine their exact Red Hat license position in order to respond to the audit while keeping the project moving forward without disruption.
They had previously worked with Anglepoint to improve CMDB completeness and accuracy while creating various ELPs inside of ServiceNow, and sought out Anglepoint’s experts again to take on this new challenge.
Optimizing their environment
Anglepoint’s license experts quickly gathered all relevant entitlement information from multiple sources, without distracting the team from the project wherever possible and began analyzing the organization’s Red Hat consumption data to determine an accurate ELP. By leveraging their expertise and knowledge, Anglepoint discovered numerous discrepancies in the company’s ServiceNow deployments, and worked closely with the infrastructure manager to determine which servers were active and in scope. After careful analysis and follow-up, Anglepoint identified a compliance risk of over $750,000 due to insufficient Red Hat Premium subscriptions.
Anglepoint worked with the organization to develop a plan to optimize their current environment. This consisted primarily of recommendations to move VMs to specific clusters to maximize the high-cost Red Hat Datacenter licenses and moving non-production VMs to specific “non-prod” clusters to take advantage of the lower cost “standard” subscriptions.
85% reduction of compliance risk in additional subscriptions
By implementing these recommendations, the organization was able to realize an 85% reduction from their compliance risk in additional subscriptions needed. The 80 man hours that Anglepoint provided to manage the audit response allowed the team to continue with the project to move all their virtual workloads from VMware to Nutanix hypervisors and complete this in the planned time frame. This meant that, in addition to the mitigated risk and the realized cost avoidance from the audit, they were also able to reduce their hardware needs and benefit from additional environmental savings.
Anglepoint’s expertise and guidance in navigating Red Hat’s complex licensing terms, along with their knowledge of the vendor’s leverage points, was crucial to the organization’s ability to successfully respond to the audit while delivering on a business-critical project in the required timeframe. The organization continues to work with Anglepoint, supported by their independent, world-class managed services covering multiple vendors.
In 2022 the organization’s IT environment was in flux, with active servers being mischaracterized as inactive, and vice versa.
