We recently published a post on SPLA tools. We didn’t want to go into much detail as we do maintain that Altaris is tool agnostic. We can work with tools you already have in place or recommend one that suits your unique environment. And we always maintain that no tool alone can do the complete job and that licensing and compliance experts are required to manage the tool and ensure the output is optimized from a cost perspective to produce a compliant and reseller ready report.
More recently we have been working with a tool called Block 64, a company based in Toronto and founded in 2012. The primary use of this tool is for on-premise asset management and server metering but with a few tweaks we’ve found it quite effective in a Hosted / Service Provider’s environment.
Not only does it accurately collect all server and usage data, but also meters the environment and provides the costs for running a specific workload in the public cloud.
Obviously, some Hosting Companies resist moving workloads to the public cloud as they see it as a competitor to their own service. However, we have some clients who use these same metering capabilities to sell against the public cloud, armed with the costs such a migration might cost.
Regardless, we recently completed a highly complex engagement that came about as a result of a significant acquisition. With the use of metering / asset management tools like Block 64 we were able to identify a lot of redundancy and reduce their SPLA bill by 40%.
Some of the tactics included:
The consolidation of physical hosts where there was capacity to reduce the number of Windows Server Datacenter licenses.
Identify customers licensed for dedicated environments but still being reported under SPLA
Identify instances of Passive SQL servers being reported under SPLA
ESX hosts being licensed at the aggregate level vs. VM level
Optimizing almost 1/3 of the SQL footprint by identifying low utilization and moving SQL VMs to a designated host and then licensing on the host level with SQL Enterprise Edition
If you want to discuss the right tool for your environment or explore what you might be able to leverage what you already have deployed, click on the button below to book a complimentary consultation or email us at info@altariscloud.com.
Your Licensing Experts at Altaris Cloud