Telkomsel

Snow’s Software Asset Management helped us to reduce software expenses by identifying and removing unused licenses. For example, optimization of our Microsoft subscriptions has saved us a potential $74,000 a year.
Torang Hasudungan Sitorus, Vice President, IT Quality Assurance and Service Management, Telkomsel
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Telkomsel reduces 10% on Oracle software costs within the first month, cuts risk and enhances service continuity with Snow Software Asset Management. 

Overview

Telkomsel reduces 10% on Oracle software costs within the first month, cuts risk and enhances service continuity with Snow Software Asset Management

Challenges & Opportunities

PT Telekomunikasi Selular, known as Telkomsel, is one of Indonesia’s leading digital telecommunications providers. Based in Jakarta and employing more than 5,000 people, Telkomsel serves around 170 million customers with a variety of pre-paid and post-paid SIM cards, including the hugely popular Telkomsel PraBayar and Telkomsel Halo brands.

Like many large organizations, Telkomsel constantly seeks to optimize operational efficiency. With a significant budget assigned to software, the Telkomsel IT team is always looking for ways to enhance administration and streamline management processes wherever possible.

Torang Hasudungan Sitorus, Vice President, IT Quality Assurance and Service Management, explains, “For example, vendor software audits took considerable time to resolve, and Telkomsel lacked the data to prove its usage or reduce its license fees. Similarly, the team was unable to locate outdated software that might expose us to security risks, or eliminate software that was not actually in use.”

He continues, “When we investigated further, we realized that the twin root causes were reliance on manual processes, and the lack of a single, trusted view of software in use across the business. We looked for a way to improve our audit compliance, enhance security, monitor utilization, and cut costs.”

Solution

To gain integrated control of its software estate, Telkomsel chose Snow’s comprehensive Software Asset Management (SAM) solution which will help them manage their data center and end user on-premises and Microsoft 365 environments. We completed a comprehensive technical POC of the Snow Platform to ensure that it was able to address all our technical and business requirements. In addition, having Snow a local team in Indonesia along with the strong partner relationship that Snow had with our incumbent technology partner, Astra Graphia Information Technology, made Snow the most suited SAM partner to work with. The IT Operations team owned the project, supported by the Security, Infrastructure, Development, and Asset Management teams for implementation.

As a first step, Telkomsel implemented the Snow SAM Platform, which collects detailed information on installed software, including licenses, versioning, computer specifications, users, and period of use. In parallel, Telkomsel deployed discovery tools to create a database of physical and virtual machines, including storage, switches, servers, blades, and PCs—as well as IP addresses and operating systems.

“The Snow solutions automatically created a database encompassing more than 5,000 servers and 5,000 end-user devices. Snow SAM provides our team, our stakeholders, and our organization with a central view and complete visibility of all our assets in one place, which immediately removed the root causes of our earlier challenges,” reports Torang Hasudungan Sitorus.

“For the first time, we had the validated data to reduce the risks of an audit or a compliance violation, manage and streamline software licenses from a single place, and optimize budgeting and spending on software licenses at the enterprise level.” Going forward we look to expand the Snow footprint to cover more EUC and Servers as well as looking at optimizing over software vendors like SAP”.

Impact & Results

With Snow SAM in full operation, Torang Hasudungan Sitorus describes outstanding results: “Telkomsel achieved a 10% reduction in software license spending, with a 90% reduction in time to collect data, and highest level of accuracy in calculation of software utilization data.”

He continues, “Snow’s Software Asset Management helped us to reduce software expenses by identifying and reclaiming unused licenses. For example, optimization of our Microsoft subscriptions has saved us a potential $74,000 a year.”

As well as achieving impressive business metrics, Telkomsel has gained control of its software estate. For example, the IT team uses the solution to manage service continuity for critical applications by ensuring licenses are renewed, and to track and blacklist unsecured software. With full visibility of equipment and software, Telkomsel can delete applications with poor security standards, prevent malware, remove network scanning tools, and mitigate business risk.

In addition, the information presented by Snow SAM enables Telkomsel to monitor consumption of applications, allowing optimization of metered licensing contracts, and to use that data to plan license renewals and contract negotiations.

Torang Hasudungan Sitorus concludes, “Software Asset Management (SAM) from Snow has improved audit compliance and risk avoidance, enhanced security compliance, and cut software license costs. As part of our drive to operational efficiency and excellence, Snow SAM optimizes software management across the entire organization, and helps Telkomsel deliver a great user experience to employees, stakeholders, and customers.”