Multinational Financial Software Organisation

Introduction

The client was a multinational financial software company, based in London, but with offices all over the world, including North America, Europe and Asia.

At the start of the engagement the client was a year away from the renewal of its core Red Hat Enterprise Agreement and was looking to reduce costs as much as possible, as well as centralise management and control of all Red Hat software purchases within the global procurement team.

Their Challenges

The client had several challenges to overcome for this review:

• There was no central management of software subscriptions, with different global business units self-managing their own, making it more challenging to pull data on entitlements together.
• There was limited central discovery available with regards to software deployment, which led to significant gaps being identified in their data coverage.
• There were many stakeholders that needed to be engaged to pull together entitlement and deployment data for the license position before their renewal.

Their Objectives

The client’s objectives were:

• A clear Red Hat license position, ensuring full visibility of all usage globally.
• Strategies to optimise and reduce costs as much as possible.
• An understanding of future agreement options.

bedigital’s Solution

We followed our standard ELP process for Red Hat, which involves these key stages  :

• Initial advice to the client on what data would be required and how to collect it.
• Contract, entitlement and deployment data analysis.
• Risk identification and mitigation.
• Identification of opportunities to optimise spend and how to achieve them.

How bedigital Delivered

The early stages of the engagement focused on understanding what data was available and identifying the best tools to gather it. It quickly became clear that the client had limited central inventory beyond a CMDB (Configuration Management Database).

We worked closely with stakeholders across the business to support data collection and identify the most effective approach. Ultimately, we used Red Hat Discovery alongside various Red Hat Customer Portals to meet most of the requirements. Combined with JBoss discovery scripts we provided and internal data templates, this enabled efficient collection of the required data.

After producing an initial draft ELP, we reviewed anomalies with the client’s technical stakeholders to validate our interpretation of the data and build a complete picture of the client’s Red Hat roadmap.

This process uncovered a significant risk caused by a misunderstanding of Red Hat subscription rules, which we helped reduce to approximately 10% of its original scale. We also identified opportunities to optimise unused subscriptions and improve visibility across the client’s Red Hat estate. After offsetting the remaining risk, this still resulted in annual savings of nearly £750,000

Challenges Overcome

There were several challenges to overcome during the project:

• The lack of central management of entitlement and deployment meant we had to work with procurement professionals from various business units and technical stakeholders from multiple different application platforms using Red Hat software to fully gather the data.
• As the client was such a large and diverse organisation, there was a delay to the project whilst appropriate access and permission was sought to roll out the Red Hat Discovery toolset. We supported the client every step of the way with this task.

Outcomes

• The client was certain of their compliance with Red Hat subscription terms, thanks to the work bedigital did to give them that confidence.
• The client was left with a view of what its best choice was for a renewed agreement, after our analysis of the agreement options open to them.

Benefits

• The client was made aware of a significant risk, about which it had not been previously aware, and was left with clear guidance on how to prevent such a risk re-occurring.
• We enabled the client to save nearly £750,000 per year on a renewed agreement by giving them clarity on what subscriptions were in use and where.

Testimonial

I want to express my sincere appreciation for your outstanding work throughout this engagement. Your dedication, professionalism, and collaborative spirit made a real difference – especially given how complex and lengthy this journey has been. It was truly a pleasure working with you.” – The client’s Global Director of IT Sourcing

Conclusion

As with all software vendor renewals, there are time pressures and challenges to overcome.  We created a plan at the beginning of the project and stuck to it, despite encountering some obstacles, to ensure the client achieved a beneficial agreement renewal with Red Hat.

*Sample list of Red Hat products in scope

Below is a sample list of the products that were included in the scope of the project:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server with Satellite
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Virtual Datacentres with Satellite
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extended Lifecycle Support
• Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
• Red Hat JBoss Web Server
• Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
• Red Hat Virtualisation Manager