ITX360 - IT Cost Optimization

• Perform initial scoping to identify  best candidates of IT spend to focus on. 
• Scope may be limited to certain areas of IT spend or be “full scope” to include all IT spend. 

• Quantify and allocate all IT spend for in-scope areas.
• Calculate TCO for each area of spend.

• Calculate estimated ROI.
• Assess relevant factors like alignment with need, usage, requirements, user satisfaction, etc.
• Calculate Spend Quality Score (SQS). Assess and score applicable criteria on objective and subjective criteria.
• Determine dependencies between different areas of spend.

• Deliver optimization recommendations and document cost reduction initiatives.
• Score and rank initiatives and recommendations based on applicable criteria, including potential benefits, initiative cost, potential “hard savings”, potential “soft savings”, upstream/downstream impacts, time requirement, business impact, and other factors.

We engaged with a major public-sector to assist with cloud procurement planning and software license compliance.

• We scanned their existing on-premise environment and modeled migration options with target pricing for major cloud vendors. We reduced the initial quote of $800k+ to a final procurement below $250k, saving our client over $550k in 1 years’ worth of cloud services.
• We identified over $175k of unused annual software support spend that client could unilaterally drop in the next round of renewals. 
• Advised on key cloud contract terms and negotiation.
• Performed a rapid self-audit and identified over $650k in license compliance gaps. Subsequently, we assisted our client with the license remediation.

The VP of IT at a major retail chain requested assistance with workload consolidation, license usage assessment, and net-new software license procurement for Oracle and Microsoft products. We rapidly engaged and assisted with the following:

• Performed a rapid deployment and utilization scan of the client’s IT landscape, including deployments in AIX/LPARs, VMware, physical on-premise, and cloud.
• We analyzed and advised on VMware workload consolidation, and repurposing of existing unused hardware to balance additional compute needs with unused hardware, while reducing software license requirements.
• We also analyzed non-VMware workloads and advised on cost saving consolidations that helped reduce required software procurement, while better leveraging existing hardware resources (like AIX CPU pool resources).
• We reduced the overall net-new procurement in hardware down to $0, and reduced Oracle and Microsoft procurement needs by a total of $1.1M.
• We identified license compliance gaps of over $1.7M and then assisted with remediation and validation.

A Fortune 500 client approached us for support during a software vendor audit support. We engaged rapidly and directly with the vendor auditors to manage the audit and minimize the total resolution cost. Our support included:

• Performing a rapid self-audit and identified over $13.5M in compliance gaps. Subsequently, we assisted with validation to ensure that the residual procurement was minimized. We worked with the auditors towards audit closure that was acceptable to all parties.
• Worked with several different technical teams to present a coordinated response to the auditors.
• Assessed software deployments in AWS and the corresponding licensing impact, in light of the vendor’s contracts and cloud licensing policy.
• Advised client on go-forward compliance management.