Inetum
Complete visibility of the total number of users and accurate licensing reporting.
Background
Inetum-Realdolmen is a Belgium IT services company that provides a wide range of solutions – including application development, infrastructure, and operational services – to a wide spectrum of verticals ranging from government and health, to insurance and industry. It operates in more than 26 countries, with nearly 27,000 employees.
As a Cloud Service Provider, Inetum-Realdolmen is using Microsoft SPLA licensing for RDS, Exchange Clients, Office, SQL and Dynamics.
Main challenges
Before using Octopus Cloud, Inetum-Realdomen reported licenses by checking the actual servers and manually tracking them with an excel file so they could submit a SPLA report. The main goal was to report these licensing correctly to ensure they were being compliant with complex SPLA licensing rules.
The company needed to report on the correct number of total users and needed to know who had admin rights within the organization. However, this was near impossible as it was extremely difficult to monitor who had installed new software over a given period. In a worst-case scenario using the manual approach, an incorrect number of licenses could be reported and invoiced to the customer.
Our solutions
Using our AI-enabled Cloud View tool, we provided Inetum-Realdomen with a clear overview of what software was installed on the servers located on our cloud infrastructure. This allows them to remain compliant by invoicing all licenses based on actual usage. Our tool also makes things much easier by automating the process which means efficiency is improved and less time needs to be spent on manual licensing sanity checks.
Octopus Cloud actively uses the Microsoft SPLA rules (different to some other licensing tools) to achieve compliancy with license rules. We find the best license type, which allows you to get the most out of the licenses, at the lowest possible price. Inetum-Realdomen has been using Octopus Cloud since 2018 and appreciate the fast and helpful technical and licensing service.
“We reduced the follow-up needed for our licenses by as much as 75%.”
Final outcome
The client now gets correct and up-to-date information on what has been installed. This allows for a transparent and compliant overview of all licenses so that invoicing and reporting for end-customers becomes a much easier task.
With Octopus Cloud, Inetum-Realdomen achieved their goal of making reporting easier by being able to see everything on one screen. They use Cloud View once a month for the monthly reporting and invoicing, without any specialist skills or needing to be a technical wizard.
“With Octopus Cloud we are getting a correct overview of the licenses needed to cover the software installed. This results in compliant usage and correct invoicing towards Microsoft and our customers.”
