Article All of Government: How Insight supports your journey to efficiency

With the cloud broadly mandated for government organisations, the question when renewing your infrastructure, services and applications is at the same time simple but important: Are you getting optimal value from your investments?

It is no secret that enterprise software licensing is complex. With the cloud now suitable for far more than software, and with licensing regimes extending to infrastructure, platforms, and more as a service, complexity in cloud optimisation is quickly magnified.

That is why, as All of Government contracts come up for renewal, there is an excellent opportunity for a health check of your progress on the journey to the Microsoft cloud, and be sure of value going forward.

The scale of cloud in the New Zealand government is, to put it mildly, staggering. In addition to your own organisation, there are around 150 others, with a total of around 200,000 seats.

Licensing at this scale costs taxpayers billions of dollars, while reciprocally providing them with value – after all, the Government needs the resources provided by Microsoft and other vendors in support of service delivery.

A good question at this juncture is, well, just exactly why is licensing so convoluted? With the ‘as a Service’ offerings associated with the cloud in general, and Microsoft Azure and solutions like Dynamics 365, the ‘granular’ nature of services allows customers to choose and use only those components necessary for their organisation.

So far, so good. But this is a double-edged sword, because while it implies efficient purchasing, it also means complexity is unavoidable especially at scale.

In practice, that means some organisations may very well purchase and provision services they do not need and never use. With the scale of All of Government, you know where this is going: failure to optimise even ‘small’ things quickly equates to ‘big’ costs.

Now, as you will appreciate, while government organisations fall under an umbrella of sorts, each one is at a different stage on the journey to the cloud. There are plenty of very good reasons for that, which we will not go into here; what is important is that Insight offers services designed to support progress wherever your organisation is presently at.

Across all our services, which are proven in multiple government agencies, the focus falls squarely on creating and optimising value, so you get the best bang for your buck.

Note that it isn’t about ‘shortchanging’ the vendor, and in fact the vendor prefers it when spend accurately matches requirements. After all, that’s why they made cloud services granular in the first place!

• Insight’s Microsoft Landscape Assessment is designed to help customers collect the information they need for their Microsoft True-up or Renewal with minimal business impact. This solution leverages Insight's licensing expertise to optimise Microsoft spend and provide a complete view of current Microsoft product deployments and licensing positions. With Insight's Microsoft Landscape Assessment, customers can save time, monitor and optimise costs, control business and legal risks, optimise hardware and software investments, and align IT with organisational goals.

• Microsoft Profiling Service is a service provided by Insight to help organisations identify and analyse user profiles and their needs for Microsoft licences. By understanding user profiles, organisations can map them to the appropriate online services, such as Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, Windows 10/11 Enterprise, Enterprise Mobility + Security, and Microsoft 365 Defender. This ensures that each user has access to the right tools and features they need to perform their tasks effectively and securely. Insight’s Microsoft Profiling Service also helps organisations evaluate their current usage of online services and identify any gaps or overlaps that might exist. By addressing these issues, organisations can optimise their Microsoft subscriptions and save money.

• Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI-powered tool that integrates with your business data and Microsoft 365 apps to help you work more efficiently and productively. Insight offers a 90-minute interactive session for NZ Government organizations to learn more about Microsoft 365 Copilot and Generative AI. The session includes a live demonstration, exploration of implementation considerations, and identification of use cases. Each session is unique and catered to your needs, providing a deeper understanding of Microsoft 365 Copilot, AI challenges and considerations, data and security factors, and immediate steps to prepare for implementation. With Insight's Microsoft 365 Copilot discover and envision session, you can unlock the power of AI to deliver exceptional employee and customer experiences with increased productivity, efficiency, and ROI.

• The Azure and M365 Heath check, is a discreet optimisation analysis of your environment, surfacing opportunities to optimise costs, resources and cloud functionality. The Health Check requires read-only access and is a secure means of uprooting hidden opportunities to right-size, optimise and enhance your M365 or Azure resource usage. To maximise the value on offer, the Health Check report contains both summary and deep-reaching insights – starting with a brief overview of findings and recommendations.

Several services are available in support of organisations migrating to, or already in, the Azure platform. They include:

• Experience Azure Migration in a Month for those looking to move – and leverage a partner that is cloud-native. Insight provides an end-to-end accelerated solution taking a client from envision right through to providing a Landing Zone and migration. All along the way guiding and helping implement best practice and a true understanding of what it means to move to cloud.’

• Azure Cloud Ready – Cost Management, Security and Governance Assessment for those that are there and are looking for an assessment to capture any business risks, issues and best practices aligned to Governance, Cost Control and Security within Azure. The report that Insight provide will detail a list of findings, recommendations and remediation actions that will give the customer a point in time reference for improvements across the Azure environments.

• Monthly Reporting for existing Azure Customers. this service, is focused on continual optimisation and improvement – wrapping findings up into a monthly report that includes potential financial savings along with any licensing implications/costs that may need to be considered. 

You might ask yet another simple question as you go into your contract renewal process.

Why Insight?

The answer is that we offer highly experienced licensing consultants with a proven track record of understanding your requirements and delivering optimal configurations not just for today, but into the future. Our unique value proposition a combination of Licensing Specialists with our Professional Services team who are proven in successfully delivering a Microsoft cloud-first strategy. Simply put, our local teams have the experience and capability to meet and deliver the strategic initiatives of your Government agency, whilst our national and global networks mean we scale as required.

This helps you take advantage of all that Microsoft has to offer in the cloud, which is valuable and applicable to you, while avoiding all that which is not relevant to your organisation. The result? Software investments optimised for ongoing value.

It’s time for Microsoft Licensing Renewal. Get Cloud Ready with Insight.