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, notwithstanding Cabinet’s 2016 endorsement to accelerate adoption. 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!
Several services are available in support of organisations migrating to, or already in, the Azure platform. They include:
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.