AMREST an Effective Recipe for Robust Global License Management

AMREST An Effective Recipe for Robust Global License Management

COMPANY BACKGROUND

AmRest operates restaurants such as Burger King, Pizza Hut and Starbucks in Central Europe, Eastern Europe and as far afield as China. It uses numerous retail and business software applications – from point-of-sale to engineering and business software – to support more than 25,000 staff.

CHALLENGE

Without strong controls in place, license management was extremely painstaking. Obtaining the right information regarding licenses and entitlement involved analyzing a mass of data. With multiple audits from major vendors to manage, accurate discovery for an IT estate across a global operation was a prerequisite for ensuring the company was correctly licensed.

SNOW’S CONTRIBUTION

The Snow Platform, comprising Snow License Manager, Snow Inventory and Software Recognition Service, is installed on-premiseSnow enables the company to identify license risks and provides a platform for effective Software Asset Management.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• Accurate inventory and discovery giving full visibility and insight into actual license usage • Identification of more than €150,000 of unlicensed and unauthorized software • Optimization of licenses and significant cost reduction • Introduction of business unit charge backs for license costs • Creation of a white list of approved applications

SAM HERO

Pawel Szczepaniak, Software License Manager at AmRest, explains the benefits of devoting resource to strong license management. “In less than 12 months thanks to Snow, I have been able to transform how the company views license management. As a result, the need for a new role was created to focus specifically manage and optimize licenses across AmRest’s global operations.”

SNOWSOFTWARE.COM MANAGING EXPENSIVE SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS “Using Snow, we have identified

AmRest is the largest independent restaurant operator in more than €100,000 of unlicensed Central and Eastern Europe. Since 1993, it has built a portfolio and unauthorized software.” of well-known brands such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King and Starbucks based on franchise and joint venture partnerships. Pawel Szczepaniak, Software License In 2012, it acquired two brands operating in China, giving the Manager, AmRest company a truly global presence. meet its needs was Snow. It has the ability to provide AmRest Headquartered in Poland, Amrest operates an office in every with geographic coverage combined with powerful discovery, country where it trades. Office staff each have at least one inventory and normalization capabilities.” device and every restaurant has its own IT equipment. Globally, the company has 25,000 employees. Pawel Szczepaniak adds: “We did a Proof of Concept with the help of consultants from Snow. This confirmed that it would Pawel Szczepaniak, Software License Manager at AmRest, provide an efficient solution for our challenging requirements. says, “Our datacenter has 300 servers supporting our IT We felt Snow would also give us a stable platform for future IT infrastructure and virtualization is highly important. With a growth as well as facilitate strong license management.” worldwide operation, it is challenging to monitor and manage what gets installed onto local machines. Each time AmRest APPRECIATION FOR THE SOFTWARE RECOGNITION SERVICE acquires a company or opens a restaurant, we have to AmRest is using the on-premise version of Snow and Pawel is incorporate additional computers onto our network.” pleased with the functionality: “The reporting in Snow License COPING WITH A DIVERSE AND EXPANDING IT Manager 8 is powerful. We are going to start sending reports to our senior management every month as they provide the top INFRASTRUCTURE level visibility that they want to see. AmRest has to manage diverse license requirements from an ever-expanding IT infrastructure. “Historically, multiple people ”He adds: “However, my favorite part of Snow is the Software have been able to authorize the purchase of software and Recognition Service. SCCM provides details on the 50,000 without any tools in place to manage this process, we didn’t application types used on our estate but it was just a sea of have a good overview of our licensing position, ”Pawel explains. information. Software Recognition Service aggregates, cleanses “In one country, all users have local admin rights so there are and normalizes all software identified on our machines which effectively no restrictions on what can be installed. takes the effort out of recognizing and understanding what applications have been installed.” “This lack of transparency became a major issue. Also, it was REDUCED RISK OF LICENSE COMPLIANCE FAILURE important to make sense of our past usage and entitlement so that we would be well placed to sign a new Microsoft Enterprise Pawel has seen a number of business benefits from installing Agreement later this year. Snow. “I am confident that by using Snow, we will be correctly licensed for our major software vendors such as Microsoft, “Up until now we have relied on Microsoft SCCM but it could Oracle and SAP. AmRest now has far greater control over its IT only manage basic inventory tasks. We needed a solution that infrastructure. By installing Snow on each machine, we can even could work remotely and give us the ability to quickly obtain the inventory computers that have yet to be integrated into our license inventory before the new computers are integrated into corporate environment. our Active Directory.” “Using Snow, we have identified more than €100,000 of unlicensed CHOOSING THE BEST LICENSING PLATFORM and unauthorized software. By removing these applications, we AmRest turned to SoftwareONE, the global software licensing benefit from increased security and reduced risk of compliance experts, for advice. Pawel Kurylowicz Business Development failures. We discovered a further €50,000 of software for which Manager, SoftwareONE says: “We always suggest the solution we have now purchased the correct licenses.” that is best suited to manage the specific client environment. AmRest has complex global licensing and our analysis showed To ensure stronger controls, the company has created a white that the Software Asset Management solution best aligned to list of approved applications and a blacklist of software it is

SNOWSOFTWARE.COM “A key aspect of Snow is the ability operation has just bought 200 Microsoft Office Standard to help optimize licenses.” licenses but, at the time, had we had the visibility that Snow provides, we could have potentially transferred licenses from Pawel Szczepaniak, Software License our head office and saved the additional cost. Going forwards, Manager, AmRest Snow will also help with our future procurement requirements as we will be able to purchase only those licenses needed.” in the process of eradicating from its environment. Pawel is confident he can manage these processes from afar. “Even He adds: “We are planning to make extensive use of Snow’s though we are 6,500km from China, Snow enables us to control chargeback feature. This will enable us to accurately calculate the local license environment according to robust corporate and report on which businesses are using which software and policies.” how many licenses are required. Using this information, we will be able to recharge the individual business or country. This CONTINUALLY EXPANDING THE SCOPE OF SNOW will ultimately help us minimize what we spend on software There are a number of areas where AmRest is planning to licenses globally. embed Snow deeper into its software estate, as Pawel explains: “Once we have completed the process of preparing for our new “We are currently in the middle of an SAP audit. Once this is Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, we will look at licensing around complete, we will use Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software to Oracle’s Micros point-of-sale system. ensure we retain an optimized state through the year up until the next renewal. The ability to incrementally incorporate “A key aspect of Snow is the ability to help optimize licenses, software vendors is a key strength of the Snow platform. Our specifically transferring spare or under-utilized licenses to experience of working with Snow has been positive and the where they are most needed. For example, our Chinese support that we receive is professional and responsive.”

SNOWSOFTWARE.COM