Businesses have long struggled with enterprise software rollouts and associated license management. The situation has grown extra complex as businesses seek to mix and match cloud software subscriptions, enterprise agreements, and other types of consumption models.
With those challenges in mind, Presidio Inc. -- the midmarket IT solutions provider -- has launched a dedicated software practice to help customers get their consumption strategies and associated costs under control. Matt Rehm, senior director of the new Software Solutions Practice, is leading the push.
The new practice surfaced just before this week's Cisco Partner Summit 2017. Presidio is a major Cisco, Dell EMC and VMware partner. The company's software effort is part of Presidio Illuminate bundle -- a new suite of services to help organizations more easily assess, adopt and benefit from subscription-based software, CTO Vinu Thomas says.
Illuminate includes expert consultation around enterprise agreements, lifecycle services, adoption services and customer support. The suite also features training components to ensure end users and the organization realize the full advantages of the selected software, Presidio asserts.
Runaway Software Costs: Client-Server to Cloud Services
Traditional client-service software projects -- involving ERP, CRM and other big engagements -- earned a reputation for runaway costs. The shift to cloud services was supposed to give customers far more predictable cost models. But it hasn't always worked out that way.
In fact, customers are increasingly worried about wasted cloud spend -- often involving unused SaaS user licenses, poorly optimized IaaS workloads and more. As a result, optimizing cloud costs is the top initiative across all cloud users (53 percent) and especially among mature cloud users (64 percent), according to RightScale's 2017 State of the Cloud Report.
The concerns appear legitimate. Respondents estimate 30 percent of cloud spend is wasted, while RightScale has measured actual waste between 30 and 45 percent, the report said.
Presidio's Software Knowhow
With customer needs in mind, Presidio is shifting the software cost management from a reactive discussion to a proactive strategy. And its far more than a cost-related discussion. The effort involves total lifecycle management to ensure strong user outcomes, the company says.
A few examples:
- During the software selection process, Presidio’s trusted advisors work with clients to compare best-of-breed software options against numerous factors, including big-picture strategic goals, existing assets, employee skill sets, workflows and key performance indicators, the company says.
- Among the pivotal steps in the adoption phase: Building excitement among users, developing training materials, tracking effectiveness and providing resources to support the ongoing production environment, Presidio adds.
Presidio doesn't disappear after the software is deployed. The company's Digital Solutions Group has developed a Cloud Concierge to track customer software usage and consumption analytics for solutions like WEBEX, among others.
Presidio's Evolution
Much like the overall IT market, Presidio has aggressively evolved beyond data center projects toward hybrid IT services, managed and cloud services in the midmarket. The company also ranks among the Top 100 Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs) for 2017, according to MSSP Alert, our sister site.
