European Rail Agency

Vision

Moving to Enterprise Agreements reduced complexity

An efficient rail system is vital to modern society, and our client, a European rail agency, are responsible for the management of the national railway network infrastructure. This includes the maintenance and expansion of the existing network, as well as the allocation of rail capacity and traffic control.

Their IT network is critical to the seamless operation of services, and four years ago we won a public tender to provide networking product and maintenance services to the agency.

As use of the rail network increased, so too do the demands on the network, requiring them to ensure that they’re able to take advantage of the latest innovations. But to do this cost-effectively meant that they needed to change the way they approached licensing.

Like many other organizations, they needed to change the way they managed their licenses, moving towards a Smart Licensing model. With Cisco introducing the delivery of licenses through a centralized Smart Account, they recognized the opportunity to gain greater visibility into the management and usage of this asset.

While the move to Smart Licensing created opportunities for them, they needed to bring their existing licenses, which weren’t centrally managed, into the system to ensure maximum benefit.

With no overview of all existing licenses and no view of the roles and rights for personnel they needed to find a way forward.

Transformation

A consulting-led approach to create a roadmap for the future

As their networking partner, providing all their Cisco equipment, they looked towards us to enable this transition.

The challenge was that their current environment was siloed, with individual divisions procuring and managing licenses separately.

As part of the process to unify their license management, we embarked on a comprehensive program to provide them with a full view of their ‘as-is’ state and create a roadmap to get them to their desired ‘to-be’ state.

This program contained assessment, project and management phases. As part of the assessment phase, we created a Software License Management Assessment (SLMA) to identify and catalogue all licenses across the entire organization.

As part of the assessment, we provided a full analysis of their licensing landscape, as well as detailed recommendations on how to optimize this to ensure maximum efficiency in the future.

Together we embarked on the project phase to implement the recommendations of the assessment, centralizing the management of the licenses through a Digital Wallet.

Once this was complete, they handed over management of the licensing environment to our team as part of a managed license service, based on the capability of our Software-defined Infrastructure Lifecycle Services.

Results

A managed software license solution for complete ease of mind

Our managed license service provides them with full control, flexibility and visibility of their Cisco software licenses in both their operational and procurement environments. This enables them to ensure that as they evolve their environment, they can do this in the most cost-effective manner.

Optimized license renewal process

With complete visibility of their licensing environment, there’s no risk of the expiration or a shortage of licenses impacting on the operational efficiency of the network.

Streamlined administration

They now have an up-to-date overview of all activated licenses, ensuring that there’s no unnecessary investment on licenses, while also minimizing ad hoc expenses.

Optimizing licensing through vendor partnerships

With our strong partnership with Cisco, we understand the nuances of their licensing policies, allowing us to ensure that they maximize their cost savings through Enterprise Agreements and specific licensing programs.

Clear view of future requirements

Our managed license service allows them to accurately budget for their entire networking environment, optimizing their licenses to deliver maximum efficiency.