• 3684-mid-218.html MetrixData 360 | Top Audit Management Consulting Company-2019

    MetrixData 360
    Making SoftwareLicensing More Cost-Effective
    MetrixData 360

    Mike Austin, Director, MetrixData 360Mike Austin, Director
    Organizations are always tasked with the burden of doing more with less. IT departments are under tremendous amounts of pressure to reduce spending during software procurement. To top it off, software licensing agreements are increasingly becoming more complex, adding to a software asset manager’s nightmare. While a robust software asset management (SAM) practice can help mitigate such challenges, organizations realize that the resources, tools, and processes required for such an undertaking is enormous. Specialized in negotiating software license contracts and defending companies through software audits, MetrixData 360, a licensing expert consulting firm, ensures the proper implementation of an individualized and optimized SAM practice, specifically tailored to their clients’ unique requirements.

    In an interview with CIO Applications, Mike Austin, director of MetrixData 360, talks about the factors that led to the company’s inception, its SAM services, and their plans for the future.

    Can you provide us with a brief overview of the company?

    Before MetrixData 360 was established, I worked in Microsoft, along with many of our existing team members who held various software licensing roles. During that time, I realized most companies did not have a concise picture of their software assets due to the sheer complexity of licensing. Often, we discover that our clients are over-buying software licenses to mitigate the risks of non-compliance or under-buying, which means a higher chance of fines during an audit. MetrixData 360 was established to help such companies structure and negotiate their software agreements in the most optimized manner and ensure that they are buying what they need and not what the software publisher is trying to sell. To achieve this, we follow a very data-centric approach. Using proprietary tools developed in-house to organize and analyze data in a fraction of the time that other providers can do, we use the data from software inventory and deployments and pay a keen interest to a company’s roadmap to help them gain a better understanding of their software contracts and licensing agreements. This helps companies in cutting software costs by mitigating compliance exposure. Offering a clear, concise and easy to understand context if data inventory is what we specialize in! Giving expert advice to our clients on how to leverage this information is our norm.

    MetrixData 360 simplifies data from software inventory, contracts, and technical roadmaps to help put money back into your IT Budget


    Alongside SAM services, we also offer software auditing assistance. MetrixData 360 has been involved directly (sometimes even in court) in defending companies through hundreds of audits by countless software publishers, including Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and IBM. Our team of SAM professionals has extensive experience in understanding the data that companies are obligated to provide during an audit. Often, auditors take the most conservative view of a company’s licensing data to present the most-costly way to compensate for non-compliance as this generates revenue for the software publisher. However, MetrixData 360 closely mirrors the auditor’s process and develops a tactical defense against any non-compliance issue. In the event of an actual compliance gap being uncovered, we negotiate with auditors to minimize any unbudgeted financial impact to your organization.

    Please elaborate some ofthe services offered by MetrixData 360?

    MetrixData 360 offers three primary services that have been developed as a result of numerous engagements with various companies.

    Firstly we have our software contract negotiation service aims to help clients save money while preserving and growing their relationship with a software publisher as a strategic partner. It’s a delicate balance. Negotiating better rates and irritating providers.

    Next, we also have a service designed to assist companies that are facing a software audit. While preparing for a software audit, we conduct a self-assessment that mimics the same processes followed by each software publisher during a formal audit. Each self-assessment reveals some grey areas where the rules around fair use are not clearly defined. During an official audit, these grey areas are used in a manner that benefits software publishers. As such, we document how exactly a software is being used and provide explanations based on our interpretation of the rules to help a company during an actual audit.

    Above all, we offer managed SAM services to eliminate the (technical) challenges associated with managing complex software environments for an organization.

    What is the methodology that you follow when engaging with a client?

    MetrixData 360 functions as an actual extension of a client’s team. Our approach to SAM is relatively straight forward and involves three steps.

    Beginning with the discovery process, we configure the most effective SAM tool for that client’s environment (we’ve worked with every SAM tool out there and are able to discern that easily) to collect only relevant deployment data for each publisher. This includes deployments on both physical and virtual machines, including cloud-based instances. After the data is gathered, the next step is analysis aimed at minimizing a client’s continued investment in software while ensuring that compliance is maintained. MetrixData 360 also monitors the usage of software to ensure that any bundled software that has been purchased is fully utilized. The final phase is negotiation, wherein the case of an audit, our clients always receives a favorable settlement.

    Can you share a case study where you helped a client resolve their SAM related issues?

    In the face of potential audit or contract renewal activities, MetrixData 360 ensures that clients have total certainty in their effective license position. Among several client engagements, one interesting case comes to mind. This client had about 5000 employees, but the data that had been pulled by the auditors supported licensing costs for 15000 employees, which was completely inaccurate. The auditors came up with numerous excuses to explain the discrepancy. They claimed that the company must have many contractors on its payroll. During MetrixData 360’s in-depth research of the data discrepancy, we found that an employee’s first name and last name was being treated as belonging to two separate individuals. MetrixData 360 was able to prove this error to the auditors, and through our evaluation, we also found several other instances of licenses applied in-optimally. This resulted in even more savings for our client.

    How do you perceive the road ahead for your company?

    We are not an organization that caters to thousands of companies. We remain committed to a relatively small number of clients. While we plan to expand our geographical reach and service offerings, we will continue to adhere to the same approach. Currently, we are focused on solving the challenges of understanding the usage patterns for workloads and applications being moved to the cloud. In addition to those efforts, we have plans to launch a product that identifies third-party applications in client environments, which will serve the same functions as that of the applications present in the Microsoft 365 bundles. This product will help in application rationalization and ensure that a company’s software procurement costs are kept to a minimum. With so many constantly changing rules and contractual obligations that go along with software licensing, we intend to offer the best ways to optimize deployments while ensuring minimal compliance risk and exposure.

    - Joe Phillip
        October 07, 2019