Credit: Data#3
Data#3 has set up a new Microsoft licensing solution for industrial and safety supplier J. Blackwood & Son via its consulting services unit.
The supplier used Data#3’s Technology Intelligence Solution to conduct a review of the way technology is used, with Blackwoods’ current technology tech usage mapped against its desired outcomes.
“The Data#3 team engaged with our in-house IT team and gathered a lot of data in a four-to-eight-week process,” said Blackwoods’ head of IT infrastructure and cloud services, Adam Barlow.
“They collected data about our environment, information about the current state, our future technology strategy and our business direction requirements. Then, the team went away and crunched data and came up with possible licensing models.
“There was a process of refining these models based on our review and input and we settled on the most viable option for us. This process enabled us to play out different scenarios and make decisions around the structure of a new agreement.”
The solution also provided the supplier with visibility of Microsoft licences, including those that were unused, which is expected to be useful for when the business faces a software audit.
The new licensing solution in place, is in addition to Blackwoods’ previous agreement, which saw it acquire Microsoft licences on behalf of a group of four business within the parent Wesfarmers Industrial and Safety (WIS) group.
However, the desire to establish more technology independence for Blackwoods compared to the other businesses, created some complexity with the allocation of sufficient licences for the supplier, according to Barlow.
“Exposure in the form of license compliance gap is a key risk, and without the right process, we also could be incurring costs for licensing that we may not be utilising to its fullest,” he said.
The decision to simplify the process came as Blackwoods was optimising its IT infrastructure services, modernising its end user compute fleet, moving over to Microsoft 365 and shifting from an old in-house developed enterprise resource planning program to Microsoft Dynamics 365.
“The environment looks completely different today to three years ago when the enterprise agreement was signed. All those changes must be factored in, as they have implications on our licensing needs,” Barlow said.
On top of the existing agreement everyone has their own allocation and there is more autonomy in how licences are leveraged, he added, with Data#3 playing “a big part in working through the reconciliation of licenses and getting the right agreements set up”.
Recently, Data#3 overhauled a vast array of legacy technology for the Australian Islamic College, providing a full digital transformation into Microsoft.
