By Sanjay Castelino | July 01, 2021
This week at Snow, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of Snow Atlas, the first cloud-native platform built from the ground up to provide technology intelligence as a service. At its core, the introduction of Snow Atlas is about empowering our customers to more efficiently and effectively address challenges in the changing IT landscape, from technology sprawl and cloud shift to the growing hybrid work environment.
As Vishal, Snow’s President and CEO recently shared, the release of Snow Atlas represents a significant milestone for Snow and a launching pad for future technology innovations. The new platform, available now in early access, will allow us to address changing market forces more quickly and respond to trends impacting customers and partners with cutting-edge technology solutions.
Let’s take a closer look at Snow Atlas to see how it was built and how it can help you.
What is Snow Atlas?
The vision behind Snow Atlas is to provide hybrid enterprises with the tools they need to discover, monitor and optimize their technology assets, both on-premises and in the cloud. That is the same vision we have for our offerings, but with Snow Atlas we will be able to provide you with a new delivery model as well as a more integrated roadmap across all technologies. The introduction of the platform is the next step in Snow’s journey to enable organizations to realize the full potential of technology intelligence.
3 ways Snow Atlas can help you with ITAM
The first solutions on Snow Atlas will be software asset management (SAM), SaaS management and ITSM integration delivered as a service. With SaaS deployment, Snow Atlas offers an easier way for you to discover, manage and optimize all of your IT assets.
1. Gain visibility into what technology is being used, and how. With SAM on Snow Atlas, you can gain visibility into blind spots in your technology environment such as desktop installs, datacenter activities and SaaS sprawl. Rather than relying on multiple point solutions, Snow provides an agent-based platform that gives organizations an accurate inventory of assets across the ecosystem. This visibility can provide a better understanding of your technology usage and spend, enabling you to make informed decisions around subscription levels, renewals or new digital initiatives.
2. Identify cost-reduction opportunities and optimize your environment. Once visibility is established, SAM on Snow Atlas recognizes and suggests remediation for some of the most challenging areas of wasted spend:
- Unused accounts
- Microsoft365
- Bring Your Own License (BYOL)
- Redundant applications
3. Protect company data and reduce risks. Leverage the value of holistic, accurate and timely technology asset data by sharing it with other systems and teams such as ITSM, security and more. Unavailable with any other IT operations management (ITOM) applications, SAM on Snow Atlas can provide you with visibility of all devices, users and applications along with a detailed account of which users have access to which applications and cloud services, and how they are used. Easily identify potential software vulnerabilities or which applications hold personal data to minimize cybersecurity and compliance risks.
Platform features and functionality
Snow Atlas is the foundation on which our new solutions will be delivered. Built on a microservices architecture and with standardized APIs, it offers a host of additional functionality and opportunities for innovation. Here are just a few of the things our customers will have access to with Snow Atlas.
SaaS portal
Snow Atlas has an easy-to-use dashboard highlighting focus areas to help users better navigate priority areas of interest as well as a unified view of cloud infrastructure, cloud applications, licenses overview, reports and user information.
Self-healing
One of the biggest challenges for IT administrators is ensuring that systems are running properly and remain available for their key stakeholders. Snow Atlas addresses this with self-healing technology that continually monitors the system to ensure uptime. When problems are discovered, they are automatically mitigated and the system availability is brought back online with no manual intervention required from IT teams.
User self-service
Snow Atlas provides IT teams with the freedom to move faster. Advanced administration and self-service capabilities empower admins to add new users and configure new accounts or organization structures without having to rely on a time-consuming request to consultants or technical resources.
Real-time agent creation
IT admins using Snow Atlas will be able to save time and effort with self-service capabilities to create, configure and deploy inventory agents. With the ability to create their own inventory agents, users will be able to utilize their normal internal software distribution channels and processes to deploy the agents. Additionally, users will be able to create, configure and deploy agents whenever they need them – whether they are adding more devices to monitor, updating to get the latest features or configuring new security procedures.
Future innovation
Snow has a 20-year history of adapting to new technologies whether that be the introduction of the cloud and software-as-a-service or the shifting complexity of the IT landscape. Snow Atlas positions us to continue that legacy. As new technologies such as containers, function as a service (FaaS) and IoT become more engrained in the everyday environments of enterprises, Snow Atlas provides a platform for future innovations – allowing additional flexibility as the landscape (and customer challenges) change.
Additional benefits of SaaS delivery
We developed Snow Atlas in the cloud with our first solutions available via a SaaS delivery model, which means you can always expect some of the following benefits:
- Easy to deploy and easy to maintain for faster time-to-value
- Futureproofed with automatic upgrades so you can access the latest features as soon as they are released
- A flexible consumption model, the ability to recognize costs as OpEx and alignment to your organization’s cloud goals
Delivering on our mission
At Snow, we strive to deliver long-term customer value by providing complete insight and manageability across all technology. We believe that IT leaders who are empowered with end-to-end visibility of their environments are better prepared to make strategic decisions for their organizations.
With the launch of our new platform, we’re doubling down on our commitment to helping IT teams optimize their entire technology landscape to strategically support their organizations today, and in the future.