At a glance
Organization
Akbank
www.akbank.com
Industry
Finance/Banking
Key figures
16000 Employees
8500+ Windows and Unix servers
USU Solution
USU Software Asset Management Solution
Solution Partner
MOS Academy
The Challenge
Akbank is one of the largest banks in Turkey. Owing to its large IT infrastructure with 8,500+ Windows and Unix servers, the company has a portfolio of many different and costly licenses. It needed a solution to effectively inventory and manage these licenses and report its license usage.
Owing to its broad IT infrastructure environment, Akbank had been struggling with a very complex software license situation for some time. The Infrastructure Technology Department missed a clear visibility over its software estate and license usage and was not able to access consumption data.
Akbank identified a demand for detailed license reporting, the capability to effectively manage the software licenses of big software vendors, and to be prepared for software audits. In addition, current processes were cumbersome and very time-consuming.
A vendor’s license metrics can sometimes become complex. Our database software vendor has VPC and PVU metrics related with the products running on Unix systems. These types of license metrics were hard to maintain manually. It is not possible to manage an enterprise’s license inventory by manually checking contracts and maintaining data in Excel spreadsheets, which also need to be created manually. We saw this clearly during license renewals and budgeting
Neslihan Kop Özen, Infrastructure Technologies Department, Akbank
The solution
Akbank was searching for a SAM solution that is scalable, flexible in terms of customization, cost-effective, and that also had a straightforward user interface. The company reviewed different SAM tool offerings and license management products, and also investigated Gartner Magic Quadrants for Software Asset Management solutions.
The bank chose USU Software Asset Management for USU’s long track record with established large customers and its global network of experienced local consulting partners, such as MOS Academy, who have successfully worked for clients of a similar size to Akbank.
After the USU Software Asset Management solution was up and running with Raynet scanning technologies, the Akbank IT team began to collect license data from 8,500+ Windows and Unix servers. After gathering and normalizing the necessary license data, the team continued with reporting processes involving all big vendors.
It was crucial for us to work with a solution that provided flexible execution based on end-user demand. Thanks to the USU Software Asset Management solution, we can now operate regular budget control and compliance reports in just a few clicks. On top of that, our IT team can take advantage of easy integration with other applications within the bank
Rabia Duduhacioglu, Infrastructure Technologies Department, Akbank
When Akbank started to check the discovery reports for the database vendor licenses, they noticed that the SAM solution did not detect the vendor software on Unix servers as expected. These software products are critical for Akbank employees, which is why correct license discoveries were of high importance. The cause of the problem was related to the software installation method. In their solution, USU engineers determined a specific method of discovering vendor licenses in accordance with the bank environment.
First, the Akbank IT team defined the domain users belonging to the project, who were then defined in the domains within Akbank. Second, the customer defined the authorization sets that the SAM tool could provide for these users. With this authorization setting, the customer was able to discover the necessary licenses through scanning. With this method, Akbank could complete the software license discovery for the first time ever, and today benefits from a wealth of data to discover and report licenses from big vendors.
Results
USU Software Asset Management made it possible to fully automate the collection of software inventory, thereby saving considerable time. Using flexible and automated inventory methods, Akbank gained high data quality and accuracy across its IT infrastructure in the shortest possible time.
The USU solution is subsequently helping to optimize licenses through enhanced product lifecycle management of major database software vendors.
“Akbank-SAM was a challenging project due to the variety of high-tech software products that are being used at the bank, also the bank’s information security policy and practices were quite strict. Thanks to USU’s flexible structure and solutions, we found an answer for every challenge. We, together with the customer are very happy with the results that we achieved as a team. Especially the customized license compliance reports we have produced are a clear milestone in terms of global SAM practices,” said Kerim Yüksel, Founder & Managing Director, MOS Academy.
Akbank can observe changes in license usage in almost real-time and exactly determine the need for new purchases. Now, the IT team can calculate a solid budget based on facts and manage the annual budget based on actual usage. Compliance risks or unexpected surprises during audits are a thing of the past.
About Akbank
Akbank T.A.Ş. was founded in 1948 and is one of the largest banks in Turkey. Listed on the Borsa Istanbul, its largest shareholders are members of the Sabancı family. Akbank offers vehicle loans, housing loans, consumer loans and commercial loans. In the "Brand Finance — Banking 500, 2018" report, it ranked as "The Most Valuable Banking Brand in Turkey" for the seventh time in a row. Akbank also achieved significant success with its ranking of 126th most valuable banking brand in the report, which lists the most valuable global banking brands.
About MOS Academy
Master of Service Academy is the leading SAM tool and service provider in Turkey, serving high-ranking telco and banking enterprises in the region, all thanks to the strong partnership and cooperation with USU. Alongside SAM, MOS has a successful reference set of implementation projects in the fields of enterprise architecture, IT service management and information security, which also helps to simplify complex IT asset management cases.
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