NIRAS is one of CapaSystems “old” customers and has been using CapaInstaller since 2005. And there is a good reason why they keep using this tool.
NIRAS is a Danish engineering company that has been behind some of the most ambitious building projects in Denmark. These include Fields in Copenhagen, the Storcenteret in Kolding and Musikhuset in Aarhus. The company has approx. 1,400 employees and offices in more than 20 countries.
DKK 300,000 Saved on Licenses
For the IT department at the engineering consulting company, NIRAS, a comprehensive view of the company’s software is a must when managing approximately 5,000 units in seven countries. The possibility of creating such a comprehensive view was an important factor when deciding to use CapaInstaller from CapaSystems
With that many units linked to the company, there are also many licenses for various services. As company licenses are often purchased in large quantities, many licenses mean large expenses. NIRAS uses CapaInstaller to save money. Lots of money.
NIRAS uses CapaInstaller to monitor the company’s active and passive licenses.
A software advisor from Gartner estimates that service companies can save up to 30% on licenses by canceling passive licenses. That is a lot of money to save.
“If some software hasn’t been used after 60 days, the license will automatically be cancelled. That contributes to trim the fat from the machinery while keeping down the number of active licenses. When we started using CapaInstaller in 2005, we cut DKK 300,000 in unused licenses. That’s not to be sneezed at,” says Søren Dahl Nielsen, System Deployment Manager at NIRAS.
However, it is rarely with bad intentions that the employees have unused software licenses. Most often, it’s simply because the employees don’t think of the fact that software is linked to licenses that cost money. With a busy schedule, going through the programs on the work computer is therefore far from their first priority.
“The price, compared to the efficiency we were offered, made CapaSystems a winner.”
Søren Dahl Nielsen
System Deployment Manager, NIRAS
Software Catalogs Offer the Employee More Freedom
Savings on licenses are obviously significant to a company the size of NIRAS. However, the employees’ lack of focus on software may also be a threat to the company’s security.
Employees typically don‘t spend time on software updates. Updates often become a source of irritation. At NIRAS’ IT department, Søren Dahl Nielsen and his colleagues therefore use CapaSystems’ solutions to give the end user an understanding of the updates available.
‘We use the software catalogue to push the software updates out to our end users. We leave the timing for the update up to the users as long as they meet the deadline that the IT department yet has set’, says Søren Dahl Nielsen.
Test Run Before Roll-Out
To many IT departments, system updates are among the most important precautionary measures, but how can you be sure that the updates that are rolled out to the users do in fact work?
NIRAS has the possibility of testing all upcoming updates to beat any issues. The IT department therefore knows that the update will cause no issues once it‘s rolled out to the users.
Being proactive in security updates is a huge advantage. If the support department already knows of potential challenges for the updates from the rest run, NIRAS can have solutions ready. That makes work easier for the support department as well as for the users receiving the support.
‘One of the benefits of the solutions we use is being able to send updates to a test group. We are able to run it in a test version before using it in the production. We can therefore make sure that what we send out does in fact work,’ says Søren Dahl Nielsen