Norce Achieves Real-Time, Right-Sized License Position with Xensam

The Customer  

The Norwegian Research Centre (Norce) is an independent research institute based in Bergen, with 800 employees across Norway. They research to facilitate informed and sustainable choices for the future, focusing on energy, health, climate, environment, society, and technology. 

Costly, Inaccurate and Inefficient: The Limitations of a Legacy SAM Tool 

With researchers spread geographically and a huge variety of applications, accurate license inventory is vital to Norce. Researchers use unique devices, software, and operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and Mac, which requires capabilities to distinguish when the same user accesses software on different devices to avoid duplicate license numbers. Their previous SAM tool generated an inaccurate licensing position, which caused their IT manager, Kjetil Knutsen, to do much manual work. 

“Our previous legacy tool was unusable. I had to reconcile the data manually using Excel to get the right license numbers.” 

Real-Time, Right-Sized License Position with Xensam  

Norce utilizes Xensam’s advanced software discovery to get greater visibility of their SaaS applications and reconcile their licensing position. The system supports the diverse operating systems across their environment to create an real-time, accurate picture of users and licenses in use.  

“We see so much more with Xensam, especially previously unrecognized SaaS applications.” 

With their previous data, Norce knew that they would have problems in the event of a software license audit from a major vendor. Now, with an accurate license picture at hand, they have peace of mind in the event of an audit. 

Accurate Cost Allocation Across a Distributed IT Environment  

Norce has set up a highly specific organizational structure to map data accurately across the country, enabling them to associate costs with licenses by device and user. This data makes optimization decisions and reporting faster and enables license consolidation initiatives.  

“The Cost Center has been fantastic. Because of our unique organizational structure, it’s valuable to map costs accurately across departments and more granular sub-groups.”  

Actionable Data in Standard and Custom Reports 

With Xensam, Norce has reliable data at hand in minutes. Standard Reports give them insights on the metrics that matter most, from usage trend analyses to cost reports, vendor data, and license positions. Norce also uses Custom Reports to combine metrics for a unique picture of their IT environment.  

“We use Standard Reports a lot. They’re so much quicker. We also use a special report created by the support that maps device and software costs to all Azure AD users.”  

Increased Efficiencies and Fast Time to Value   

Norce has experienced giant leaps in efficiency with Xensam’s platform. The response times are fast, allowing them to quickly generate reports on various metrics.  

“The platform’s speed is one of the things I appreciate the most. It’s so responsive and has saved me a lot of time.” 

Rollout was also smooth, empowered by the knowledgeable assistance of Support Technicians.  

“Implementation was easy. It took 10 minutes to deploy all the agents across our IT environment. Xensam’s support has been incredible compared to our previous provider.”  

Conclusion  

Since implementing Xensam, Norce has gained control of their software environment with real-time, accurate data on licenses, users and usage. This enables them to manage compliance, plan consolidation efforts, and allocate costs correctly across their diverse organizational structure. With Xensam’s responsive system and extensive reports, they’ve increased efficiency across the board.