Flexera and Snow Software have announced a definitive agreement under which Flexera intends to acquire Snow.

Worldwide IT spending could reach $5.1 trillion in 2024, according to Gartner. It is estimated that up to 32% of this spend is wasted. Together, Flexera and Snow will provide deeper visibility and greater insights into the assets, technologies, terms of licensing and usage that comprise this spend and associated risks. Flexera and Snow will offer an expanded global footprint, a powerful strategic partner network and expanded IT Asset Management (ITAM), SaaS Management and FinOps capabilities. Customers will gain precise, detailed, and dynamic views into their technology blueprint to make strategic business decisions.

Snow Software is previewing Snow Copilot – the first-in-a-series of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities designed to solve large challenges in IT Asset Management (ITAM) and FinOps.

Developed in its innovation incubator Snow Labs, Snow Copilot is an AI assistant that empowers users to ask conversational questions and receive natural language responses, according to the company.

At release, Snow Copilot is available for Software Asset Management (SAM) computer data in Snow Atlas with more use cases being explored over time.

Snow Labs is a multiprong innovation initiative to help organizations make better decisions and deliver positive business outcomes with Technology Intelligence, or the ability to understand and manage all technology data, via Snow Atlas.

The current project focuses on using artificial intelligence to advance data insights and further explore ways to tackle multifaceted ITAM and FinOps challenges, the first offering powered by Snow AI, according to the company.

“We created Snow Labs as a space for rapid experimentation and prototyping, allowing us to test emerging technologies that sat outside of our standard product roadmap,” said Steve Tait, chief technology officer and EVP, research and development at Snow. “Artificial intelligence is a great example of a rapidly evolving, emerging technology that could allow Snow Labs to address a myriad of challenges our customers face when making sense of their technology asset data. We believe that AI will fundamentally transform the way our customers and partners interact with their data. This is just one of many ways we are working to bring our vision around Technology Intelligence to life through innovation.”

Snow Copilot, one of the first AI assistants developed to solve advanced challenges for ITAM and FinOps, leverages the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.

According to the company, it allows customers to input questions and receive insights on their computer data, such as “How many computers have been installed in the last 90 days?,” as well as explore “what if” scenarios all directly within Snow Atlas.

Snow Copilot reduces the need to export data into PowerBI or Excel to get insights into advanced questions on forecasting, asset allocation, and trend identification of SAM computer data. All data remains secure in the customer environment ensuring data privacy and integrity, according to the company.

Additional AI-enabled features within the Snow AI umbrella are under exploration for 2024, including:

IT leaders are grappling with anxiety over the risks of generative AI despite continued confidence in their software-as-a-service (SaaS) security posture, according to Snow Software.

96% of respondents indicated they were still ‘confident or very confident’ in their organization’s SaaS security measures, and yet, ‘managing the security of SaaS applications’ is the top challenge for IT leaders.