Decoding SaaS Best Practices and Cloud Infrastructure Optimization

All types of organizations today utilize myriad software for different purposes. Employees are empowered to subscribe to any software necessary for their work. Managing the organization’s Software Licensing Process is a stressful job for the CTO of the company. What blueprint should a CTO/CIO follow to make this process painless?

The biggest problem with SaaS management is that although the traditional on-premise software was brought in by the CIO and pushed down on the organization, the modern buying approach is that employees and department heads are self-provisioning. The cat is out of the proverbial bag and there’s no putting it back in.

When I meet with IT leaders, the first thing we accomplish is acceptance around the new buying model and with that acceptance, a realization that a different approach is warranted.

Generally, I recommend a few specific action items:

1. Implement a process or system to track which applications are available at the organization and who the appropriate contact is to gain access to each of those systems. Employees self-provision because they’re in a hurry to get their job done. If provisioning through company-approved channels is easy and fast, employees are more likely to follow policy.

2. Coordinate an all-hands webinar or even just an email to the entire company from the CIO. Use this platform as an opportunity to educate the workforce on the dangers of shadow IT, along with the impact that self-provisioning can have on the profitability of the company. Employees are mostly good citizens who want the company to succeed, so treat them like adults, and arm them with honest rationale and explanation of the challenges around the new buying modality.

3. Finally, begin monitoring who’s buying all of that software. You’ll inevitably find that your organization has some big spenders and you’ll also likely find opportunities to consolidate scattered accounts into an enterprise license, which will save the company money, and increase security. By letting employees know that you have a system in place and that you’re watching their spend, they’ll be more cautious about their software purchasing decisions.

CTO/CIOs have to report IT expenditure, and IT asset optimization to the Board. What are some of the best practices that CTOs can deploy in their organization to ensure that the software assets of the company are utilized optimally?

Great question! Monitor, monitor, monitor! Optimizing SaaS is different than optimizing on-premise software. With SaaS, you need to begin measuring and monitoring usage months before you can begin to realize the optimization opportunities. It’s a bit silly, but I like the analogy of trying to know when a turkey in the oven is done. First, you insert the thermometer, and then you wait. If you need to know the temperature but you haven’t yet inserted the thermometer, you’re already too late. The same goes for optimization, you have to start the process of measuring and monitoring before you need to make optimization decisions.

As companies have begun shifting their critical systems to the cloud, a two-step approach is best:

1. Implement single-sign-on and enforce it

2. Implement a SaaS management and optimization tool

Together, these tools allow you to secure, measure, optimize and manage your SaaS stack in the same way that you’d expect to manage your network and on-premise software stack. The earlier in the cloud transformation journey that you do these things, the sooner you’ll be able to check the box on security and spend as it relates to SaaS.

Organizations are working across several different software platforms that require to be “patched-up” for a seamless workflow. What are some crucial factors that CTOs should bear in mind when using Software Patches?

The utilization of ‘best of breed’ IT products for areas like Service Management, Software & Hardware Asset Management, Enterprise Architecture, IT Financial Management, etc. have long been an industry trend. For each business area, this provides deep functionality and capability but often results in duplication of data, inconsistency in nomenclature, and inability to drive business value across these verticals.

The key to realizing the full benefits of cross product integrations is a central data repository, or ‘single language’ . Using this across all IT areas allows for consistent and clear communication, easy integrations and enables substantial business outcomes. For example, if a SAM and Enterprise Architecture tool speak the same ‘language’ when describing IT hardware and software, an organization can easily apply their defined software white/blacklist (Enterprise Architecture) to the IT Software inventory (SAM) to determine if an unauthorized software is deployed on mission-critical servers.

Cloud computing is now a part of most organizations. How can a CTO ensure that the integrity and safety of data are maintained while using cloud computing?

What are the top 3-5 best practices to keep in mind?Data security is a key challenge for all organizations in today’s world. Storing data in the cloud and running applications in the cloud that access organizational data, are both potential security risks as the number of unauthorized users who could attempt to access the data is very large. The most important practice to implement to minimize risk is secure access control. Most security breaches in data stored in the cloud have been through infiltration of login ids and passwords, not through direct access to data stored in offsite datacenters.

Organizations should implement strong single sign-on capabilities with multi-factor authentication. Single sign-on abstracts the password from the consuming application while minimizing the end user challenge of having to maintain multiple high-security passwords for the many applications they must use daily. Multi-factor authentication provides an additional layer of security by requiring the user to validate themselves through a secondary source (i.e., cell phone text, email, etc.).

In continuation of the above question, a lot of times, most of the organization’s cloud infrastructure remains underutilized. What steps should a CTO take to optimize the organization’s cloud infrastructure capabilities?

As organizations move more of their IT infrastructure to the cloud, the benefits of fast uptime, dynamic sizing and flexible spend options can be outweighed by the proliferation of little-used cloud instances which incur an unintended expense. Proactive control and ongoing analysis of cloud infrastructure use is critical to optimize cloud spend. This includes a defined, though fast process to bring up new cloud instances, an ongoing review of usage, and a mechanism to remove unused instances and right-size underused instances.

Flexera recently acquired Meta SaaS. Tell us a little about this merger and how it will enrich Flexera’s IT services/solutions portfolio.

The SaaS management space itself is less than two years old and Meta SaaS was the clear early leader in that space, having both the strongest market presence and the most advanced, mature technology. The Meta SaaS focus on reimagining how SaaS is bought, managed and secured aligned directly with Flexera’s mission of changing how software is bought, sold, managed and secured. The entire Meta SaaS team has joined Flexera and we are all confident that we’re better together.

Flexera has a broad reach in the marketplace and between Flexera’s Data Platform, Security & Vulnerability Management solutions, and our Software License Optimization’s FlexNet Manager Suite, we provide buyers with a single vendor for managing their software assets. Adding SaaS management was a natural extension of our capabilities, and we’re excited to provide a combined breadth of value that no other vendor can match.

Through partnership, acquisition and in-house product development, Flexera is focused on remaining the market leader for all software and cloud management capabilities.

What’s coming up that you’re excited about in two areas: in the market in general—perhaps a trend or tool; and within Flexera — any new features or upcoming innovations?

APIs have become more and more important to the cloud ecosystem. These APIs create some of the problems we solve, but generally, APIs are a driver of innovation. I’m excited to watch the APIs for enterprise level applications evolve and grow.

As for Flexera, and SaaS Manager, in particular, we have some exciting capabilities coming out in the next few months that will further cement our leadership in the space. I wish I could share them with you here, but they’re not public yet.

Thank you for a riveting discussion, Arlo. We hope to talk with you again, soon!

About Flexera

Flexera is reimagining the way software is bought, sold, managed and secured. We view the software industry as a supply chain and make the business of buying and selling software and technology asset data more profitable, secure, and effective. Our Monetization and Security solutions help software sellers transform their business models, grow recurring revenues and minimize open source risk. Our Vulnerability and Software Asset Management (SAM) solutions strip waste and unpredictability out of procuring software, helping companies buy only the software and cloud services they need, manage what they have, and reduce compliance and security risk.

Powering these solutions and the entire software supply chain, Flexera has built the world’s largest and most comprehensive repository of market intelligence on technology assets. In business for 30+ years, our 1200+ employees are passionate about helping our 80,000+ customers generate millions in ROI every year. Visit us at www.flexera.com