FEATURE : 2022 : THE CIO ’ S PRIORITIES
track usage , but it puts you at a disadvantage at audit time and when it ’ s time to negotiate price .
A comprehensive Software Asset Management ( SAM ) programme goes beyond cost reduction to help optimise your software licensing expenses . Automated calculation of consumption costs and license optimisation , for example , are far more effective than guesswork .
Control SaaS costs within your organisation
How many SaaS applications has your organisation subscribed to ? Hundreds ? Thousands ? Widespread adoption of SaaS is likely changing the makeup of your software portfolio , perhaps without much oversight . If those subscriptions are spread across cost centres and employees , you ’ re missing opportunities to control your costs and to protect the organisation from vulnerabilities .
Gartner predicts that worldwide public cloud services end-user spending on SaaS is set to jump from US $ 102,798 million in 2020 to US $ 145,377 million in 2022 . As SaaS grows in popularity and prevalence , so does the imperative to govern associated cost .
This may require centralising SaaS spend management ( rather than allowing business units to oversee it ) and optimising all modules you have with each vendor ( e . g with Salesforce , Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Salesforce App exchange ).
Remove guesswork from your cloud migration
Your business units are likely eager to take advantage of the multiple , robust cloud services available to them . But as you migrate interdependent workloads to the cloud – public , private or hybrid – keep tabs on costs , along with workload placement and prioritisation .
Applications can struggle or fail in a new cloud environment . This happens when the way in which the application and its complex interdependencies fit in a cloud aren ’ t understood well . It can also happen when relationships with other applications in your portfolio aren ’ t tracked and accommodated .
By having a well-defined strategy for migrating data and workloads to the cloud , supported by accurate dependency mapping , you can ensure that your migration is efficient and that you understand costs before embarking on the effort . This helps not only the initial move , but ongoing cloud plans .
Optimise your cloud costs
Significant expenses come with cloud migration and use . That ’ s why a focused effort on cloud cost optimisation is vital . To optimise your cloud costs , track cloud spend across all resource types and across all cloud providers . This will help you negotiate provider discounts ( such as reserved instances , spot instances and savings plans ) and allocate discounts appropriately to the accounts that use them . When they ’ re tracked accurately , you ’ ll have the ability to subdivide your cloud bill ( s ) across multiple dimensions , including provider account , cost centre , application or individual user .
Maximise your ITSM and ITFM investments
When you invest in IT Service Management ( ITSM ) and IT Financial Management ( ITFM ) solutions , it ’ s
44 INTELLIGENTCIO EUROPE www . intelligentcio . com