We’re all becoming more adept at moving from one period of uncertainty to another. The pandemic seemed to halt us in our tracks, yet digital transformation picked up the pace to accommodate remote work and new business processes. Cloud spending increased during the pandemic as a great facilitator and yet despite bull markets taking an inflationary turn, there is no indication of slowing. In fact, in a press release, Gartner predicts a 20.7% increase in public cloud spending totaling $591.8 billion in 2023 (up from $490.3 billion in 2022).
“Current inflationary pressures and macroeconomic conditions are having a push and pull effect on cloud spending,” said Sid Nag, Vice President Analyst at Gartner. “Cloud computing will continue to be a bastion of safety and innovation, supporting growth during uncertain times due to its agile, elastic and scalable nature. Yet, organizations can only spend what they have. Cloud spending could decrease if overall IT budgets shrink, given that cloud continues to be the largest chunk of IT spend and proportionate budget growth.”
To proactively counteract inflationary pressures and stretch shrinking budgets, IT leaders would be well-served in ensuring that their existing cloud spending isn’t being wasted. Some experts suggest that approximately 30% of cloud resources are underutilized or inefficient. Before cutting budgets, it’s essential to understand an organization’s complete cloud environment, who is using what, and how best to reallocate resources to optimize your existing spend, adjust as indicated, and plan accordingly.
A holistic cloud view is required
Turning a smarter page to the new year begins with automation and data integrations across IaaS, UCaaS, and SaaS. By uncovering the deepest level of information, IT will be able to make the most immediate, informed, decisions and forecasts for cloud spending moving forward. A complete view sets the Tangoe One Cloud platform inpart because with the addition of our new SaaS offering, we offer the industry’s only full lifecycle, end-to-end cloud expense management solution across all domains.
From mid-size to global enterprises, multi-cloud environments are rapidly growing in size, scope, complexity, costs and security risks. That’s why Tangoe’s cloud expense management and optimization solution and support team are uniquely suited to help simplify, manage, and optimize cloud spending, subscription, and license usage on a single platform. Our new SaaS management solution especially dives deeper into authorized and Shadow IT discovery, usage analysis, and actionable insights to inform when to add licenses, reassign subscriptions and right-size cloud services to meet contracting and growing business requirements.
Tangoe prides itself on its complete platform for technology expense and lifecycle management – across cloud, mobile and fixed network connections specifically so our clients can make the most informed, day-to-day business decisions. Uncertainty breeds uncertainty. That’s why today’s IT leaders require intelligent information readily available at their fingertips especially when the CFO is looking for line items to cut. Having smart answers to hard questions can provide clarity and certainty and save the resources that keep your business humming in any event.
Automating cloud expense management
Analyzing where wasteful spending leaks are occurring within your organization’s budget is only possible once you’ve conducted data integrations across IaaS, UCaaS, and SaaS. Rather than spending time creating one bulky spreadsheet after the other, the Tangoe One platform, integrated with more than 800 cloud services, can help identify both authorized and unsanctioned cloud resources being used across an organization.
Using an automated program to handle invoices and expenses can allow for an organization to efficiently manage its subscriptions and avoid one of the more overlooked causes of wasted cloud budget, late fees. Automated bill–pays allow an organization to discover who is using what subscription, how that usage stacks up against contracted licenses, and when to renegotiate licenses and/or reallocate a given employee’s subscription.
By switching to automated cost management, a company not only matches the dynamic cost of SaaS with a dynamic budgeting strategy, but also increases the overall accuracy of its cloud budget, and perhaps most importantly, it saves itself a lot of man hours. As a result, IT teams gain actionable insights – in the form of always ready reports, and their time and resources can be spent more effectively working on more innovative tasks.
We know from a recent report that 58% percent of IT teams noted that they would like to spend less time on manual tasks to free up time for more meaningful work. Being able to digest and understand all cloud services data across SaaS, UCaaS, and IaaS enables a bigger birds-eye view and a richer look at all the details that make up wasteful cloud spending. When pushing back against uncertainty, clearing a smarter path is just what the doctor ordered.