What is Cloud Expense Management (CEM)?

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What is Cloud Expense Management (CEM)?

Cloud Expense Management is corporate planning and oversight of complex cloud environments to help organizations manage their costs, assets and usage with greater visibility and control via a single centralized platform. It enables IT and (IT) Finance executives to get a holistic view of their cloud spend including IaaS, UCaaS, SaaS and PaaS to identify cost saving opportunities so that they can maximize the value of their investments. CEM offers essential tools, robust reporting and analytics for deeper insights that empower financially sound, strategic business decisions with the ability to budget, scale/right-size and forecast future needs.

What is cloud cost allocation and what does a CEM invoice process consist of?

Cloud cost allocation refers to the ability to assign costs to the appropriate business unit/cost center within an organization so that usage is charge-backed to the appropriate department.. A sophisticated enterprise CEM solution will automate invoice acquisition, validation, approval and cost allocation. An AP/GL file is generated from processed invoices for loading into the organization’s financial system and payment. Cost allocations also integrate with HRIS and Financial systems, are pre-configured and automatically applied to every invoice across cost centers.

What are the benefits of automated cloud Invoice Processing?

Utilizing automated cloud invoice processing naturally eliminate manual efforts such as having to build endless spreadsheets of invoice data. It also ensures data accuracy, fin-ops efficiency, as well as helps enforces tighter governance, security and compliance. Get approvals quickly and easily to avoid late fees. Centralize invoice data in a single platform that keeps you organized and provides comprehensive executive-level as well as day-to-day program reporting and analysis users rely on. And with the time saved internally on these tasks, you and your team can now focus on more productive, value-add initiatives.

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What is cloud IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service?

IaaS is a fully outsourced service with managed hosting and development environments. Typically utilized by network and infrastructure architects. Web hosting companies like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Oracle are the top IaaS providers today. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is forecasted to experience the highest end-user spending growth this year at 30.6% as it is the foundation of both IT transformation, driving innovation and building internal operational efficiencies.

However, while adoption is on the rise across organizations globally, as too are costs (both financial and operational) and complexity for managing and maintaining it. When transitioning to cloud, IT executives are tasked with not only ensuring successful implementation, but also that security and compliance protocols are upheld.

What is PaaS: Platform as a Service?

Pass is similar to IaaS, but more advanced. Providers offer a computing platform and solution stack as a service. It is typically utilized by application developers. PaaS is mainly used by companies that need to develop, test and deploy applications that are then hosted by the provider.

What is SaaS: Software as a Service?

SaaS are web-based applications available on-demand to customers. SaaS is mainly subscription-based. Examples services include packaged software, email, CRM and storage. This is the biggest spend category for IT professionals. Many enterprises outsource their SaaS expense and asset management to help them track, simplify and optimize their costs, usage and services while identifying and mitigating the risk of future shadow IT activity.

What is UCaaS: Unified Communications as a Service?

UCaaS is a cloud-delivered unified communications model that supports these six functions: Enterprise Telephony, Online Meetings (a/v & web conferencing), Communication-enabled Business Processes, Instant & Unified Messaging and Mobility. The infrastructure is owned, operated and delivered by the provider. It typically includes self-service web portals for provisioning, management and performance/usage reporting. The provider delivers applications from a common platform and licenses the service for a monthly, recurring, subscription charge. Sample Service Providers include Webex by Cisco, MS Teams, Zoom, Vonage, Ring Central, and 8×8. UCaaS enables a workforce, be it in a remote, on-site or hybrid environment to collaborate cross-functional anywhere and at any time across the globe.

How do I reduce my cloud costs?

The first thing you need is an enterprise-level CEM Solution that can provide clear, centralized visibility across all your cloud costs and give you the control you need to reign them in. Once you’re able to get a complete holistic picture of assets and expenses, flag issues like usage spikes and tie vendor license utilization to the appropriate cost center and user, you’re better positioned to streamline and cut costs as needed.

You can reduce cloud costs by outsourcing optimization and leveraging a CEM Solution which includes automated / AI-driven savings recommendations.

Tangoe One CEM goes beyond charts and graphs, to serve up IaaS cost-cutting opportunities for instance based on over a million different pricing schemas. In fact, these insights are accessible with the click of a button so you can act on them immediately. It also includes many other features that help you cut your cloud costs so that only pay for what you need such as:

Rightsizing virtual machines, databases, data warehousing and storage volumes

Decommissioning unused storage volumes, load balancers and unused snapshots

The ability to create schedules for instance pausing, set reserved instance coverage, view historical reserved instance coverage, and automate reservation purchases

How can I ensure my CEM expenses and assets are being managed efficiently?

Having the appropriate cloud expense report tagging methodology will lead to better tracking and of resources, tighter compliance and financial controls. In addition, viewing your cloud expense and assets from a “single pane of glass” with tools that help make sure that these investments don’t outpace your growth.

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