Intelligent CIO North America Issue 17 | Page 45

CIO OPINION reducing risks and securing the correct IT asset data that can help drive Technology Value Optimization ( TVO ). Doing so can eliminate waste , allowing you to reassign budget to your organization ’ s strategic initiatives .
Optimize your software licensing expenses
Software licensing can be mystifying . There ’ s no straightforward equation for determining the cost per unit for the software you use . Software publishers ( including IBM , Microsoft , Oracle and SAP ) bill customers based on multiple metrics , such as availability , cluster , cores and environments .
Not only does this complicate customers ’ ability to 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 ) program goes beyond cost reduction to help optimize your software licensing expenses . Automated calculation of consumption costs and license optimization , for example , are far more effective than guesswork .
Control SaaS costs within your organization
How many SaaS applications has your organization 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 centers and employees , you ’ re missing opportunities to control your costs and to protect the organization 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 centralizing SaaS spend management ( rather than allowing business units to oversee it ) and optimizing 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 .
Widespread adoption of SaaS is likely changing the makeup of your software portfolio , perhaps without much oversight .
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