- Spending on cloud platforms and software-as-a-service (SaaS) is growing, and with spending comes waste.
- The barriers are drastically lower for purchasing SaaS and cloud services as compared to traditional IT components.
- Skills gap: IT asset managers tend not to have the skills to optimize spending on cloud platforms.
- New space, new tools: The IT asset management market space is still developing cloud asset management and SaaS management capabilities. Practitioners must rely on cloud optimization tools in the meantime.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- IT asset managers are uniquely suited to provide value here. They already optimize costs and manage assets.
- Scope creep is a killer. Focus first on your highest value, highest risk cloud instances.
- Don’t completely centralize. Central oversight is powerful, but outsource some responsibility to the business.
Impact and Result
- Introduce governance: Work with developers, power business users, and infrastructure groups to define a governance approach to cloud assets and to SaaS.
- Standardize high-impact, low-effort cloud services: Focus your efforts where they will have the most value and in places where you can provide early value.
- Update your processes: Ensure that your asset registers and your configuration management database is up to date when cloud assets are provisioned and quiesced.
Implement Hardware Asset Management
Implement Software Asset Management
Develop an IT Asset Management Strategy
Reduce Shadow IT With a Service Request Catalog
Harness Configuration Management Superpowers
Prepare and Defend Against a Software Audit
M&A Runbook for Infrastructure and Operations
IT Asset Management (ITAM) Market Overview