Service provider best practices for Azure-based SaaS management
According to a leading analyst, the SaaS cloud application services market is expected to reach $113.1 billion in 2021, up almost twice from $58.8 billion in 2017.
SaaS is very much in demand, and SaaS management through Microsoft Azure represents a significant opportunity for service providers today and well into tomorrow. In fact, service providers looking to expand their Azure business offerings would be wise to consider Azure-based SaaS management for their customers, but there are several areas of consideration from a management perspective.
Security, compliance, budgets driving SaaS management
What’s truly driving this SaaS opportunity is the availability of SaaS applications for nearly every business function for organizations across all industries. With this is mind, companies need the right Azure-based SaaS management solution for their global and mobile workforce in order to properly manage IT budgets.
In addition to areas such as administrative functionality and application security measures, Azure-based SaaS management is needed to ensure licensing compliance and the right spend management for customers. Leading analyst groups have all noted the amount of financial waste due to unused SaaS licenses and SaaS redundancy.
From a security perspective, each application in use by the workforce represents a possible security threat to the IT department.
A 2019 survey shows that the average number of apps per company has grown by 43 per cent since 2015, and nearly half of data breaches are due to employee error, yet only 49 per cent of survey respondents had ever participated in cybersecurity training at work. While this reality scales depending on organization size, this is clearly an opportunity for service providers to administer proper Azure-based SaaS management to their customers for effective security measures.
Determining SaaS usage ROI
Determining ROI for any Azure-based SaaS investment is not a simple task. Service providers need to work with their customers to develop an ongoing process that accounts for shifts in users and uses of applications, as well as new technology that will come online in the future.
It is recommended that service providers determine SaaS usage through the monitoring of per user billing, per account billing and per transaction billing.
Billing for users: Service providers will be familiar with this method by understanding the number of seat licenses. This is determined by monitoring specific users with direct functions, access, permissions, and privileges within any given app or solution.
Individual accounts: In this method, service providers track each license vendor and regularly track logins as a means for usage. However, a better method to track ROI calculation might originate with the number of transactions that take place and the use for benchmarks.
Per transaction billing: An example here would be the identification of cloud applications that bill based on number of downloads or amount of data used (think of a mobile/cell-phone data plan). Certain automated solutions are billed this way, and without the oversight of a trusted service provider, customers not only rack up significant invoice amounts but can also lack visibility into proper ROI.
There are a handful of actions service providers can do to provide proper management of Azure-based SaaS solutions. Service providers should work closely with their customers to establish corporate policies on SaaS application investments of any kind. They should build tools and solutions to unify and oversee their SaaS management. Service providers should also strictly measure utilization for each employee within the organization and establish clear and concise parameters for utilization, which will help with cost controls and compliance initiatives.
A partner for Azure SaaS management solutions
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