To SaaS Manage or NOT?

Software Asset Management
1

Since there have been multiple conversations, webinars, etc. on SaaS management, curious to know how SAM practitioners are managing or not managing software as a service (SaaS) applications within your current environment. Just looking for a few key indicators, no need to mention publishers.

  1. Does your organization have a tool to manage SaaS applications? Yes/No
  2. If you don’t have a tool currently, is it on the horizon (6 to 12 mos) to obtain one?
  3. If you do have a tool currently, how easy was it to integrate with your SaaS portals to get ROI? (in months).
  4. Did the org allow the tool to integrate with your financial/procurement/expense system? (Yes/No)
  5. How hard was to obtain buy-in for purchase/deployment of the tool?
  6. What is your overall experience and are you satisfied with the current SaaS tool?
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2

I can only answer to 1 and 2 since we don’t have a dedicated SaaS tool, but use our SAM tool to track SaaS in limited capacity.

  1. We use our SAM tool as a license repository for all licenses, SaaS, install-based, etc. For SaaS licenses, we upload consumption/usage information as point in time data prior to contract renewal so we know how the metric is calculated/where it’s stored, and to ensure the owner makes an appropriate renewal decision
  2. We’ve considered a separate SAM tool for real-time license consumption data, but the number of tools most SaaS providers can measure are low, presenting a low ROI for our use case
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3
  1. In POC
  2. Unlikely
  3. Challenging with the many risk based assessments it must pass
  4. Yes for POC only
  5. Challenging, SaaS owner must co-fund
  6. Satisfied has value co-funding keeps it out of reach today. From SaaS app owners perspective no interest to invest when their solution meets needs.
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