Find Value With Cloud Asset Management

• 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.