Overspending on cloud services is a common customer problem. Many employees are signed up for more services than they need, or higher levels of services than is required for their job. Modern cloud service subscriptions are very different than the days when you would have to purchase discs of software, and assign those licenses to specific computers. Now that cloud services are available anytime, anywhere, subscriptions and user accounts can be more difficult to keep track.
Indeed, optimization tool vendors typically spot about 30 percent of spending waste in the SaaS market, leading to $30 billion in annual unnecessary customer costs, according to The ITAM Review.
Eager to help customers eliminate such waste, Aspera recently released LicenseControl for Office 365, a cloud-based Software Asset Management solution that optimizes Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions. LicenseControl recommends how to reduce increasing IT costs while finding the optimal SaaS subscriptions for every user, the company says.
LicenseControl features:
- Complete license overview. Gives a single, detailed view of all Office 365 app usage and subscriptions.
- Subscription optimization. Analyzes where to optimize and eliminate duplicate licensing.
- Automatic downgrade calculation. Eliminates paying for unused services by finding a license with only the options needed.
- Subscription re-harvesting. Shows where to deactivate unused accounts and re-use licenses.
- Fast and always available. Hosted on the Aspera Cloud Platform, so there’s no on-premises installation or downtime.
SaaS spending management tools arrive at a key time -- especially since many employees now sign up for cloud services on their own. Plus, department managers frequently don't seek help from their MSP or IT department when signing up for groups of services. That leaves IT in the dark on what is actually out there being used on a regular basis.
The issue stretches far beyond Office 365, so I assume platforms like LicenseControl will continue to expand their reach into more SaaS applications. Earlier this year the company released LicenseControl for Salesforce. Plus LicenseControl for SAP and LicenseControl for Oracle also are on the market.
Companies interested in evaluating LicenseControl for Office 365 can sign up to get a free demo using their own Office 365 data.
