What is Cloud Services Management?

With the right planning, cloud services fit the bill nicely. Without a way to effectively govern cloud costs, companies are bound to spend more – way more – than intended. Cloud Services Management, as part of a comprehensive FinOps strategy, connects all service usage data and pricing information as well as associated financial data like budgets, invoices, and contracts in one platform, serving as a single source of cloud truth for IT operational management. Tangoe One Cloud, our Cloud Expense Management platform, allows you to do just that.

• Optimize your IaaS spend: Track, analyze, and optimize cloud infrastructure services with a single pane of glass view across all major CSPs. Find out where you’re overspending and where you can make more efficient use of your cloud infrastructure.
• Make SaaS management easy: Easily see and manage all your SaaS applications in one simple platform. Discover unsanctioned apps and unused resources, reduce duplicate apps, and manage everything from licensing to payment to contract renewals with the touch of a finger. Tangoe One also supports UCaaS optimization, providing the visibility and insight companies need to maximize their cloud communications investments.
• Streamline overall financial management: Modernize your entire cloud cost management ecosystem with one simple platform, from cloud contract renewals to cost allocations, invoice management, and bill pay.

Cloud Services Management can include a variety of tactical and strategic tasks, such as handling the daily administration of cloud resources to meet performance expectations and the demands of the business, but also optimizing the cost and usage of cloud services.

CSM processes are typically applied to three types of cloud services: IaaS, SaaS and UCaaS. Here’s a sample list of just some of the management responsibilities across each service category.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): a cloud service model that provides on-demand access to highly scalable cloud infrastructure resources. Almost every organization today leverages cloud infrastructure services from four dominating providers: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

• Reducing waste and spend: Review IaaS resources to evaluate how efficiently each one is being used and where resources might be overprovisioned
• Reducing the amount paid for contracted services: Evaluate IaaS contracts and deployments to see how effectively discounts and savings plans are used
• Take stock of your all-in private cloud costs, defining the fully loaded virtual and physical expenditures to make smarter cloud strategy decisions

Learn more about Tangoe’s IaaS management solution.

Software as a Service (SaaS): a cloud service model that provides on-demand access to cloud-based software. Software is available for purchase on a subscription basis and typically delivered to buyers via the internet.

• Reduce the cost of cloud applications: Review all SaaS applications currently in use to identify redundant tools and consolidate them, leveraging economies of scale
• Avoid costs: Evaluate the usage of all individual SaaS licenses pinpointing unused licenses or underused licenses to more efficiently use what you already own
• Administer licenses: Handle the day-to-day onboarding and offboarding responsibilities of assigning and reassigning licenses, ensuring employees have access only to the information they need for security purposes

Learn more about Tangoe’s SaaS management solution.

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS): a cloud service model that brings together communication and collaboration capabilities like call, chat, video, and conferencing into one cloud platform. Popular UCaaS examples include Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

• Monitor costs and fraud: Evaluate the usage of all UCaaS licenses to gain cost management insights and monitor for fraud and abuse
• Administer licenses: Handle the day-to-day onboarding and offboarding responsibilities of assigning and reassigning licenses, ensuring employees have access only to the information they need for security purposes

Learn more about Tangoe’s UCaaS management solution.

In addition, Cloud Services Management can include other financial management tasks including:

• A comprehensive FinOps program, using known best practices to control the cloud
• Invoice management tasks spanning processing, approvals, and bill payments
• Contract renewals, negotiations, and assistance for procurement teams
• Cost allocations and chargebacks, showing which departments use each cloud service and holding them fiscally responsible for the services they use

You can’t innovate in a digital world without the cloud, but adoption alone isn’t enough. As cloud rapidly grows, so too do the challenges of managing cloud services.

• Sprawling Cloud Assets and Costs: Cloud services can proliferate like uncontained wildfire without the right visibility into usage and costs. This uncontrolled growth creates serious security risks and burns up IT budgets. Research shows two-thirds of CIOs are spending more on the cloud than they anticipated, and the average company wastes up to 30% of their cloud resources. FinOps has emerged as the go-to method for combatting these cost complexities and can reduce cloud costs by as much as 40% when implemented effectively.
• Shadow IT: Do you have a complete view of all the applications running in your corporate network and how each employee is using each tool? Seventy percent of companies say Shadow IT is their No. 1 problem with cloud applications, and unsanctioned apps consume as much as 40% of IT budgets.

Cloud Services Management simplifies, manages, and optimizes cloud usage and spend in a single platform designed to address today’s most popular cloud services. Companies are empowered to make critical decisions about how and when to use cloud services to drive cost savings, efficiencies in IT financial management, and get the most value out of their digital innovation strategy.

Here are four reasons why companies choose Tangoe One Cloud to control their cloud costs using a mature FinOps approach:

1. Unrivaled Cloud Visibility

The broader data ingestion you’ll have, the a clearer your perspective on all your cloud services. Tangoe One Cloud stretches far and wide with multi-cloud support for today’s four major CSPs, the most direct SaaS integrations by far (over 5K), plus support for 225k+ other apps, and a five-step process for multi-source Shadow IT discovery.

2. AI to Hyper-automate Cost Optimization

Tangoe One Cloud infuses AI to automate critical steps and workflows across the three key phases of the FinOps framework, supercharging financial efficiency and turning FinOps into a sustainable practice.

• Automation for informed cost cutting and cloud visibility: Crunch mountains of data in seconds to get smart AI-powered recommendations for cloud cost savings. Tangoe One Cloud continuously ingests and assesses IaaS and SaaS resource usage data using machine learning, behavioral analytics, and predictive algorithms.
• Automate cloud usage and optimization: Turn potential savings into real dollars saved. Approve cost-savings optimizations & recommendations with the touch of a finger and let Tangoe One Cloud do the rest with automated implementation. Capitalize on the full potential and ROI of FinOps faster.
• AI and RPA across the entire cloud cost management ecosystem: Fully align your IT and financial teams by hyper-automating all processes, workflows, and interdependencies, driving cost savings and process efficiencies simultaneously.

3. Drive Cost Savings Beyond the Cloud

Why stop at cloud cost savings? Tangoe One Cloud helps companies reach a new stratosphere of savings with the ability to simplify, manage, and optimize beyond their cloud estate, drilling down into mobile devices and telecom services. See the power of complete, 360-degree technology expense management.

Learn more about Tangoe One Cloud, our solution for Cloud Services Management.