For many years, we have heard reports of how IT and Telecommunications was converging. Now, cloud services will accelerate this convergence trend. It also promises a great opportunity for Solutions Providers. Some providers have begun to manage aspects of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud computing. Organizations also need help managing exponential growth in costs from Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). There are several areas where Telecom Expense Management solutions offer capabilities that align directly with management of cloud service expenses.
On-Boarding, Off-Boarding and Entitlement Management
First, management of on-boarding and off-boarding employees for cloud services and applications is becoming more complex and mistakes can be costly. Managers at enterprises need to ensure that employees get the right cloud applications to do their jobs. They also must verify that these subscriptions are discontinued and removed from bills if employees leave the firm. This is just an extension or many wireless expense management firms that already provide similar inventory management services for clients.
Sourcing and Optimization
Second, there are optimization opportunities to consider. Firms need to audit application subscriptions to ensure employees are only getting the apps they use. There may be many cases where team members only need to view reports. They don’t actually need the applications. In these cases, it will be less costly to have an administrator run the reports and send them to folks. Cutting unnecessary subscriptions will save money.
Enterprises should also consider sourcing and optimization opportunities for cloud apps and services. Companies that currently use five to eight applications for each category (human resources, finance, sales, marketing and enterprise resource planning) may find opportunities to consolidate to one or two providers within each category. This consolidation will optimization can also feed validation activities in billing.
Expense Management
Third, TEM Providers are starting to see large and significant over-charges and billing errors where enterprises pay for features the cloud provider promised at no cost. In other cases, the pricing doesn't match the contract.
TEMIA members find enterprises often pay different prices for the same services or apps from vendors that promise uniform pricing for an enterprise. Cloud services and apps have characteristics for hidden waste and expenses that TEM Providers are well equipped to manage.
Managing Network Assets
Overlaps between these areas create another bonus for engaging with TEM Providers on cloud services. There are changes that are coming to network services as enterprises shift from data and applications stored in corporate data centers. Enterprises should be reducing the capacity of their high speed network connectivity to these data centers.
Network services can migrate to lower cost fast local internet connectivity from Tier 1 providers with some redundancy for services. TEM providers can help enterprises manage their network inventory, and ensure clients leverage the benefits from rapidly declining costs for these services.
Policy and Security
A second bonus area would be mobile policy, policy enforcement and security. TEM Providers are well grounded in developing mobile policy and helping enterprises to enforce the policy.
Automation of Manual Processes
With cloud computing enterprises grapple with managing cloud entitlements on-boarding and validation. These are all managed with manual processes. Finally, there is the issue of processing cloud bills which is often requires a manual labor intensive process for bills that are received in paper or PDF format.
As adoption of cloud services accelerates, enterprises are beginning to realize that no one is responsible for managing these expenses. With the potential for wasteful unnecessary expenses from cloud computing, enterprises are finding that TEM Providers are well equipped to manage this area.
Joe Basili is Managing Director of TEMIA (www.temia.org)
