As the modern enterprise adopts more and more software as a service (SaaS) applications, billing and compliance are becoming incredibly complex, with a simple solution nowhere to be seen.
According to its 2019 Business @ Work report, identity management platform Okta found that large enterprises have on average of 163 enterprise applications in their estate. This highlights the prevalence of a culture shift over the past decade away from monolithic license agreements with vendors like Oracle, SAP and Microsoft, towards the adoption of a plethora of best-of-breed software as a service (SaaS) tools.
While this no-doubt brings huge advantages in terms of capability, employee satisfaction and collaboration, it does create a set of headaches for IT when it comes to access management and security, compliance and cost. Where there used to be one hand to shake there are now 163, and that creates a billing and compliance headache that many are still grappling with.
Speaking during a roundtable event at content specialist Box’s UK HQ last week the UK heads of SaaS giants Box, Slack and Okta all discussed the challenges that arise as enterprises adopt more and more best of breed tools.
One topic that came up was the added complexity this footprint brings from a billing and compliance perspective.
“You’ve got 163 apps, and now you’re getting 163 bills, is that really efficient? As opposed to getting three bills from SAP, Oracle and Microsoft?” asked Jesper Frederiksen, vice president and general manager for EMEA at Okta.
“I think what’s happened is people have moved from capital expenditure purchases for IT, over the last 10 to 15 years, towards software as a service, and it adds up, right? We all charge per user or per transaction,” said Chris Baker, GM EMEA at Box. – Read more
