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What is maverick buying?

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Maverick spending, also known as rogue spending, can be defined as any purchasing that takes place within an organization, outside of an established procurement process.

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In the context of SaaS, maverick spending refers to the acquisition of cloud-based software solutions that are purchased unbeknownst to the finance, IT or procurement teams, and in a way that does not comply with the organization’s formal IT procurement process — and so may not be approved, vetted, or appropriately documented.

What is an ELA?

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An Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) is a contract between a software vendor and an enterprise customer that sets out the terms and conditions for the licensing of software products across an enterprise. Unlike a Master License Agreement (MLA) which is a more comprehensive business agreement that can cover a range of products and services, an ELA is often used for specific software products.

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While the specific terms and conditions of an ELA can vary, it will typically outline the number and type of licenses covered under the agreement, restrictions or limitation on usage, the duration of the agreement, the fees associated with the license, renewal terms and termination clauses.

What is an auto-renewal clause?

‍Auto-renewal is a term often used in SaaS agreements referring to the automatic renewal of a user’s subscription plan at the end of their contract term. These auto-renewal clauses will automatically extend the user’s subscription for another period, typically the same duration as the initial term, unless the customer explicitly cancels or modifies their subscription by a specified date. This is often referred to as a termination window and is typically either 30, 60 or 90 days prior to the renewal date.

What is a SaaS agreement?

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A SaaS agreement, or contract, details the terms of your purchase from a SaaS vendor.

What are reserved instances?

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Reserved Instances (RIs) are a pricing and capacity reservation offering provided by AWS for their EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and RDS (Relational Database Service) services.

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They specifically allow users to commit to using a specific instance type in the same region for either a one or three-year term, in exchange for discounts of up to 72% – the exact discount is ultimately dependent on the commitment term, instance type, availability zone and region.

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There are various types of Reserved Instances available, each with different terms and levels of flexibility. Standard Reserved Instances provide the highest cost savings but are the least flexible, whereas Convertible Reserved Instances offer more flexibility by allowing you to change instance families within the same instance type.

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In contrast, Scheduled Reserved Instances offer a lower discount, but allow you to reserve capacity for specific time windows, such as business hours or weekends, providing cost savings for predictable workloads.

What is a single-tenancy environment in cloud computing?

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A single-tenancy environment, also known as dedicated hosting or a dedicated instance, refers to a situation where each user or tenant has their own dedicated infrastructure and resources, including servers, storage and network components. These resources aren’t shared with any other users, maximizing performance and control.