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What is tail spend?

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Tail spend refers to the unmanaged purchases made within an organization that fail to pass through an official procurement process. On account of their low value, the costs incurred by these purchases are seldom monitored by financing teams as they are generally too small to be deemed “strategic”. The problem, however, is that they can make up as much as 20% of a business’ total spend.

What is SaaS sprawl?

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SaaS sprawl, also known as software sprawl, occurs when an organization’s SaaS stack consists of a large — and often unmanageable — number of applications.

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Ultimately, as business needs grow, the number of digital tools required increases, which leads to new applications being subscribed to, be this through a centralized process or at the will of individual employees.

What is an instance in the context of cloud computing?

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In cloud computing, an instance refers to a virtual server provided by a third-party cloud service, for example AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. These instances ultimately enable companies to deploy and run their applications or services in the cloud, in a scalable and flexible manner. This is because instances are on-demand and can be adjusted based on your workload requirements.

What is a reduction clause?

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A reduction clause refers to a provision in a software agreement that allows customers to reduce the number of licenses or users covered by their subscription during the term of an agreement. This provides customers with flexibility to adjust their plan to meet evolving business needs, while avoiding paying for licenses or users they no longer require or needing to terminate the contract. The specific terms and requirements of a reduction clause may vary depending on the SaaS provider and the subscription agreement, for example it may be subject to a minimum number of licenses or users.

What is a multi-tenancy environment?

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In cloud computing, a multi-tenancy environment refers to a situation where multiple users, also referred to as tenants, share the same physical infrastructure and resources. These resources, such as computing power, memory and storage are dynamically allocated based on the needs of each tenant. Each tenant’s data is, however, stored in separate databases to ensure both privacy and security.

What is SaaS management?

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SaaS management is the process of identifying, managing, and governing the software applications that exist within an organization’s technology portfolio.

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When software goes unmanaged, it not only puts the business at risk of data breaches and security issues, but it can also lead to a substantial amount of wasted spend as a result of redundant and duplicate SaaS apps, not to mention unused licenses.