Alexis Kestler
The rapid growth of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) adoption has brought many benefits, but also new challenges for IT and security teams. Without visibility into the SaaS landscape, "shadow IT" can emerge, leading to increased costs, security risks, and compliance issues. That‘s where Auvik‘s SaaS management solution comes in, providing the visibility and control needed to optimize SaaS environments.
The Rising Need for SaaS Management
As organizations continue moving to the cloud and adopting SaaS applications, their technology environments have become increasingly complex. Research shows that the average company utilizes over 100 SaaS apps, with employees adopting new apps at will. This leads to a lack of visibility and sprawl of SaaS apps that goes unchecked.
Without a way to track SaaS usage and spending across the organization, costs can balloon out of control. Shadow IT emerges as employees spin up apps without IT‘s knowledge or oversight.Security risks increase exponentially with more entry points into the corporate environment. Compliance and governance suffer without knowledge of what data is processed where.
Clearly, the traditional manual approaches to SaaS management fall short in today‘s landscape. Spreadsheets and audits simply cannot keep up with the pace of change. IT and security teams need comprehensive visibility and control across the full SaaS environment to manage it successfully.
Some key SaaS management challenges include:
- Lack of visibility – Inability to track all SaaS apps in use across the organization
- Shadow IT – Unauthorized apps that emerge without IT oversight
- Cost optimization – Paying for unused or underutilized SaaS licenses
- Security & compliance – More exposure from ungoverned apps and data flows
- Inefficiency – Manual efforts to track apps, users, and data
This is where a SaaS management platform like Auvik becomes a critical solution.
Introducing Auvik SaaS Management
Auvik SaaS Management provides full visibility and control over an organization‘s SaaS environment. With automated discovery of SaaS apps, centralized monitoring, and management workflows, Auvik serves as a control plane for optimizing SaaS.
It gives IT and security teams the ability to track SaaS usage, spend, and security in one place. Instead of living in the dark, you gain an up-to-date inventory of all SaaS apps in use along with the critical data needed to manage them effectively.
Key capabilities of Auvik SaaS Management include:
- SaaS discovery – Automatically detect all SaaS apps across the organization
- Centralized visibility – 360-degree view of your entire SaaS landscape
- Usage monitoring – Track adoption and usage trends across users and apps
- License management – Optimize license costs by matching to usage
- Lifecycle automation – Streamline onboarding, offboarding, and role changes
- Security monitoring – Detect threats and risky user behavior
With Auvik, you remove the blind spots in your SaaS environment. Instead of guesswork, you gain data-driven insights to inform management of apps, licenses, security, and more. The result is an optimized SaaS ecosystem aligned to business needs.
Key Features and Benefits
Auvik SaaS Management provides a robust set of capabilities to cover all aspects of SaaS optimization. Let‘s explore some of the key features and benefits:
Automated Documentation
Auvik automatically generates and updates documentation on all your SaaS and business applications. This inventory stays up-to-date as the SaaS landscape changes, saving IT teams from manual tracking.
SaaS Health Scoring
The unique SaaS Health Score feature provides recommendations to improve your application inventory. It analyzes security, compliance, account usage, and other parameters to inform management.
Enhanced Security Logs
Centralized security logs give visibility into risks like shared accounts, unauthorized access, and suspicious insiders. Security teams can monitor and investigate events from a single pane of glass.
Full Application Visibility
Auvik provides a unified view of all SaaS, cloud, and desktop apps across their performance, usage, and security data. This full-stack visibility enables optimal management.
Quarterly Business Reviews
Relevant SaaS usage insights are packaged into quarterly reviews to align business stakeholders and steer strategy.
User Lifecycle Automation
Automate the onboarding and offboarding processes across SaaS apps to improve security and efficiency. Access is synced to employee status.
Vendor Risk Monitoring
Stay on top of security incidents like breaches involving your SaaS vendors. Monitor vendor risk exposure.
Software Inventory Tracking
SaaS inventory is automatically tracked with real-time alerts on any new apps, powering lifecycle management.
Risk Behavior Alerts
Risky user actions like credential sharing or unauthorized app access triggers alerts for investigation and response.
Integrations
Auvik integrates with various IT systems like IAM, service desks, SIEM, and more to enable workflows.
This combination of discovery, visibility, automation, security, and integrations empowers organizations to take control of their SaaS environment.
Use Cases Across Teams
Different teams within an organization can leverage Auvik SaaS Management to achieve their goals:
IT Teams
IT leaders gain visibility into SaaS usage within the organization to right-size licenses and subscriptions. Automation streamlines cumbersome management tasks like user provisioning/deprovisioning. Integrations connect SaaS management workflows across IT systems.
Security Teams
Security leaders monitor the SaaS environment for threats coming from risky user behavior, malicious insiders, or vulnerable vendors. Alerts quickly notify them of issues needing investigation.
Finance Teams
Finance leaders optimize SaaS costs by identifying opportunities to eliminate waste on unused apps or licenses. They forecast and plan budgets more accurately with data.
Executives
Executives and board members can track metrics on SaaS ROI and stay informed on risk exposure. Data-driven insights inform strategic decision making.
Across functions, Auvik SaaS Management powers organizations to balance business agility with IT control.
Streamlined Implementation
As a SaaS platform itself, Auvik is simple to implement across an organization. It does not require any on-premise software or infrastructure. The solution connects to your IT environment through standard integrations and APIs.
Installation of lightweight Auvik agents on endpoints discovers local SaaS apps not visible through network monitoring. Out-of-the-box integrations with IAM systems like Okta facilitate automated user lifecycle workflows. Connectors are available for popular IT platforms like ServiceNow, Splunk, and Slack.
Well-designed onboarding resources like live training, documentation, and email onboarding campaigns bring IT teams up to speed with the platform. Dedicated customer success managers help ensure you achieve maximum value from the full capabilities of Auvik.
Within just minutes or hours, your team can gain an accurate view into your organization‘s SaaS applications and begin optimizing the environment leveraging built-in management workflows.
Flexible Pricing Options
Auvik offers flexible pricing tailored to your business needs and scale. A 14-day free trial provides access to full SaaS management capabilities without any credit card required.
After the free trial, the sales team provides a customized quote based on your environment and user count. Published pricing is not available online since the model is personalized.
There are no limits imposed on the number of devices, apps, alerts, integrations, or other functionality. A flat per-user monthly rate covers access to the full Auvik platform.
Volume discounts apply for organizations with large user bases to keep pricing affordable. For fast-growing companies, pricing models can scale up transparently over time as usage increases.
Compared to other SaaS management solutions, Auvik provides comprehensive functionality with flexible pricing to match your needs. The free trial lets you experience the value firsthand.
Comparing Top SaaS Management Alternatives
While Auvik is a leader in SaaS management, it is not the only option. Here is an overview of key competitors and how they compare:
Cledara
Cledara offers SaaS management focused primarily on cost optimization. It provides visibility into subscriptions and licensing costs with some automation capabilities around provisioning. Lightweight but missing some of Auvik‘s security and risk functionality.
Pricing starts at $279/month.
Zluri
Zluri takes a data-driven approach to recommendations and workflow automation for cost savings. Limited discovery capabilities compared to Auvik but useful for cost analytics if you have inventory through other means.
Tailored pricing based on needs.
BetterCloud
BetterCloud targets lifecycle automation across employee onboarding, offboarding, and SaaS security workflows. Lacks full discovery and inventory management offered by Auvik.
Demo available but unclear published pricing.
NachoNacho
NachoNacho provides basic visibility into SaaS spend with some cost controls by limiting employee spending ability. Very lightweight with little automation or security functionality compared to Auvik.
Pricing starts at $5/month per user.
Torii
Torii focuses on using data insights to drive cost optimization and automation of SaaS management. Light on discovery so requires other sources of truth on inventory. Open platform allows customization.
Pricing not publicly listed.
In comparison, Auvik provides the most comprehensive end-to-end SaaS management solution encompassing discovery, visibility, security, automation, and cost optimization. The platform serves as a system of record and control plane purpose-built for SaaS management across functions.
Conclusion and Next Steps
As SaaS application usage continues growing rapidly, Auvik SaaS Management is becoming an essential solution for IT and security teams to gain visibility and control. Featuring automated discovery, centralized monitoring, workflow automation, and data-driven insights, Auvik helps you optimize your SaaS application environment.
Key benefits include:
- Full inventory of SaaS apps – Eliminate blind spots
- Usage and cost visibility – Optimize spend
- Lifecycle automation – Streamline management
- Security monitoring – Detect threats
- Actionable insights – Inform strategy
Getting started takes just minutes without any deployment headaches. A free 14-day trial provides firsthand experience of the platform‘s value. Pricing scales flexibly based on the size of your SaaS environment and user base.
Visit Auvik.com to learn more and get started with a trial. Take control of your SaaS applications with Auvik SaaS Management.
