Asana is a project management solution that helps companies to organize collaborative work, manage tasks execution and stay in the loop of ongoing business processes. According to the G2 product review, more than 114,000 paying organizations rely on Asana to manage product launches, marketing campaigns, company objectives, and more.
While using Asana software, businesses pay a fixed amount per user per month. Billing is handled annually. No refunds are provided. Thus, to avoid paying for unused or underutilized seats a company should understand the number of users holding the seat and its utilization rates.
Binadox allows tracking, managing, and optimizing companies’ SaaS subscriptions, in particular Asana subscriptions. Binadox helps to save a great deal of the IT budget spent on SaaS
To integrate Binadox with Asana follow the instruction below.
Create Personal Access Token in Asana
1. Open the Asana application, click your profile photo from the top bar and select Settings.
Asana Home page
2. Navigate to the Apps tab. Click View developer console.
View developer console
4. Click + Create new token.
Create new token.
5. Copy created access token.
Token Details
Use created access token to authorize requests
1. Log in to your Binadox Workspace.
2. Proceed to the SaaS Connections and click on the Asana card.
SaaS Connections
3. Name the connection and click continue.
Connection Name
4. Paste the token created in Asana in an empty field and click Continue.
Connection Properties
5. Fill in the billing information required for your account.
Billing Information
Note: The administrator whose account is used for creating the token must have access to all projects for which you want to receive usage data.
Binadox released a new automation tool for building positive and fulfilling onboarding app provisioning and offboarding app deprovisioning experiences. It saves time, money and eliminates errors.
Besides, it displays the number of teams, members in these teams, as well as applications that are assigned to each team. You can check the number of unassigned licenses across all apps and decide what licenses should be allocated to newcomers.
Teams Feature
Manage your renewals at a new level
Binadox modernized the Renewals Calendar in the License Manager section. Previously, it displayed applications’ billing dates and costs only.
Now it also presents the Expiring Renewals — apps that are not renewed automatically and should be handled manually. This detalization allows you not to miss dates when your contracts should be paid to keep your organization running without any interruptions.
Expiring Renewals
Optimize the cost of a new SaaS app – Power BI
Now you can integrate Power BI Sevice with Binadox. Power BI is a solution that helps companies to connect to and visualize any data. To successfully integrate Binadox with a Power BI service, connect Office 365 to Binadox and get the necessary credentials in Azure Directory. Notice that Binadox can monitor only the Power BI Service.
Power BI
Stay informed 24/7
Binadox offers a ticketing feature for notifying you about all the updates in your cloud. Binadox already integrates with Slack, Freshdesk, E-mail, Zendesk, and ServiceNow services to provide ticketing. Now Binadox added the Telegram application for integrations as well. It allows you to receive Binadox notifications to a specified Telegram channel.
New Ticketing System
Sign up for a free trial or book a demo to learn how to automate, manage and optimize your cloud to the fullest extent.
This is a guide for integrating the Power BI service with the multi-cloud cost management platform Binadox. Power BI is a solution that helps companies to connect to and visualize any data using the unified, scalable platform for self-service and enterprise business intelligence (BI) that’s easy to use and helps you gain deeper data insight.
To successfully integrate Binadox with a Power BI service, it is required to get the necessary credentials in Azure Directory, add them to the Binadox, and connect the application.
Note: Binadox can monitor only the Power BI service. The Power BI Desktop monitoring is not possible due to Microsoft limitations.
Contents
1. Connect Office 365 with Power BI license to Binadox
2. Configure required permission in Azure Directory
3. Locate Integration Data on the Azure Portal
4. Create New Connection for Power BI in Binadox
1. Connect Office 365 with Power BI license to Binadox
Connect Office 365 to Binadox, in order to connect and start monitoring Power BI service.
2. Configure required permission in Azure Directory
1. Log into the Microsoft Azure portal as a global administrator. In the navigation pane on the left, click All services > Identity > Azure Active Directory. Use the search bar, if necessary.
2. Go to the App registrations section and select the app that has already been registered when creating Office 365 integration with Binadox.
3. In the navigation pane, choose API permissions. Once you’re on the API Permissions page, click the Add a permission button in the Configured Permissions section. On the Request API permissions page that opens, scroll down the permissions list and select Power BI Service. Then, select Delegated permissions card, scroll down the permissions and select Tenant drop-down list. Select Tenant.Read.All checkbox and click Add permissions button.
4. Grant consent for the required permissions for all accounts in your organization to be able to view Power BI Service data. Click Grant admin consent for (the name of your organization) and the status will change to Granted. It means that all the required permissions are granted and the data will be displayed in a day.
3. Locate Integration Data on the Azure Portal
1. To find the Tenant domain, Application ID, and Client Secret, sign in to the Microsoft Azure portal as a global administrator. Navigate to Azure Active Directory.
2. To locate the Tenant domain, click Custom domain names. Copy your tenant domain from the Name field (e.g. organization.onmicrosoft.com). You may also hover the mouse pointer over the profile information at the top right corner of the menu bar to see the tenant domain.
3. To locate an Application (client) ID, click Azure Active Directory > App registrations in the navigation pane on the left. Click on the name of the Binadox application. To quickly locate it, type in its name in the search bar.
4. To copy an Application (client) ID, hover the mouse pointer over the value. Click on the appeared icon to copy it to the clipboard.
5. To generate a new Client Secret, go to the Certificates and secrets section and click the New client secret button.
6. Make a Description for your client secret, select its duration in the Expires section and click the Add button.
7. Hover the mouse pointer over the value and click on the appeared icon to copy it to the clipboard.
4. Create New Connection for Power BI in Binadox
When the necessary steps in Azure Directory are done, you can log in to your Binadox Workspace.
Proceed to the SaaS Connections and connect the Power BI.
3. To do that, create a connection name.
4. Select the Office 365 integration.
5. Then, you need to paste data copied from Azure Directory: Tenant domain, Application ID, and Client Secret.
6. After that, you can click the Connect button, and monitor Power BI Service data.
New Employee Onboarding Checklist and Best Practices
~5 minutes read
Most companies do not take employee onboarding seriously or have at least something that reminds a workflow for this purpose. In fact, this is a glaring omission.
There is firm evidence that companies that properly engage their employees from day one and actively promote interactions see their stock prices rise. Not only does end-user experience matter. Employees’ positive experience motivates them to do better jobs and stay at the company for a longer period, which is a good thing, right?
At the same time, we have to understand that employee onboarding is more than just inviting a newcomer to a Slack channel and introducing him/her to the team. It is about making a newcomer feel welcomed, informed, and supported. It is a joint effort of HR department workers, IT specialists, and Team Leads to deliver the company’s values, culture, and knowledge.
In this article, we’re going to explain why the onboarding process matters, how to do it right, and what positive effects onboarding can bring to your company. Additionally, we will discuss how Binadox can help your business automate the recruitment process.
What is employee onboarding?
First of all, we need to agree on what we understand by “onboarding”. Onboarding is the process of engaging a new employee in a work process, facilitating socializing, and providing him/her with all necessary knowledge and tools. That is a typical HR perspective.
Tech specialists consider onboarding more as provisioning a new employee with the credentials and permissions required for using working applications. When not automated this process usually implies lots of manual work. It looks like this: The HR department requests a tech specialist to create new accounts and configure access for newcomers and often at the very moment they need to have a new task done.
As you can see, this practice takes time and slows down the productivity of all involved parties. According to Urbanbound findings, loss of productivity due to new hire learning curves can cost a company anywhere from 1% to 2.5% of total business revenue, which is a huge waste.
To make the onboarding process easier and faster, it is better to clearly identify responsibilities between those who handle onboarding.
We recommend dividing responsibilities the following way:
HR dept. handles the formal part of the hiring — discusses payroll and benefits, keeps documentation.
IT specialists share required credentials, grant access to apps, and establish emails and accounts.
Team Leads welcome newcomers to their Team and navigate them on the way to learning how to better perform their tasks.
When responsibilities are clear the process of onboarding becomes more organized and departments can do their work more efficiently.
Employees onboarding benefits
By paying close attention to onboarding, your company increases the chances of having satisfied and loyal employees. Efforts to create a fruitful working environment always pay off.
Efficiency
If you want to expand your business and have truly involved employees, we recommend focusing on the onboarding process optimization. This daunting (as it may seem) task can help you increase productivity. Actually, organizations with a standard onboarding process experience 50% greater new-hire productivity.
It’s simple: new hires show more interest in improving the organization’s efficiency when they can easily access the right apps and tools, as well as know to whom they can address their questions and concerns.
Security
If you don’t want to risk your company’s sensitive data, you’d better ensure that the right people have the right levels of access to the work-critical applications. A solid onboarding policy can help you protect your data and reputation, as well as avoid severe financial losses.
Also, you shouldn’t forget about the offboarding policy as well. It plays a huge role in keeping your organization’s data safe. In fact, a Fox Williams study has shown that nearly 90% of employees are capable of accessing sensitive data long after they’ve been dismissed.
Onboarding best practices
The onboarding process varies from company to company. Furthermore, onboarding of the employees working from the office, and remote employees differ, too. As a result, companies are better at creating either a universal process or two separate workflows for remote and on-site workers. The main goal here is to leave a positive impression and stimulate further engagement.
Some companies offer a standard set of perks for their employees like flexible working hours, financial bonuses for dedicated work, as well as certificates for free massages, and yoga classes. It is a nice practice to send free educational books and a company’s branded hoodies.
While you’re figuring out what perks you can offer to your new hires, we’d like to tell you about some fundamental practices to get your newcomers up and running.
Analyze your failure cases
Companies usually get the success measuring factors across, as they serve as a setting for employees’ productivity. One of the KPIs that interests us the most is the New Hire 90-Day Failure Rate.
If new hires are leaving in the first 90 days, that means they either weren’t the right hire from the start, or the onboarding process didn’t motivate them to stay and be engaged in the company’s life after all. High levels of failure if detected in your organization should encourage you to spend more time in the hiring process to make sure that you are getting real talents and they will be a part of your business for a year.
Discuss goals and facilitate growth
New hires will better understand what they should do and what factors measure their success in the company if they have a clear KPI to follow. KPIs should be implemented for making employees feel satisfied when they achieve the parameters that mark success, in the first place.
They are not just another instrument of monitoring and control. The best way to do that is to organize face-to-face meetings for employees with their team leads. This way, company heads, and project managers will better understand new employees’ needs, and pain points and help them to build their growth strategy.
Discuss processes and improve them
Ask your new employees about their working experience over several periods of time. Try to find out how their working perspective evolved in one month, six months, and a year after they joined the company. Note what moments they mark as positive and what requires improvement. Do not hesitate to go deeper into small details. Remember that the “Devil is in the details” — insignificant at the first sight things make people stick to work for years, or oppositely drive them into depression and thoughts about leaving.
Afterward, compare the collected answers and correct the course of action. Make orders to resolve negative moments and invest more time and energy in successful practices.
Automate recruitment process
Progressive companies always vote for automation. It saves time, and money and eliminates errors. HR processes, as any others, can and should be automated as well. Services like Binadox provide positive and fulfilling experiences from onboarding to offboarding offering automation tools.
Binadox onboarding automation tool allows business owners to add a new employee to the required team and give them access to the necessary tools just in a few steps.
To start using Binadox for onboarding app provisioning and offboarding app deprovisioning a company needs:
Structure existing employees in collaborative applications used in a company, if not done before. In general, companies use G Suite, Office 365, or Okta. It is a must thing to do as Binadox pulls Teams data from one of the connected apps so that you don’t bother with forming Teams all over again manually.
Once the Teams information is loaded in Binadox you will be able to see how many members there are in each team and which applications are assigned to it. Besides, you can check the number of unassigned licenses across all apps.
Having previous steps done provided you with the ground for managing your Teams and Applications. Now when onboarding an employee with required applications all you need to do is to add them to Teams in Binadox and the system will automatically assign apps that are specified to the selected Team.
Binadox Teams
Try Binadox onboarding app provisioning and offboarding app deprovisioning during a free 14-day trial to check how you can benefit from it.
Also, book a demo to discuss the details with our Sales Department and tech specialists.
Employee onboarding is a time-consuming process that involves a lot of administrative work from different departments. To provide a new employee with all the necessary information and tools, HR departments, IT specialists, and Team Leads need constantly communicate over documents, policies, and applications.
An established onboarding process allows for building a smooth immersion in work, reducing time spent on discussing bureaucratic issues, and improving efficiency.
Binadox Teams feature helps automate the onboarding process.
Teams Configuration
1. Сonnect collaborative apps
Binadox pulls a list of already formed teams from collaborative applications you use like G Suite, Office 365, or Okta. That is why as the first step you need to connect one of these applications to Binadox.
To start configuration you need to proceed to the Teams (Side menu > SaaS applications > Teams) and click on the “Connect App” button. After that, you need to select an app and an account to connect, if there is more than one.
Connect App
If you have connected collaborative apps before– these apps will be identified in the Teams sections. As the next step you need to select an app, and an account, if there is more than one.
Select a Collaborative App
Once Teams information is pulled from the chosen collaborative app to the Binadox, you will be able to check:
Existing Teams and sub-teams;
Number of members in each Team;
Icons of allocated applications per team;
Number of unassigned licenses across apps.
Teams with all data
2. Allocate employees in Teams
In case some employees do not belong to any Team, the system will show a warning notification. It is crucial to place all employees on the Teams they belong to (in the collaborative application) as applications are assigned to the Team, not to each member.
Unassigned Members
3. Assign working applications to Teams
When all employees are assigned to the required Teams, click on the Team name and view the Members and Apps details in separate tabs.
In the Apps tab, you can view the number of unassigned licenses that can be allocated to new employees (as a part of onboarding).
If you need to assign an application to the Team, click on the “Add App” button. The system will present you with the list of already integrated Binadox applications that can be assigned to the Team. Additionally, you can delete the app from Teams.
Add app
In the Members tab, you can view the number of used and underutilized licenses. You can also click on the “Add Member” button to invite new employees to the Team. It means that this member will have an access to the apps that belong to this Team. To do that, fill in all the necessary information in the popped-out “New Member” widow and click on the “Add Member” button.
Add new member
Additionally, you can delete members from the Team (as a part of offboarding). To do that, select the members you want to remove and click on the delete icon.
Delete Members
To sum up, automation of the onboarding and offboarding processes will make your organization a better place to work, while saving time and optimizing your valuable assets. As a result, it can improve employees’ productivity, as well as enable your long-term success.
Cloud computing has become one of the most skyrocketing, transformative, and innovative technologies of the 21st century, revolutionizing almost every industry on the planet. Talking numbers, in 2022, the global IaaS cloud has reached a mark of $120 bn, the global PaaS market has reached $110 bn and the SaaS market reached $177 bn, according to a Statista report.
Exploring cloud adoption among the industries, manufacturing, healthcare, retail and government are the industries that embrace the cloud services in the most rapid way as Stefanini Group research shows. However, law firms have been indecisive about cloud technology adoption for a long time. Recently, they’ve started demonstrating a more positive attitude to the cloud due to the advancements in cybersecurity, rising client demand, and the opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
However, what are the most common reasons why legal specialists still have some doubts about cloud deployment?
Why do some legal professionals stay away from the cloud?
Despite the multiple benefits of cloud computing, there are still some factors that keep legal professionals from migrating to the cloud. Let’s take a closer look at these factors.
Unpleasant experience
If a law firm experienced some issues while deploying cloud services in the past, it could have left a bad impression. For instance, the re-architecturing process was really challenging or the company didn’t consider the asset optimization in time and lost a huge amount of money.
Still, it doesn’t mean that it’s reasonable to reject everything connected to the cloud. Past troubles shouldn’t be considered representative of how most cloud servers operate nowadays. Some cloud providers give users the opportunity to try cloud services from various categories like compute, databases, and storage for free before purchase:
GCP offers 3 free options: 20 free services for everyone, $300 in free credits for new customers, and additional free credits for businesses.
Testing cloud services during free trial period before making any commitments is a good practice for understanding if it is suitable for business in terms of usability and future expenses.
Challenging migrations
Many law firms reject cloud technology as the migration process seems to be very difficult. The problem here lies in the fact that companies don’t understand the idea of moving to cloud and don’t know how to reorganize the existing infrastructure.
Several companies in the market can help organizations migrate to the cloud without much stress. Such cloud migration companies will help you decide on the best strategy to achieve a smooth transition to the cloud. Also, cloud migration companies help organizations navigate complexity, determine the right cloud strategy, operating model, roadmap, and ecosystem partners. They also help businesses to accelerate migration and modernization to the cloud.
Instead of dealing with all the above-mentioned practices, law firms can explore the market and find experienced specialists that will facilitate the migration processes, while the legal professionals handle their law-related tasks.
Additionally, some legal professionals believe that they give up control over their clients’ sensitive data and essential documents, as it seems safer to have all their data on servers physically located nearby. This point of view limits their ability to scale, as it’s more difficult in the case of on-premises software deployment. In reality, they are not giving up control or possession of their data, they are just moving it to a safer, easily accessible location.
Security and compliance concerns
Security concerns are the reason why some law firms remain dubious about using cloud technologies. It makes total sense as law firms have an increased degree of responsibility towards data confidentiality and data storage.
Back in the day, companies strongly considered in-house servers to be the most reliable option, and it was. However, modern cloud computing services are accelerating really fast and typically offer considerably more secure services today than on-premise solutions. Major cloud vendors like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are proven to be secure and compliant. They may help companies meet global compliance requirements such as GDPR, PCI DSS, and HIPAA. We’ve covered this topic more thoroughly in our previous article “Cloud Compliance Regulations and Best Practices”.
Reasons for law firms to migrate to the cloud
Let’s explore what benefits have motivated the industry to take a step toward cloud migration after all, and why it’s time for legal specialists to trust the cloud.
Cost saving opportunities
Cloud computing is a more cost-effective option for law companies, in comparison with the on-premises architecture. Here’s why: with the cloud, company owners don’t need to purchase expensive hardware, pay for its installation and maintenance, as well as find a place to store it and pay rent for the server rooms. Choosing cloud-based services, companies only pay for the ordered resources, according to the pay-as-you-go model.
One more case is when a company pays less, using long-term commitments like Reserved Instances or Spot Instances offered by cloud providers such as AWS or Azure. These opportunities can save an organization a significant amount of money if considered seriously and used with a sophisticated preliminary analysis of a company’s needs and resource consumption rates.
Law firms can also benefit from storing data on different cloud platforms that are compliant and safe. The risk of sensitive data loss reduces in this case, as the cloud vendors offer trustworthy disaster recovery systems, as well as regular backups.
Scalability
When data is kept on-site, the scalability process usually takes more time, money, and effort. Law firms using cloud-based services can perform their daily operations without updating or adding equipment, software, and so on.
Being able to focus on the growth of the business instead of continuously thinking about high costs is a notable advantage of cloud scalability. Additionally, suppose the company needs to take a break, cut down the number of employees, and scale down for the sake of optimizing the financial assets (for example, in times of crises like pandemics). In that case, they can easily resize their resources without letting the expensive hardware be covered by dust.
Stronger security
With the development of cloud technologies, it became clear that it’s time for changes and the cloud providers proved they can handle users’ data in a more secure and compliant way. Cloud can use a secondary server if the primary system fails. As a result, the risk of downtimes or equipment damage decreases. Cloud offers regular automatic backups if not disabled manually, protecting law firms from mission-critical data loss.
Enhanced collaboration
Cloud provides teams with effective collaboration, remote use of services, smart calendaring, virtual meetings, and centralized file storage. Using cloud computing, many firms can scale and expand with less friction. Some law firms have expanded to multiple locations with cloud computing serving as the backbone for this growth.
Nowadays, instead of actively searching for an in-person administrative staff member who can be expensive and resource-demanding, firms can hire a virtual assistant or other independent contractors to save time and money.
The next step
It’s hard to tell where the legal industry is going for sure, but the cloud will certainly play a key role in its evolution. In order to facilitate cloud resource management and cost optimization, law firms can use third-party solutions that provide a deeper view into the consumption patterns.
One such solution is Binadox that provides its users with both SaaS and Cloud Utilization Dashboards for reaching total visibility of cloud assets. Additionally, Binadox offers numerous cost optimization features like Rightsizing, Tagging, Cost Explorer, Automation Rules, and Advice section.
Cloud cost optimization features
Visibility and proper cloud management is something that not only law firms should take into consideration. Discover more cloud opportunities and Binadox will assist you on that journey. Register for a Free Trial and get the most out of your cloud.
The desire to decrease cloud expenses, as well as optimize the cost of the cloud architecture is reasonable – all the companies are seeking ways to improve their productivity and achieve cost savings for the sake of further development and innovation.
Major cloud vendors like Azure (Microsoft) and AWS (Amazon Web Services) offer various cost-saving practices that cannot be used by the companies running on-premise architectures and data centers.
However, to benefit from these cost-efficient cloud pricing models, the organizations should pay closer attention to resource usage, DevOps department decisions (as they’re responsible for cloud costs too), and long-term commitments such as Reserved Instances or Savings Plans.
Without proper cloud asset management companies receive huge cloud bills and cannot enjoy maximum return on investment (ROI). In this article, we’re going to discuss 7 ways to cut down cloud expenses and improve your cloud return on investment.
1. Take resource purchase seriously
A lot of companies prefer on-demand pricing which is more flexible regarding cloud management. However, there are options that are more appealing to many businesses. For instance, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft provide their users with large discounts (up to 72%) on EC2 instances or VMs in return for a long-term commitment. Let’s examine the most popular of them.
Reserved Instances (RIs)
AWS Reserved Instances and Azure Reserved VM Instances are not physical instances, but billing discounts applied to the use of on-demand instances. Investing in Reserved Instances, you pay for the entire term you committed to (1 year or 3 years) regardless of actual use and in return, you get a discount based on time commitment.
Nevertheless, it’s recommended to look before you leap – analyze the current cloud utilization rates and decide whether this strategy is good for the business. Various cloud management platforms like Binadox can facilitate the monitoring and tracking processes for IT and Finance departments. These platforms save companies time and money as they require no additional specialists for completing this task.
Savings Plans
Like RIs, Amazon Savings Plans pricing allows users to get discounts up to 72% compared to the on-demand pricing. However, unlike Reserved Instances, AWS Savings Plans are more flexible regarding the ways these savings can be applied across unified bills.
It’s worth mentioning that the users that purchased Standard RIs can sell them on the Amazon Web Services EC2 Reserved Instance Marketplace. It’s a useful practice in case the company has overprovisioned resources. However, there is no such option for Savings Plans. So, the companies opting to commit to Savings Plans usage should make sure that the proper planning strategy is implemented in their organization.
Spot Instances
AWS Spot Instances and Spot VMs in Azure and Google are specialized instances that give users the opportunity to access and utilize unused instance capacity, paying less than for the on-demand instances. Such instances offer users a discount of up to 90%.
While Spot Instances pricing seems to be more profitable than the standard on-demand one, Spot Instances aren’t the most reliable option. The thing is: the cloud provider can reclaim the Spot Instances you’re using at any time. If the cloud vendor needs them, they send users the notification that the Spot Instances will be taken back soon. It may result in downtime and issues connected to the customers’ satisfaction, performance failures, and money loss.
This way, Spot Instances aren’t the best fit for companies with critical workloads. So, it’s recommended to identify whether your company can tolerate the downtimes or not before committing to the Spot Instances deployment.
2. Size instances properly
To make the most out of cloud investments, business owners should do profound analytical work and choose the instance type that will serve best for their company. In other words, organizations need to have greater visibility of how much computing power and memory a specific application uses. It helps minimize the possibility of idle and underutilized instances draining the company’s budget.
As a rule of thumb, idle and underutilized instances are supposed to be rightsized. Still rightsizing may turn out to be a challenging task, as it involves sophisticated analytical work for identifying what instances should be selected instead.
Cloud cost management platform Binadox simplifies the rightsizing process and sends its users recommendations on what instances better match the current workload. Additionally, Binadox presents the information on the size and cost of the new instance that frees the IT and Financial departments from additional manual search.
3. Eliminate unused resources
Cloud services deployment is beneficial for many companies, as they are charged on an on-demand basis. However, those who deploy cloud products, pay not only for the used resources but for all the ORDERED ones. This way, companies pay for the assets whether they’re using them or not.
The best decision in this situation is to get rid of all the dormant resources: idle instances, old snapshots, unused elastic IPs, and so on. For instance, you can delete unassociated EBS snapshots, as they cost little separately, but in total make up large expenses.
Cloud management tools can help detect inactive resources, and either automatically remove them (with the help of automation rules, for example) or highlight them for manual review and notify you about their existence. Also, cloud management platforms can facilitate the tracking of these resources so that they are not left unnoticed.
4. Optimize storage
Storage can be scaled and rightsized like the instances. So, it’s recommended to observe your storage solutions on a regular basis. Additionally, you should consider other storage solutions offered by cloud providers to use the most beneficial and profitable ones.
You’d better identify the frequency and speed with which you’ll need to retrieve your data. In the case of using the standard S3 buckets for archival storage, you might benefit from moving that data to “cold” storage options like Glacier, as it costs less than the “hot” storage. Object expiration and transitions to Amazon S3 Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) and Amazon S3 Glacier can significantly reduce the total cost of S3.
5. Track data transfer costs
Inbound data transfers and transferring data to the cloud are typically free. However, outbound transfers (from the cloud) can cost you an arm and a leg. The charges depend on the region. To find out more about the data transfer cost specifications, read our previous article.
By having a full view of these types of charges, you can decide where to host your data. You can also try grouping resources within regions to avoid extra expenses. Keep an eye on not only what you have, but where you have it, so you will not waste a huge amount of money on data transfer.
6. Monitor and analyze resources utilization
A lack of visibility of your cloud assets can lead to resource redundancy and unreasonable spending. In this case, the more doesn’t mean the better.
You cannot analyze what you cannot monitor. First of all, you need to understand whether you’re using your resources to the fullest extent or not, and if you aren’t – draw some conclusions for future resource shopping. Various monitoring tools can make your life easier, especially for those who deploy a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud architecture.
7. Use cloud cost optimization solutions
In order to understand whether your strategy is effective, you should track your costs and realize your cloud resource usage patterns. A cloud management platform is an efficient tool for day-to-day task management and cutting down cloud costs. Also, CMP can help you avoid cloud resources sprawl, budget waste, and letting some kind of security threats occur.
Binadox provides its users with all cost data gathered in one place, helps to see the resources utilization rates, offers cost-saving features, and allows companies to get the most out of their cloud budget.
Cloud Optimization Features
Want to improve your cloud return on investment?
Sign up for a Binadox free trial and be aware of all the cost optimization opportunities. You can also book a demo to find out how to use Binadox to the fullest extent.
Cloud computing has gained huge popularity during the last decade, so more and more organizations wonder what cloud architecture to choose: single cloud, multi-cloud or hybrid cloud. It’s crucial to make the right choice, as building a cloud architecture is challenging and there is a chance that in the end, the company won’t get the expected result.
In this article, we focus on the hybrid cloud architecture, as it offers greater flexibility due to the agility of cloud platforms and the persistence of the on-premises architecture. Let’s identify the peculiarities of the hybrid cloud, the stages of its implementation, and scaling, as well as what benefits businesses can get from this type of cloud.
Explaining the hybrid cloud
A hybrid cloud implies the usage of one or more public and private clouds. Moreover, this type of cloud architecture gives companies the opportunity to deploy their applications, services, and data on the cloud or in-house, as necessary. This way the hybrid cloud approach ensures trustworthy protection of sensitive information and grants the company owners control over resource usage and maintenance.
Furthermore, hybrid cloud architectures are designed to work with already-purchased on-premises hardware, offering facilitated scalability, and the agility of the cloud platform at the same time.
That’s why it’s no surprise why hybrid cloud is becoming the favorite choice of most enterprises. Actually, 82% of companies opt for a hybrid cloud solution. RedHat survey explains the popularity of this type of cloud by the fact that it gives companies the opportunity to choose an optimal solution for each task or workload. The organization might use on-premise infrastructure for storing sensitive data, for example, and public cloud services for application development or hosting.
Moreover, hybrid cloud deployment is an efficient way to update and modernize IT apps and services. For example, organizations can add new artificial intelligence programs without getting their budgets down the drain in order to rearchitect their former networks.
Adopting hybrid cloud
Commonly, the process of adopting a hybrid cloud architecture implies three main stages:
Architecture choosing stage – the process of analyzing whether the hybrid cloud is the most advantageous cloud model for the company;
Sorting out assets stage – determining which IT assets would work better for the different cloud models;
Setting up and maintenance stage – implementation of cloud and developing operation strategy.
So, let’s start with the first stage of hybrid cloud adoption.
1. Choosing architecture
First of all, it’s crucial to understand whether your company made the right choice choosing the hybrid cloud at all.
To answer this question, consider 4 main types of cloud architectures:
The private cloud is a single-tenant, dedicated, highly automated environment which means that the organization using it does not share any resources with other users. This type of cloud is preferable to governmental and healthcare organizations as the private cloud is considered to be the most secure.
The public cloud is a cloud computing infrastructure that’s delivered remotely and shared across different organizations or a group of customers through a self-service interface. The public clouds are commonly used by the retail industry, as well as e-commerce, finance, and banking, due to their availability and agility.
The multi-cloud implies the use of two or more cloud platforms of the same type, the public or private ones. It’s the most popular type of cloud architecture. In fact, 92% of organizations deploy multi-cloud.
The hybrid cloud usually combines the public cloud with the private cloud and on-premise hardware and software. It is a good solution for those who used on-premises software and now want to be more flexible or want to run their own private cloud environments.
Public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud architecture
So, the decision-making process begins with realizing that not all organizations can and should run the hybrid cloud architecture. Here’s why: companies with fluctuating workloads due to unstable customer activity are better to take advantage of the dynamic scaling capabilities of pure cloud architecture to maximize the cost-efficiency. However, the large industrial businesses handling global operations may take the most out of this particular type of cloud, due to their need for onsite data centers with their remote facilities.
Also, the hybrid cloud architecture is a good solution for highly regulated environments, such as the pharmaceutical industry. For this type of company, operational efficiency is vital, so the ability to quickly develop and shift the workloads presented by hybrid cloud architecture is highly appreciated. This facility allows companies to meet market and innovation demand while reducing the operational costs of hardware and software usage.
2. Sorting out assets
When the company has made up its mind to run the hybrid cloud, it’s time to move further. As reflected in the heading of this section, the next stage implies proper research on what workloads, data, and assets can be moved to the cloud and what should be kept on-premise.
Many companies use the cloud for software demanding high computing power (for example, artificial intelligence or machine learning capabilities). Some companies use the cloud for archiving massive data and storing frequently accessed and sensitive data on-premises.
In the case when a company operates mostly on its own hardware, it can view the cloud component in a hybrid architecture as the abstract component of the on-premises network. It means automatically steering users to the appropriate hybrid cloud subsystem according to their needs, their efficiency and profitability expectations, as well as the company’s aims.
3. Setting up and maintenance stage
Processes of the implementation, maintenance, operation, and upgrades should be automated and agile. The process of providing maintenance generally offers three options the companies can choose from:
The cloud service provider handles the installation of the software and hardware of both the cloud system and the on-premises one. There are services like AWS Outposts and Azure Stack Hub available for performing this option.
The cloud service vendor offers software for the cloud and on-premises architectures, and the customer company undertakes the hardware maintenance (like local servers).
The company arranges the hybrid architecture itself, and it’s integrated into a major cloud vendor environment. In this case, open-source programs play the role of the backbone of the hybrid cloud system.
The companies that want to implement the hybrid cloud as fast as possible should choose the first option. However, they need to bear in mind that it implies a single vendor lock-in.
The organizations considering the second approach (when the cloud vendor deals with the software, and the company maintains the hardware) gain maximum hardware flexibility and get the chance to not depend on a single vendor. Additionally, there is an amazing possibility to upgrade dedicated hardware for numerous processing tasks, such as Artificial Intelligence workloads, independently from other systems.
With the third option companies gain full flexibility, however, they should remember that this option requires a team of technology professionals and investments, as well as development efforts to adapt open-source hybrid cloud systems. This approach is a perfect fit for tech organizations with strong IT systems.
How to implement a hybrid cloud
Here are the four key questions companies typically address when planning a hybrid cloud implementation.
What can help me to manage the hybrid cloud architecture?
Some organizations don’t even take the hybrid cloud model into account, as they are confused with the challenging day-to-day operations associated with the hybrid cloud deployment. Nevertheless, companies can reduce the risk of something going wrong with this new technology by introducing the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE).
CCoE (the team of cloud specialists focusing on cloud maintenance) ensures the hybrid cloud is an efficient solution for the company from both the installation and deployment points of view. The CCoE should focus on defining cloud strategies, assessing the required implementation resources; and reporting on any changes, including the positive moments, downfalls, and main conclusions.
To experience the advantages of this type of cloud architecture, IT teams should automate as many processes as possible. It will assist with the testing and maintenance of the architecture to ensure steady performance. This practice is widely known as “infrastructure as code” — the usage of fully automated programs to build, configure, deploy, and manage cloud systems.
How do I improve cost savings?
The cost management approach in traditional IT differs greatly from the hybrid cloud. There are two main ways to save the budget using the hybrid system:
Scale dynamic workloads up and down on public clouds and deploy the local cloud systems for non-fluctuate workloads.
Deploy third-party cloud cost management tools that help to achieve granular visibility into cloud cost and utilization. Those tools often allow setting up alerts and notifications so that the team stays in the loop of all important changes. There is no longer the need to monitor the assets 24/7.
How can I ensure data security and compliance?
The thought of storing all the sensitive information in the cloud can be disturbing for the companies that recently migrated to the cloud. The majority of them may think that it’s difficult to maintain the data security protocols required by cloud vendors and compliance regulations.
Although the major cloud vendors proved their trustworthiness in handling the critical data security and compliance requirements, companies should still pay close attention to data protection in a hybrid cloud. Data security should become and remain the top priority in the development and maintenance cycle. Organizations should ensure reliable identity authentication and authorization policies, as well as implement data encryption rules across the system.
Fortunately, nowadays companies can manage all of these security processes with the help of software automation that makes it much easier for businesses to adopt multi-cloud and hybrid cloud security policies. For instance, you can try such security-related features in Binadox. Sign up and test them for free.
How do I choose providers for the hybrid cloud architecture?
To successfully move to the hybrid cloud architecture, the company should take the selection of cloud providers very seriously. The organization should consider the services provided by each vendor, the compliance and security factors, as well as the financial aspects. Nowadays it’s easy to change the vendor if it doesn’t meet business requirements. Switching to a new vendor is more than possible, thanks to containerization, standardization of the cloud platforms, and infrastructure-as-code technology.
There are also amazing cost-saving opportunities for the long-term commitments offered by the major cloud providers. However, opting to install the hybrid cloud vendor’s entire hardware and software solution will lock the company into that relationship.
Summing up
Сloud architecture is the key to staying competitive and following the innovative approach. That’s why it’s crucial to make the right decision regarding the type of cloud system that will be used in the company, as it can ensure flexibility, data security, productivity, and efficiency, as well as cost savings.
Although the hybrid cloud is beneficial from various points of view, it can be difficult to implement and maintain. Сompanies should take the management and cost optimization aspects seriously to achieve their cloud goals and get strategic results.
Companies adopting cloud architecture are still thinking that they’re “owning” IT instead of “consuming” it. As a result, businesses develop strategies, negotiate contracts, and make economic decisions without taking into consideration that the financial and management approaches are different for on-premises and cloud architectures. Not only does it make organizations believe that the cloud migration doesn’t worth it, but even makes some companies reverse their course and go back to traditional IT.
In this article, we discuss five of the most persistent, relevant, and crucial cloud economics mistakes that companies usually make. Additionally, we explore the possible solutions to the financial issues in the cloud.
Mistake 1: Keeping in mind CAPEX instead of OPEX
Issue
On-premises software operates according to a capital-expenditure model, where data-center capacity is built with a view to the distant future. In this model, the cost of additional resources (e.g. capacity) is minimal, and companies measure their cost efficiency and allocate future budgets by looking at the average cost and resource utilization rates.
Cloud computing has changed the capital-expenditure model (CAPEX) to the operating-expenditure model (OPEX) due to cloud infinite scalability. OPEX implies that the companies pay for what they actually consume or, to be more clear, for what they subscribed to.
All in all, nowadays the most efficient cloud economics is grounded on the ability to accurately evaluate the demand, as well as the corresponding marginal costs at any given moment. In fact, the organization should pay for resources only when it needs them, rather than paying for unused assets, letting the budget go down the drain.
Solution
Companies should develop a dynamic operating-expenditure approach to cloud economics that instantly optimizes supplementary costs. This strategy means that the business owners and IT departments choose cloud services that match the current workload requirements.
For example, a media company can scale up its compute capacity ahead of major customer promotions or special occasions like holidays to meet the demand and be able to handle increased user traffic. After the promotion ends or the holiday season comes to the end, the company scales the compute capacity down and easily avoids extra cloud spending.
Mistake 2: Forecasting cloud spending based on the past utilization only
Issue
In the context of the capital-expenditure model used in traditional IT, it was normal to plan the future budget, as well as allocate resources keeping in mind the past consumption level and costs. This approach hardly fits the operating-expenditure world of the cloud, as the cloud nature is pretty much fluctuant.
Additionally, the traditional IT method to forecast future expenses is a big issue in the cloud architecture perspective, as it’s more difficult to estimate the cloud spending and make allocations to support new cloud-based products. Forecasting according to the capital-expenditure model often results in a greater than 20% mismatch between the planned and actual spending and leads to rapid and stressful rebudgeting.
Solution
In order to improve the forecasting and budget planning experience companies should consider the business goals and priorities. For example, if an organization is planning a huge promotion tied to Cyber Monday, it will probably see a rise in customer interest. So, the company should think ahead of the future and think of the additional resources, and the possible cost spikes as well.
Since the cloud costs depend on the usage, the supplementary resources required during the busy seasons can cost a company an arm and a leg. Establishing the unit economics (such as compute cost per customer) for the major applications can help in this situation. This approach requires a mindset shift toward a consumption model. This way, the company owners better understand the business drivers of their cloud spend and its corresponding impact on unit economics.
Mistake 3: Considering only the benefits of cloud elasticity
Issue
The elasticity and scalability of the cloud are economically perfect for workloads with flexible cloud utilization patterns. Unfortunately, the majority of companies suffer from the constantly increasing costs caused by the inability to analyze and predict the application demand that would match the real one. So, most companies end up having overprovisioned resources, which leads to wasting money.
Here is another problem: if we take a video-streaming company as an example, we’ll see that the storage consumption is steadily increasing as the number of subscribers grows. It’s great, as the storage is used to the fullest extent. However, the continuous growth in subscriber data means continuous increases in storage costs as well.
Solution
Considering the case of underutilization, companies need to pay close attention to the examination of their workloads which can help to assess whether their elasticity patterns would lead to savings on the cloud or not. If the cloud elasticity drains the company’s budget, the cloud cost monitoring tools are a must. Only with a detailed view of the asset usage and corresponding expenses the business can evaluate the excessive resources and downsize them.
If we’re talking about exponentially rising costs, greater visibility can help as well. You can’t control what you can’t see. So, constant monitoring of the expensive resources should be the companies’ highest priority, too.
For instance, with Binadox (cloud asset management and cost optimization platform) you can see the whole picture of your cloud resources usage and the costs. Also, you can create the rightsizing recommendations based on the current workload, as well as adjust the system setting up the planned workload to receive more accurate recommendations.
Binadox Rightsizing
Mistake 4: Migrating all the workloads to the cloud
Issue
One of the points why companies move to the cloud is the cost-saving opportunities that cannot be achieved within the on-premises architecture. That’s why some organizations shift the entire existing infrastructure and services to the cloud. However, it’s vital to remember that not all business applications are suitable for migration to the cloud.
Sometimes running apps in the cloud is not physically possible. Other times, it’s not financially wise to run in the cloud, as the cost of rearchitecting may be really high.
“Not all business applications should migrate to the cloud, and enterprises must determine which apps are best suited to a cloud environment”.
Organizations should compare the cost of the app deployment within the traditional infrastructure, as well as the cost of migrating this app and all corresponding data to the cloud.
The applications that shouldn’t be moved to the cloud, may be run on the company’s custom-designed on-premises infrastructure. The scale and homogeneity of these workloads may create on-premises economics that is equivalent to or better than those offered by cloud providers.
Mistake 5: Ignoring security threats and compliance requirements
Issue
The more data and services are stored in the cloud, the more chances of security issues occurring. Although awareness about cloud security aspects is growing, more often it is challenging to identify and remediate these issues.
The consequences of the security and compliance violations are tangible – they include huge fines, reputational damage, and even lawsuits. So, organizations don’t want any trouble with cloud security aspects at all.
Solution
Companies should design a cloud security strategy, as it leads not only to the trust issues from the client side but also may cost a company a lot of money. It’s better to start with the identification of the potential security threats, such as data breaches, account hijacking, unauthorized access, data loss, and vulnerabilities of applications and systems. When the weak spots are discovered, the organization should solve the issues as soon as possible. Read about the most widespread security concerns and their solutions in our article “Shared Responsibility Model for Cloud Security”.
Besides security questions also should be taken into consideration. You can read about the compliance regulations and the best practices in our previous article “Cloud Compliance Regulations and Best Practices”.
To sum up
These cloud economics mistakes are familiar to businesses of all sizes. When migrating to the cloud, and in the post-migration state, it’s essential to have a clear picture of the costs and hurdles you will have to overcome to enjoy all the benefits of the cloud.
When only planning the migration, ensure you find the right cloud vendor — the one that follows all the industry regulations and offers the services that suit your budget and business needs. Once this step is completed, think about the practices you will use to manage your cloud assets.
The sooner you’ll start optimizing your cloud costs, the better for your company’s well-being and development. Binadox offers real-time cost data, as well as instance resizing recommendations, immediate security notifications, tagging, and automation rules features.
Sign up for the Binadox free trial to avoid financial mistakes and stay within your budget.
We have to admit that we use far too many applications on a daily basis and can not imagine our lives without them. Our bills and shop orders are paid in two clicks in online bank applications. We no longer carry our paper notebook to get an access to to-do lists or actually meet with anyone to share the latest news.
We can get any service/product we need for our personal satisfaction via applications. Installed in a few clicks, registered in one – then you are charged monthly or for having access to extra features. It is so easy to miss the moment when expenses start growing.
Now let’s imagine how many applications are used within one organization to make all the work done? Add here cases when workers find new ways and new applications to complete their work in a short time and with less effort…The companies’ SaaS portfolio turns into chaos. No need to speak what happens to the companies’ budget.
That’s why the SaaS optimization strategies are so actively discussed by mangers. It allows making the most out of money investment in services provisioned for business.
So, in this article we are going to explain the process of SaaS resource optimization, make arguments why it is crucial for the bottom line of the business. Additionally, we’re going to discuss the best practices for getting the maximum benefit from your SaaS services and apps.
Why SaaS optimization is important
Broadly speaking, there are 2 main reasons why the SaaS optimization become a question of the great importance to many companies using the SaaS model:
1. Significant SaaS spend
The CIODive report states that most departments use between 40 and 60 different applications, companywide – 200 applications. No wonder each application generates a particular cost. As a result, organizations end up spending a great deal of money on covering SaaS-related expenses.
According to Insivia research, companies spend on average $2,623 per employee within a year to provide access to required SaaS. Considering the fact that some of the purchased applications are renewed automatically (vendor sticks to recurring billing), there are good chances that a company might continue paying for solutions no longer utilized.
*CIODive - publication operated by Industry Dive. CIO Dive provides in-depth journalism and insight into the most impactful news and trends shaping IT.
*Insivia - a global consultancy and marketing agency focused on working with SaaS & technology companies.
2. Underutilized resources
Rising costs in SaaS bills do not necessarily mean rising workloads that push utilization rates. Some team members keep adding new solutions to the toolbox but as a rule of thumb, those solutions are only used once to quickly resolve ongoing tasks and then forever forgotten.
Taking into account the chaos appearing due to lack of control – not only some services are abandoned, but also some of them serve to execute the same functions. In this case, organizations pay for the resources that don’t bring any additional value or profit.
When reporting period comes – the financial department discovers that SaaS expenses exceed their expectations and, what is more, exceed the allocated budget. Once the issue becomes visible, management concludes that SaaS optimization tools are a must to have in order to avoid money waste. A penny a day keeps poverty away.
SaaS optimization best practices
When speaking about SaaS optimization, the course of corrective actions may differ according to the company’s goals but most of the CEOs vote for optimizing SaaS costs in the first place.
In this article we have outlined 5 cost-saving recommendations for companies whose SaaS portfolios are plunged into chaos:
1. Remove duplicate applications
It is impossible to optimize SaaS applications that are not: a) discovered, b) categorized in a logical manner, c) justified by teams.
Initially, companies should start by identifying all applications involved in task execution together with their utilization rates and costs. Binadox users can do that by checking the SaaS Utilization Dashboard.
SaaS Utilization Dashboard
As the next step, companies need to look at the purchased applications from the functional perspective and then prioritize them based on the effectiveness and convenience parameters.
Functional categorization can dramatically simplify the task of finding “twin-applications” that do not create additional value. There are some of the categories SaaS applications fall into:
Online training classes or learning platforms;
Team collaboration and communication;
Project and team management;
Recruiting (as well as onboarding, and offboarding);
Customer support and customer relationship management;
Accounting and budgeting;
Document and asset management.
We also suggest documenting everything for future use – the company’s goals and, respectively, the SaaS portfolio can change over time.
2. Improve renewal experience
Taking into account the vast number of applications used by an average organization, the renewals happen on a nearly daily basis. So, they play an essential role in your SaaS optimization journey. In order to optimize the renewal process and facilitate it, companies should learn the 3 integral part of the renewal process:
The pre-renewal stage;
At-renewal stage;
The post-renewal one.
At the pre-renewal stage, companies arrange app inventory, then identify the ownership and allocate the subscriptions to the users to see whether the service is used to the fullest extent and was agreed upon by the IT department in the first place. This step is finished by prioritizing apps. The factors like convenience, profitability and rate of utilization are significant here.
At-renewal stage implies eliminating the wasteful resources and optimizing the underutilized ones. It’s a common practice to resize the existing licenses and payment plans. It is done based on the number of users actively deploying the app and the business value of the application. Especially for that purpose, Binadox provides a Renewals calendar that allows monitoring the above-described parameters and setting alerts for upcoming payments.
License Manager
The last stage is post-renewal. Companies should keep in mind that asset optimization is a continuous process. It’s crucial to keep a system of record of all changes done during the first two stages.
Rightsizing is all about reducing the number of licenses (underutilized, unused, unassigned, or overprovisioned ones), or downgrading the expensive plans (if there is no need to have advanced functionality to have the work done).
There are applications like Zoom and Office 365 that have basic plans and users can upgrade them by purchasing extra features. It’s similar to a electric razor: it has a basic tool – the razor itself, and various nozzles and accessories. When you upgrade your Office or Zoom plan, you just add the required “nozzles”.
That’s why it can be more difficult to optimize this type of liceses: you need to view the utilization rate of each feature to make the right decision. Binadox helps to deal with rightsizing both Zoom and Office 365. It suggests the plan that is better for you and your employees from the cost and usage perspective.
Office 365 Underutilized Features
Moreover, as Zoom has a free plan that can be enough for most users, an employee can easily move to the free plan, especially if assigned work doesn’t require many additional features available with the paid plan. The same applies to Office 365.
It offers multiple plans including various features, however, the most staffed and expensive plans might be not required at all. Binadox will tell you about it as well.
4. Reduce or eliminate shadow IT
Maybe it’s rather unexpected but shadow IT isn’t always a bad thing. You can read about shadow IT risks and benefits in our previous article. However, it makes the work of the finance and security departments much harder. The lack of visibility can lead to overspending and increase security risk, as well as lead to compliance issues.
It’s recommended to select the most beneficial apps from the legal and safe offerings in the market and provide a catalog of various options to employees. This way you give them a choice and offer only the trustworthy services avoiding the increase of shadow IT.
5. Plan ahead for future
SaaS optimization is a continuous and infinite process. So, knowing how to optimize your SaaS resources can help to make sure that you won’t waste any time or money down the road.
Visibility into what you’re currently spending gives business owners the opportunity to make smarter decisions when it’s time for new purchases, updating contract terms, and adding new licenses. From here, companies can decide what to keep, what to get rid of, and what to invest in more.
Summary
In this article we’ve highlighted the best practices that can help you deal with a challenging task of optimizing your SaaS assets. Also, we’ve discovered the main reasons why the elaborate work of SaaS optimization worth the effort and time.
You can significantly facilitate the monitoring of all your SaaS licenses, subscriptions, and applications with the help of Binadox. It offers the solutions that can be applied immediately, as well as helps business owners to anylize the situation, draw valuable conclusions and create a SaaS management strategy for the future.
With Binadox, you have full control of your SaaS portfolio. Start optimizing your SaaS assets today.
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