Insights from the 2022 Gartner Market Guide for SaaS Management Platforms

Gartner® recently released their 2022 Market Guide for SaaS Management Platforms and confirmed what we at Zylo have long known to be true. As SaaS stacks and spend continue to grow, so too do the financial, security, and operational risks.In today's economic climate where cost savings, efficiency, and risk mitigation are of the utmost importance, SaaS management platforms offer a way for organizations to rein in overspend, optimize their software stack, and protect identities and important data.At Zylo, we’ve been helping organizations save money, mitigate risk, and improve the employee experience for more than six years now, we’re honored to be included by Gartner as a Representative Vendor in the Market Guide.

Defining SaaS Management Platforms & Capabilities

In the report, Gartner defines the SaaS management market saying, “SaaS management platforms (SMPs) provide central admin console capabilities to discover, manage, automate, optimize, govern and enable SaaS used by employees. SMP also enhances protection of identities and data while using SaaS.” With this definition, the analysts at Gartner outline the seven capabilities that set SaaS management platforms apart in the market. Specifically, SMPs enable organizations to:

• Discover - uncover sanctioned and unsanctioned SaaS use and cost
• Manage - centralize the configuration and policy management for multiple SaaS applications within a single console
• Automate - simplify the administration of SaaS with turnkey templates, a workflow engine and intelligence-driven actions powered by AI and machine learning
• Optimize - surface analysis, insights, alerts, and automation to optimize SaaS licenses and costs
• Protect - analysis, insights, alerting, and automation to protect organizational identities and data within SaaS applications and to ensure SaaS policies and configurations are in compliance with corporate, security, or regulatory standards
• Govern - the ability to report, alert, and measure SaaS availability, as well as the breadth and depth of integrations with SaaS apps and other IT tools
• Enable - an employee-facing application catalog to simplify SaaS requests. In addition, analysis, insights and alerting to help drive SaaS adoption and maximize ROI

While these capabilities align with what we’re hearing from our customers and what we’ve built here at Zylo, there are a few that stand out.

Discovery

We could not agree more with Gartner. Discovery is at the heart of SaaS management. As we like to say, you can’t manage what you don’t know exists. This is why we’ve built a patent-pending AI-powered matching engine to automatically and continuously find and classify all of your SaaS applications and purchases. Even if they’re miscoded or improperly categorized. This engine fuels our Zybrary, the world’s smartest application library, comprised of more than 20,000 applications and curated from nearly $1T in spend.

Optimization

Companies are overspending on software. In fact, we know most organizations overspend by about 15%. Gartner projects that through 2027, organizations that fail to attain centralized visibility and coordinate SaaS lifecycles will overspend on SaaS by at least 25% due to incorrect and unnecessary entitlements and not rationalizing overlapping tools and instances. To put this simply, as your SaaS spending continues to grow, so does the opportunity for optimization and cost savings. This is why we’ve built functionality into the Zylo platform to reduce overspend and help drive cost savings, such as:

• Our insights engine, Zylo Insights, which uses contract details and usage data to surface personalized, prioritized, and actionable recommendations to optimize your SaaS portfolio
• Tools to rationalize your SaaS portfolio and ensure you have the proper mix of applications for your business
• Our ability to help you operationalize and take control of SaaS renewals with features like renewal alerts, a renewal calendar, SaaS benchmarks, and more

Automation

SaaS management isn’t just about saving money, it’s about saving time too. We’ve built automated workflows to drive optimization activities. This will be a big focus for us this year as we continue to innovate, developing new ways to automate any ​​business process or task associated with your SaaS management program.

Gartner Recommendations and Next Steps

With benefits like greater visibility of your SaaS, the ability to rein in overspend and mitigate security risks, it seems like a no-brainer for organizations to get started with a SaaS management platform. In fact, Gartner predicts that SMP adoption will grow in the next few years. “By 2027, 40% of organizations using multiple SaaS applications will centralize management using an SMP, and increase from less than 25% in 2022.” If you’re looking into SaaS management platforms, the Market Guide outlines a few recommendations for organizations looking to start on their journey:

• Gartner first recommendation is to bring relevant stakeholders to the table. This means partnering with procurement, finance, line of business, IT, security, and application leaders to cover all phases of the SaaS lifecycle. As we like to say at Zylo, SaaS management is a team sport.
• Define the requirements you need in a SaaS management platform. Gartner also cautions to ensure these are attainable requirements. There’s no denying that the SaaS management vendor landscape can be confusing. Adjacent market tool providers (looking at you SAM, ITSM, and CASB!) promote products and features that provide only some of the capabilities that Gartner identifies as required for SaaS management. Be sure to do your research to understand market dynamics, available capabilities, and proven use cases. (Hint: The Market Guide is a great place to start - get your complimentary copy here.)
• Finally, build a business case for SaaS management. Compare the investment in a SaaS management platform against anticipated returns that align to strategic value for your organization.

For any organization thinking about SaaS management, I’d consider this guide a must-read. Access your complimentary copy of Gartner 2022 Market Guide for SaaS Management Platforms here. To learn how Zylo can help you reign in overspend, reduce waste and start saving on SaaS costs, schedule a personalized demo with our team. Gartner, Market Guide for SaaS Management Platforms, 13 December 2022, By Dan Wilson Et Al. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.