Alpin - SaaS Management Blog

Why read this with nearly infinite news on the internet? We try to pick good articles you might like, and we think you might chuckle a little at our interpretation of the headlines. Plus we have to do this cause it’s a marketing thing, you just do it.

26 Jul

Cost Savings That Hide Inside Cloud Software Spend

Cloud software can contain significant amounts of easy-to-cut costs. Like an orchard of low-hanging fruit.

If you’ve worked in finance, procurement, financial planning, or accounting, you may understand the good feeling that comes with reducing costs. If you can cut costs with little time or effort – even better!

This week, we’ll focus on what those cloud costs tend to be, and on the next blog post, we’ll discuss the tools you can use to cut those costs quickly.

20 Jul

Weekly Roundup July 20, 2018

Why read this with nearly infinite news on the internet? We try to pick good articles you might like, and we think you might chuckle a little at our interpretation of the headlines. Plus we have to do this cause it’s a marketing thing, you just do it.

17 Jul

What Real-World Problems Does Shadow IT Create? Known Issues And Horror Stories

In a recent blog post, we explored just how much of an issue shadow IT has become. The numbers do not lie. Shadow IT has permeated everywhere. But is it truly a problem in need of a solution?

In this post, you can read about real-world issues many companies can expect from shadow IT. We also share some egregious shadow IT situations we’ve encountered.

12 Jul

Weekly Roundup July 12, 2018

Why read this with nearly infinite news on the internet? We try to pick good articles you might like, and we think you might chuckle a little at our interpretation of the headlines. Plus we have to do this cause it’s a marketing thing, you just do it.

10 Jul

The SaaS Stampede Cycle Explained – The Dire State of Shadow IT in Enterprise

Users flock to the newest cloud app, bypassing administrators and spreading shadow IT rapidly. How does it happen? What can you do about it? We’ll show you in this post.

First, let’s look at the effects of the SaaS stampede over the last few years.

“Dire” or “upheaval” may sound like alarmist words, but we’re experiencing a massive shift in IT budgets, spending, and oversight:

Cisco reported that large enterprises use over 1,200 cloud services on average, and fewer than 50 of those cloud services are known by IT.
CIOs guessed that, on average, their companies have 51 cloud services, but actually had 15-22 times that amount.
Gartner found that shadow IT is 30-40% of IT spend; Everest group says it’s 50% or more.

If you work in IT management at any level, you likely have this struggle: I want to be proactive, but others would rather sit by until something bad happens. When it comes to SaaS sprawl, something bad has happened, you just can’t see it. In fact, not seeing it is the bad thing! That realization should jump-start you getting in front of this before something worse happens.

So how did we get here?

06 Jul

Weekly Roundup July 6, 2018

Why read this with nearly infinite news on the internet? We try to pick good articles you might like, and we think you might chuckle a little at our interpretation of the headlines. Plus we have to do this cause it’s a marketing thing, you just do it.

03 Jul

G Suite vs Office 365 – Google Drive, Sharepoint / OneDrive (Part 3)

Continuing with our theme, Google Drive contains fewer advanced features than Microsoft’s products. However, most people would not need those features. Sharepoint exemplifies this scenario perfectly.

This review will differ from Part 1 and Part 2, for a couple reasons:

Cloud storage comes with more security concerns than the other products we have discussed. We cover that.

These product’s respective histories help us understand their functions, so we explore their origins briefly.

TL;DR G Drive is a personal file storage and sharing tool that’s been adding more enterprise features like Team Drive. Sharepoint is a much more complex tool built for organizations that can require a lot of management. G Drive currently has little in common with Sharepoint; instead, Google’s features completely overlap with OneDrive for Business.

Bonus helpful comparison table: See this nice table from UW-Madison that puts features side-by-side. Despite what UW’s table implies, Google Drive is HIPAA compliant.

Continue reading

28 Jun

Weekly Roundup June 28, 2018