We’re very pleased to announce that we’ve just extended our global Software Asset Management (SAM) leadership by acquiring Meta SaaS, the developer of the most advanced software as a service (SaaS) spend management solution on the market. The solution is being rebranded as Flexera SaaS Manager.
Why have we made this acquisition? The game has changed for companies everywhere. Customers are finally demanding more from their technology assets and suppliers. They expect – and deserve – faster time to value, more complete solutions and trustworthy data to drive better business outcomes. We’re delivering on our promise to meet these needs by rapidly building or buying the best technology, like Meta SaaS.
SaaS is becoming a very expensive and risky venture for our customers. The number of SaaS apps in use is skyrocketing – especially if you’re a small or mid-size company. You may be surprised to know that as much as one third of the SaaS applications running in your environment aren’t even being used. Why? If you’re organization is like most, you don’t have clear visibility into the SaaS apps in use across the enterprise. That means you can’t effectively manage them, so your costs and risk spin out of control.
At Flexera, we’re all about optimizing technology assets and minimizing risk. With Flexera SaaS Manager, now we can help you rein in your SaaS spend and minimize risk.
Best-in Industry: 32,000+ SaaS Apps in Catalog & 250+ Direct SaaS App Integrations
The SaaS spend management tool you select needs to have both depth and breadth. Flexera SaaS Manager has got them both. With a catalog of more than 32,000 SaaS applications, you can intelligently manage contract renewals through proactively generated, easy-to-read reports. Flexera SaaS Manager can also monitor license utilization for more than 6,200 of those SaaS applications. But the secret sauce lies with deep, direct product integrations. Flexera SaaS Manager has more than any other SAM Provider – more than 250 direct integrations!
True SaaS Spend Optimization
By integrating directly with the most widely used SaaS applications in the world – from Adobe® to Zoom®, we can deliver business intelligence about when and how users interact with them. That means understanding true SaaS ROI and the true impact of SaaS application usage for your high-spend SaaS apps like Salesforce®, Office 365®, Slack™ and Box® just to name a few.
To get to optimization, Flexera SaaS Manager does all the foundational work for you. For example, you have to know which SaaS apps are running in your environment, and who’s using them. The tool will give you instant visibility – regardless of whether those apps were procured through official channels or unofficial ones (Shadow SaaS). We can securely connect with expense, accounting, and payment systems to identify and consolidate all SaaS apps in use into a single dashboard – shining a light on Shadow SaaS.
Once you know what SaaS apps you’re running, you can take the next step of optimizing them. For example, one telecommunications company leveraged Meta SaaS (now Flexera SaaS Manager) to scan just one year’s worth of Concur expense reports. They discovered $10 million worth of Shadow SaaS in their environment – 295 unsanctioned products from 266 different vendors.
Minimizing SaaS Risk
If your company is like most, as employees come and go and roles change you struggle with securing corporate data from the people that shouldn’t have access to it. A lot of companies use tactics like checklists, emails and single sign-on (SSO) technology. But SSO only works for the SaaS apps it’s connected to. Most organizations don’t deploy SSO for all their SaaS vendors – especially when Shadow SaaS is rampant and employees are using SaaS apps IT doesn’t even know about.
In addition, most people don’t realize that a SSO system can be out of sync with the HR system and/or user account information in the SaaS application itself. This happens all the time, for instance, when employees have been given direct access privilege outside of your SSO processes. Having this blind spot exposes you to regulatory compliance risk like GDPR, which requires you to understand the systems containing personally identifiable data, and who has access to them.
Flexera SaaS Manager will help you resolve the SaaS management and security blind spot. Augmenting current SaaS security processes, it will connect your HR record to SaaS vendor records, producing intelligent, accurate checklists identifying exactly what each employee truly has access to. This lets your IT team compare its records against hard data when creating secure SaaS accounts.
We think every customer needs to understand exactly how much waste and risk their SaaS investments expose them to. Only a tool with true depth and breadth can get you there. As the global market leader in SAM – we can now offer you the best SaaS spend management capability on the market. For more information about Flexera SaaS Manager, check in with your Flexera account rep, Or just contact us.