Oomnitza Survey Reveals Half of Enterprises Waste More than 10% of Their Annual Budget on Software, SaaS and Cloud Infrastructure

Less than One Third of Respondents Indicated Mature Process Automation for SaaS License and Cloud Infrastructure Reclamation and Optimization

Oomnitza, the leading provider of Enterprise Technology Management (ETM) solutions, today announced a new survey, the 2023 Snapshot Survey: SaaS and Cloud Spend Optimization & Automation. The research, conducted by YouGov, found that half of enterprises waste more than 10% of their annual budget on software, SaaS and cloud infrastructure and a third of respondents reported wasting between 10%-20% of their annual application expenditures due to unused, unaccounted for or mismanaged SaaS and Software subscriptions and licenses.

While many organizations have instituted automated processes to manage SaaS and cloud, the majority (54%) rated their workflows to govern authorized use and licensing of SaaS applications and cloud infrastructure only as “satisfactory.” Nine percent of organizations expressed experiencing unplanned spend and budget issues due to immature or nominal process automation maturity.

“Oomnitza’s research underscores the double-sided sword that cloud and SaaS represent,” said Valerie O’Connell, research director at EMA. “Anyone with a credit card can spin up resources. That’s great for adoption and ease of access, but it’s also a recipe for overspending. Cloud instances, that for whatever reason become abandoned, can keep racking up charges for underlying compute, network and storage resources. Effective process automation capabilities add much needed control and optimization of SaaS, software and cloud investments.”

Additional Survey Findings

The 2023 Snapshot Survey: SaaS and Cloud Spend Optimization & Automation, a survey of 213 senior level IT professionals, was independently conducted by YouGov, a global market research and analytics firm. The report provides insight into software, SaaS and cloud resource management, governance and process automation deficiencies. Key findings include:

• 50% of respondents lost at least 10% of their annual expenditures on software and SaaS applications; 17% lost at least 20%
• 53% of respondents reported spending more than 10% of their annual budget on underused, unmanaged or unaccounted for cloud resources; 19% wasted at least 20%
• 63% of respondents reported that their organization experienced unplanned cloud and SaaS expenditures and issues with varying workflow automation maturity
• Only 29% of respondents felt that their organization had mature process automation for software, SaaS and Cloud spend governance

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There were some interesting trends when the sample was analyzed by company size and industry:

• Large enterprises (more than 5000 employees) appeared twice as likely to experience significant (30%) software and SaaS spend management issues compared to small enterprises (less than 5000 employees)
• 43% of utilities and infrastructure firms and 32% of professional services firms wasted a significant amount (between 10% to 20%) of their annual software expenditures
• Large enterprises were not immune from wasting expenditures on cloud resources with a reported 22% overspending by more than 20%
• Nearly a quarter both consumer and public services firms (23%) and utilities and infrastructure firms (22%) overspent at least 20% on software and SaaS
• 11% of large enterprises reported using mostly ad-hoc or manual processes to manage SaaS applications and cloud infrastructure, resulting in unplanned expenditures and issues
• 75% of professional services firms reported either satisfactory or less than optimal use of automated processes to manage SaaS licenses and cloud resources

“IT leaders must reduce spend and optimize resource use in order to survive the current macroeconomic climate,” said Arthur Lozinski, CEO and co-founder of Oomnitza. “This research serves to offer greater insight into quantifying the amount of software, SaaS and cloud expenditure waste. It also underscores the need for enterprises to mature and expand their IT process automation capabilities to improve operational efficiencies. We’re living in an era where IT has to do more with less and that cannot be accomplished with manual ticket-based processes.”

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Oomnitza empowers modern IT organizations to scale by orchestrating and automating key business processes across siloed technologies. Delivered as an agentless SaaS solution, its ETM platform provides versatile low-code workflows and IT process automation templates that leverage an enterprise’s existing tools to improve operational, security and financial efficiency. This enables IT organizations to reduce tickets and repetitive, error-prone manual tasks to improve technology utilization, service delivery and expenditure.

Oomnitza facilitates broad workflow adoption for end-to-end IT process automation, such as:

• Streamlined onboarding – from Hire to Productivity
• Secure offboarding – from Separation to Recovery
• Continuous audit readiness – from Scope to Evidence
• Software & SaaS management – from Discover to Optimize
• Optimized procurement – from Plan to Service.

Survey Details

The research, conducted by YouGov in September 2022, surveyed 213 senior level information technology professionals in enterprises ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 employees across multiple industries in the United States. The survey represented a cross section of industries, including utilities and infrastructure, professional services, and consumer and public services.