Leading IT Financial Management Software Company Predicts Growth in Shared IT Services and Demand for CIOs to Justify Investments in IT Spending
Bellevue, Wash. – November 17, 2009 – Apptio, the leading provider of on-demand IT Financial Management software, today released its top five expected financial management trends in IT for 2010. Faced with a variety of options such as SaaS and cloud computing, today’s IT and finance leaders are struggling to make informed decisions about how to source their IT Services. Additionally, the lack of visibility into spending and utilization makes it difficult to demonstrate the value IT is providing to the business. In the battle to minimize costs and onslaught of outsourced computing models, 2010 will be the year organizations begin executing against the vision of business-IT alignment, as outlined by the trends below.
Apptio’s Top 5 Financial Management Trends in IT for 2010 include:
1. CIOs will Adopt Greater Financial Management Discipline. Enterprises will no longer be able to manage IT without automated financial management systems in place. Drastic cost cutting has CIOs realizing they cannot run IT without proper financial management discipline. General purpose spreadsheets or corporate planning systems are no longer sufficient to manage the myriad of computing models and dynamic nature of today’s IT infrastructure.
2. CEOs will Require IT to Demonstrate Value of Services. IT organizations that cannot explain the total cost of an IT Service to business leaders will begin losing credibility. Like any service provider, IT must track the cost of delivering goods and services. They must have systems in place to analyze, allocate and reduce costs, and communicate to the CEO and other business leaders the value IT is providing.
3. Role of the CIO will Shift to a Service Provider. Up until this decade, the role of the CIO has focused on technology. If the business wanted to implement a new application or technology, their only real choice was to obtain support from internal IT. In the last few years, several forces have gained critical mass to change that model. Internal IT is now one of many options, and today’s CIO must act as a central “Service Provider” pooling IT resources for efficiency and deliver services to many different buyers within the organization. As a Service Provider, CIOs must develop better processes for managing the supply and demand of IT Services, whether sourced internally or externally, and the cost and quality of those delivered from his or her organization.
4. IT leaders Must Understand Cost & Benefit of Cloud Computing and SaaS. Business leaders now have the option of going directly to outside vendors to purchase IT services. This puts incredible pressure on IT to understand their internal cost per service, and whether or not a cloud or SaaS offering is truly better for the business. Additionally, there is still a lot of hype and uncertainty around the full cost of cloud computing services, requiring more in-depth analysis of the cost-benefit tradeoff of the Cloud. The adoption SaaS and Cloud will continue to grow exponentially, and better management systems and cost analysis will be grow with them.
5. Virtualization Drives Shared Services Model. In the past, each business unit owned their piece of IT and managed their portion as an expense of doing business. Today, IT acts as a central service provider to all business units. This distributed shared-services model, accelerated by technologies like virtualization, makes it complicated to accurately track chargeback, usage and ROI. The combination of the shared service model and virtualization technologies will drive adoption of more sophisticated IT Financial Management systems that can track the cost and usage of IT Services in this complex environment.
“Today’s IT leaders are faced with the daunting challenge of transforming their IT organizations, and becoming world-class service providers,” said Sunny Gupta, CEO of Apptio. “With the cloud providing new computing alternatives and virtualization increasing complexity in IT, it is becoming impossible for organizations to keep track of the cost of IT services, let alone make decisions about where to invest. With the insight Apptio gives our customers, they’ve been able to reduce cost by 10%-15% and automate ITFM processes around IT Service costing, budgeting and cost optimization.”
About Apptio
Apptio is the leading independent provider of on-demand Technology Business Management (TBM) solutions for managing the business of IT. Apptio enables IT leaders to manage the cost, quality and value of IT Services by providing deep visibility into the total cost of IT services, communicating the value of IT to the business through an interactive Bill of IT™, and strategically aligning the planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. Apptio’s TBM solutions play a critical role in helping companies understand and drive chargeback, virtualization, cloud and other key technology initiatives. Global enterprise customers such as Bank of America, Boeing, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, St. Luke’s Health System, and Swiss Re rely on Apptio® products and services to reduce costs and align IT with business priorities. For more information, visit the Apptio website or the Apptio blog.
Contact:
Karli Overmier
Barokas PR for Apptio
apptio@barokas.com
206-264-8220
