WHY SAAS MAKES ENTERPRISES NERVOUS

Recently, in an idle moment, I took five minutes to fill in one of those business questionnaires about our priorities for the next year. One of the questions struck me as odd. How big was our company: 250 employees; between 250 and 1,000; between 1,000 and 9,999; or even bigger?

And my reaction was, ‘who cares?’ Is this 1999? If it is, and I have indeed gone back in time, I feel cheated to have done so not only without noticing but without once having had a ride in a DeLorean.

Size really doesn’t matter

The number one company on the FT’s list of Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies is HelloFresh, a German supplier of ready-to-cook fresh meal kits that uses Google Keyword Planner to anticipate trends and demands for fresh ingredients. The company employs fewer than a thousand people, grew at an average rate of over 400% a year for five years, has taken a big bite out of the supermarkets’ home delivery market, and is valued at close to €2 billion.

The cloud is the ultimate disruptor. It gives companies of any size access to software, data, services and even — through providers such as Amazon Web Services and Digital Ocean — corporate-level data-centre capabilities. The cost and complexity of development and infrastructure are no longer a barrier to entry. But there is a catch. To take advantage of this new reality, companies must change the way they think.

The agile adopters will win the day

The availability of a wide range of versatile and low-cost SaaS applications can help level the playing field, allowing even SMBs to compete with enterprises. But some companies are still highly conservative in their attitudes to the cloud. They resist the adoption of new services or apply lengthy assessment processes that slow their teams down and lose them momentum in the market.

Of course, for those companies that do have a growth mentality, this only increases the value of SaaS as a differentiator. The pricing model and contract flexibility of SaaS favours the agile SMBs giving them access to the latest business tools without upfront capital costs. And because most SaaS applications are scalable — letting you both increase and decrease usage dynamically — it’s easier to tailor costs to needs than it would be if you were stuck with the fixed capacity of internal resources.

A small business with a handful of laptops can now compete with enterprises and not be at a disadvantage. But more than that, by taking full advantage of what the cloud has to offer, that same small business can leapfrog start-ups and competitors similar to itself, to grab market share and position as the leader in its category.

Let us manage cloud compliance

Ampliphae is a specialist in cloud visibility and management. Our solution lets you track exactly which SaaS applications are being used on your network and who in the organisation is using them. It gives you the information you need at a glance, so you can easily ensure compliance. And it lets you predict rates of adoption within your organisation, so you can manage licensing costs.

With Ampliphae, we take care of SaaS visibility and compliance, so you can concentrate on using the cloud to give your business the edge and help you punch above your weight.

To find out how Ampliphae can help take control of the cloud, contact us today.