Can you imagine a world without apps? 

Cloud applications have become central to how we innovate in business – how we make decisions or even take actions every day. And while they’ve been absolute game-changers, the sheer number of apps we use and the staggering velocity with which we add or swap them in our tech stacks has created a dizzying momentum that makes it nearly impossible for any human to keep up.

To put some numbers to it, most organizations:

  • Have 300-600 cloud apps in use across various teams
  • Add 15-25 new apps to the mix every month (that’s 180-300 new apps per year!)
  • Procure apps outside of IT 75% of the time
  • Swap up to 50% of their app tech stack every two years

It’s no wonder IT teams are grappling with how to manage, support and protect their exploding cloud application portfolio. In fact, it’s created an existential crisis for many IT organizations who are well past the point of trying to use spreadsheets to track the continual flux of applications and their owners and users.

And IT teams are outnumbered by the cloud applications in their orgs – left out of the majority of purchasing decisions but saddled with the responsibility of protecting users and data across a sprawling portfolio of sanctioned and shadow SaaS applications.

  • What app will pop up next? 
  • Where are the overlapping SaaS Apps that we have in our org? 
  • Which apps are waxing or waning in adoption? 
  • How much of our spend is wasted on duplicate licenses? 
  • Where are we getting our biggest ROI? 

The truth is – in situations like this – there really is only one answer to the problem: when humans can’t keep up, we need to let software manage software:

  • To give us superhuman reach and visibility into every app
  • To show us how our users use apps 
  • To monitor our organization’s sensitive data as it flows through a broad app ecosystem 
  • To automate repetitive processes like user onboarding and offboarding
  • To allow users to self-govern and get the apps they want, but in a way that is visible and above-board

We need to be able to see and act on every single app in our entire cloud application portfolio – to program desired, autonomous actions into the machine and let software manage the software. In short, we need SaaS Management