Meet Dennis, an IT manager shopping for a SaaS IT monitoring solution. Dennis wants his IT team to benefit from the ease of access cloud enables. But comparing license costs between the SaaS and self-hosted software options, Dennis’s enthusiasm is mitigated. This blog post will help Dennis (and you too) understand the full value of migrating IT monitoring to the cloud by considering a SaaS IT monitoring solution’s total cost of ownership or TCO.
SaaS’s powerful little secret: Access to state-of-the-art technology without the need for upfront investments
Why should you be considering such a move to Saas IT monitoring in the first place? Because ever since the pandemic, organizations are accelerating the transition of entire workflows to the cloud as a cost-effective and seamless option to drive innovation and keep people connected to business-essential data.
SaaS is essentially a life-saving option for any organization looking to meet ever steeper digital transformation challenges—while satisfying users for more powerful, flexible IT resources. This includes the increased need for computing power brought by the emergence of Big Data and AI-based tools in the workplace—think ChatGPT (and friends). Teams responsible for IT infrastructure monitoring will also want their tools to adapt to swift technological changes and become more agile in managing the organization’s digital environment. And so, looking into SaaS IT monitoring makes a lot of sense.
SaaS solutions let you :
- Scale both software and hardware needs, at will and instantly.
- Ensure always up-to-date and operational teams.
- Transfer to the provider the responsibility for the solution’s maintenance.
- Reduce deployment time.
- Access state-of-the art computing power to support advanced automation and AI features – with no upfront investments.
- Ensure a standardized, high security and compliance level for hosted data.
A cloud-first strategy to refocus IT teams on core business
It’s no wonder many organizations are now adopting a SaaS strategy for the procurement of new technological tools. Cloud is the cornerstone of agile digital workplaces, facilitating collaborative work, 24/7 access to data and tools, and process automation.
Cloud-first strategies encompass applications, platforms, and infrastructure. They call for unified practices and so, many organizations are also refreshing their technological stack, making room for a new approach in managing IT—in effect ensuring their IT teams enjoy the same type of productivity-enabling tools which benefit business teams.
Applying the concept of a cloud-first strategy to the tools IT teams use the most, their IT monitoring solution, for example, will help the team refocus on their core business: ensuring optimal digital performance and delivering business value.
With SaaS IT monitoring, ITOps focus on high value, business- aligned tasks such as anticipating downtime, setting up business views, sharing insights with business teams and developing the observability stack.
The 10 benefits of a SaaS-based IT monitoring strategy
- Instant monitoring, without technical installation
- Productivity gains for teams
- Faster updates and upgrades
- More flexibility and automation capabilities
- All-inclusive initial investment – which makes advocating for budget much easier and transparent
- A more secure monitoring platform
- A high level of availability guaranteed by the hosting provider (typically above 99%)
- Additional cloud-based computing capabilities
- Significantly lighter touch maintenance and daily operations
- A highly competitive TCO
Beyond first appearances: The attractive TCO of SaaS
Considering all of the benefits of the SaaS model, its most obvious advantage stands out: affordability. It stems from the fact that software switches from being a capital investment (CAPEX) to becoming a service or operational expenditure (OPEX), which makes it much easier to sell as a predictable and controllable budget item, when pitching for the need to support the organization’s digital transformation initiatives.
SaaS is an attractive proposition for finance stakeholders because it also allows to eliminate or share many direct costs, such as most setup, hosting, maintenance, security, redundancy, and backup costs, for example, as well as limiting exposure to service interruption costs.
In understanding the full value of an IT monitoring solution, one must consider all the costs of IT monitoring, beyond just the licensing. In other words, examining the SaaS IT monitoring solution’s TCO.
Reducing IT’s economic AND carbon footprint
Opting for SaaS IT monitoring solutions is also part of a digital sustainability approach with a focus on reducing IT’s carbon footprint and continuously optimizing energy consumption.
With SaaS IT monitoring, organizations reduce the number of servers they use, opting rather to share such resources. The carbon footprint of on-premises solutions is significant, and so, SaaS solutions may present an excellent option to contribute to reducing the organization’s environmental impact. Good to know: In 2019, Amazon Web Services evaluated that their cloud computing services were working at an 88% lower carbon footprint than that of on-premises equipment.
SaaS may not be appropriate in some contexts
Although a SaaS IT monitoring solution may appear to be the Holy Grail, there are some caveats. Migrating IT monitoring to the cloud may not be suitable in some business contexts or organizations, due to sector-specific strategic constraints. For example, some government, financial or health organizations may be required to host their IT monitoring applications on-premises. There may also be needs relating to the organization itself or specifically to IT monitoring needs making SaaS IT monitoring a less desirable option. It’s a choice that depends on multiple factors and your organization’s unique expectations.
This is why we recommend making time for a thoughtful comparison of on-premises vs. SaaS IT monitoring, to grasp all the possible nuances in the actual savings SaaS would enable. Also ensure you carefully communicate to the current in-house IT monitoring team that a SaaS option would not eliminate their roles, but rather allow them to refocus on operating and customizing the monitoring platform.
Going for SaaS? Two important safeguard checks:
- Make sure you have a contingency plan to manage the chosen service provider to limit risk for the organization. Make sure you compare service commitments and innovation roadmaps.
- Plan for an exit: Ask about data recovery provisions once the contract is over and what this may cost your organization over the medium and long term.
It’s obvious that migrating IT monitoring to the cloud will more often than not be more advantageous than self-hosting your IT monitoring solution. SaaS will most likely make your team more agile, adaptable, and powerful, and this at the best possible TCO. But as we saw above, you may have good reasons to keep IT monitoring on-premises and we understand that too.
At Centreon, we believe in giving each organization the power to choose. We thus provide the most agile, digital performance driving IT monitoring solutions based on several deployment and pricing models. On-premises or SaaS IT monitoring? Open source or commercial off-the shelf? Why not a little bit of both – if that fits your organization’s current requirements? It’s yours to choose between Centreon Open Source, the Centreon IT Edition, the Centreon Business Edition or the Centreon MSP Edition.
If you’d like to conduct a careful TCO assessment, don’t go it alone — read our latest expert content “IT monitoring and TCO:
SaaS or self-hosted?” You’ll find some insights as well as a complete list of potential hidden costs to consider, so you can choose a monitoring solution which meets both your expectation and budget. Contact us today to pick your next IT monitoring solution – whether SaaS or on-premises.
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