It’s easy to buy cloud-based applications. Too easy, in fact. According to recent reports, the average small business has 40 to 60 SaaS apps, while the average midsize company has close to 100 or more. Small to midsize enterprises (SMEs) spend as much as 12 percent of their revenue on SaaS.

As much as 20 percent of this spending is wasted.

Cloud adoption is relatively straightforward. It generally refers to the implementation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions such as Microsoft 365 or Salesforce.

Cloud migration is considerably more difficult. It refers to the process of moving an existing on-premises application to a cloud platform.

The Software-as-a-Service market (SaaS) market continues to experience rapid growth, with surveys suggesting that almost all organizations now use at least one cloud application. According to the 2023 State of SaaSOps Report from BetterCloud, organizations use an average of 130 SaaS applications.

As we discussed in our last post, cooperative procurement contacts help government agencies, educational institutions and some nonprofit organizations save time and money on technology acquisitions by aggregating purchasing power. Analysts say state and local governments save more than $300 billion of taxpayer dollars each year through increased purchasing efficiencies.

Businesses across the globe are expanding their use of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to support hybrid work models, modernize IT environments and improve agility. In the process, many are also inadvertently putting business-critical data at risk.

As we discussed in a previous post, there remains widespread confusion about the cloud’s “shared responsibility” security model. Major cloud service providers such as Microsoft and Google have strong measures in place to protect their platforms, but their customers are responsible for securing their data within these cloud environments.