Market Guide for SaaS Management Platforms

Published 26 November 2018 - ID G00342784 - 8 min read

By Analysts Manjunath Bhat, Chris Silva

Initiatives: Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Management

Organizations often encounter challenges in managing SaaS digital workplace applications

such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite. Infrastructure and operations leaders who
need to improve manageability and control should use SaaS management platforms.

Overview
Key Findings
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
■ SaaS applications have their own native IT administrative consoles, requiring administrators to
use multiple consoles to manage their SaaS applications.

■ The native IT administrative consoles for SaaS applications often do not fully satisfy the
management requirements for organizations.

■ SaaS management platforms (SMPs) currently have six major functional categories:
administration, IT role-based access control, policy management, license management,
workflow automation and reporting.

■ SMPs are relatively new and generally have strengths for particular cloud services (e.g., Office
365, G Suite) and particular functional categories (e.g., reporting, role-based access control,
workflow), but these products will expand to support a broader range of SaaS applications.

Recommendations
Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders focused on optimizing IT operations for Office 365, G
Suite and other SaaS applications should:

■ Avoid allowing IT management limitations to inhibit adoption of new productivity and

collaboration capabilities. Use an SMP to implement the necessary governance and
administration to enable end-user adoption of SaaS functionality.

■ Use the native SaaS application scripting capabilities (e.g., Microsoft PowerShell or Google Apps
Script) for tactical automation and custom reporting.

Market Definition
SaaS management platforms (SMPs) allow IT operations administrators to manage the day-to-day
operations for Microsoft Office 365, Google G Suite and other frequently used SaaS applications.

Gartner, Inc. | 342784

Page 1/9
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
SMPs allow IT administrators to manage application policies, take corrective action, track
application usage and automate IT administrative tasks.

Market Description
While SaaS applications have their own native management consoles, the depth of their
capabilities often doesn’t completely meet enterprise requirements. SMPs provide additional
capabilities to fill these gaps. Today, these products mostly focus on managing specific SaaS
environments (e.g., Office 365). SMPs will increasingly focus on consolidating the management of
multiple SaaS applications.

Figure 1. SaaS Management Platforms

This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.

Source: Gartner (November 2018)

As shown in Figure 1, SMPs have six main functional categories:

Gartner, Inc. | 342784

Page 2/9
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
■ Administration: SMPs automate common IT administrative actions that are either not easily
done in the native SaaS IT administrative console or not possible at all. They may also perform
common IT tasks across multiple SaaS applications. Examples of these functions include
resetting passwords, assigning licenses and creating users.

■ IT role-based access control (RBAC): These tools can provide more granular role-based IT
administration, both in terms of scope (e.g., departments or regions) and functionality, than
native SaaS administrative consoles.

■ Policy management: SMPs can track policy compliance (e.g., file sharing noncompliance) and
alert potential administrators of noncompliance events. These tools can also take action (e.g.,
delete user or file, reset password) based on detected events.

■ License management: SMPs track application usage and manage licenses.

■ IT workflow automation: SMPs can automate IT processes that involve manual steps (or require
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.

scripting). Employee onboarding (e.g., provisioning application entitlements and group

assignments) is a standard workflow use case.

■ Reporting: SMPs provide out-of-the-box reports and the ability to create customized reports, and
they may store data longer than some of the native SaaS administrative portals.

SMPs are used by IT support teams, typically in the application support organization, end-user
computing team and IT service desk.

Market Direction
SMPs are an emerging IT operations space. The vendors entered the market by addressing tactical
IT administrative challenges in the native SaaS administrative consoles (e.g., a lack of role-based
access control), and most of the vendors are still focused on a particular SaaS environment (e.g.,
Office 365). Elements of SMPs have some functional overlap with tools in related spaces (see
Figure 2) such as cloud access security brokers (CASB; see “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access
Security Brokers”) and software asset management tools (see “Augment Your Discovery Tools for
Cloud Software Asset Management Right Now”).

Figure 2. How SMPs Compare and Contrast With CASBs and SAM Tools

Gartner, Inc. | 342784

Page 3/9
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
 This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.

Source: Gartner (November 2018)

SMPs Focus on Day-to-Day IT Administration

SMPs overlap, to some extent, with these adjacent technologies, but the products are designed for
IT operations. CASBs focus on discovery of unauthorized SaaS usage and other security features;
SAM tools focus on enabling license compliance and cost optimization. SMPs focus primarily on
day-to-day IT operations challenges.

IT organizations initially buy SMPs because they have a specific tactical need (e.g., RBAC or policy
management). Gartner believes that organizations will eventually use SMPs to realize greater
efficiencies by automating common IT tasks that are typically done manually or through scripting
(e.g., Microsoft PowerShell, Google Apps Script). Employee onboarding and offboarding are
standard use cases. Additionally, when employees change roles, they often are not automatically
Gartner, Inc. | 342784
Page 4/9
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
removed from and assigned to new team drives or groups. As employees increasingly use SaaS
applications, the inefficiency of these manual activities will become more apparent, and workflow
automation will become more important to IT administrators.

Market Analysis
Enterprise SaaS adoption is still relatively new, and many of the SaaS application vendors have
focused more on application functionality and less on the needs of IT operations. This can lead to
limitations in the native SaaS administrative consoles, including insufficient reporting, coarse IT
permissions and burdensome administrative tasks that require significant manual effort.
Organizations have responded to this by:

■ Filling gaps by creating scripts for additional automation and custom reporting beyond what is
available in the native SaaS IT administrative portal.

■ Accepting the IT management limitations (and note

This research potential risk)
is restricted of personal
to the lack ofuse
governance and control.
of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.

■ Delaying the rollout of new end-user functionality because of the lack of governance and
control.

Digital workplace initiatives aim to promote the use of new end-user features and functions. Thus,
SMPs can accelerate the adoption of new end-user functionality by ensuring the organization has
sufficient IT management capabilities.

IT Operations Task and Workflow Automation

Security, compliance and policy management are the most common triggers to implement an SMP.
These areas represent the most acute pain that will justify an investment. Organizations are also
starting to use SMPs to create IT administrative workflows that allow administrators to automate,
hitherto manual, tasks. For example, the simple tasks “create a new user” or “place new user in the
North America sales group” may have to be done manually, depending on the SaaS application.
This becomes increasingly time-consuming and error-prone as organizations use more and more
SaaS applications.

Software Usage Tracking

When enterprises purchase SaaS applications to replace shadow IT services, they want to ensure
that end users are actually using the capabilities to which they have been given access. SaaS IT
administrators must be able to track licensing and usage to ensure the organization is not
spending money on unused licenses. SaaS vendors do not have the incentive to help customers
spend less money on their software, so organizations should implement their own processes and
tools to rightsize software spending. License management capabilities among SMPs vary, so
organizations looking for several SMP functions should also compare the license management
capabilities to those of SAM vendors (e.g., Aspera, Flexera, Snow Software, Zylo).

Gartner, Inc. | 342784

Page 5/9
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
A New Category of End-User Administration Tools
SMPs are focused on managing the SaaS component of a user’s digital workplace. SMPs are
analogous to traditional management tools such as group policy objects (GPOs), client
management tools (CMTs) and enterprise mobility management (EMM) tools (see Figure 3). Just
as organizations use GPOs, CMTs, and EMMs to enforce policy and support endpoint devices,
SMPs help organizations provide similar functions for SaaS applications.

Figure 3. SaaS Management Platforms Complement CMT and EMM Tools

This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.

Source: Gartner (November 2018)

As SaaS applications become increasingly integrated into an employee’s digital workspace, the
need to apply controls similar to those used on PCs and mobile devices will become increasingly
apparent. Indeed, SMPs have started to integrate with EMM suites and IT service management
(ITSM) tools to support a broader set of IT operations workflows. For example, if a data loss
prevention (DLP) policy violation is discovered, administrators can use the SMP to revoke access
to relevant files and invoke an EMM tool to remotely wipe a device.

Representative Vendors
The vendors listed in this Market Guide do not imply an exhaustive list. This section is intended to
provide more understanding of the market and its offerings.

Market Introduction

Gartner, Inc. | 342784

Page 6/9
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
Table 1 includes a partial list of SMP solution providers (see Note 1). New vendors are emerging all
the time. Every vendor has a particular strength in a certain aspect of SMP functionality (e.g.,
Office 365 RBAC, reporting and multiapplication support).

Table 1: Representative Vendors in SaaS Management Platforms

Vendor Product, Service or Solution Name

atwork (Delegate365) Delegate365

AvePoint AvePoint Cloud Management

BetterCloud BetterCloud

This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.

CoreView (formerly 4ward365) CoreView

Kaseya 365 Command

Nuvolex Nuvolex

Quadrotech Radar

Sharegate Sharegate

Source: Gartner (November 2018)

Market Recommendations
■ Do not let SaaS administrative consoles dictate your IT administrative roles, responsibilities and
organizational model. Determine the appropriate roles and organizational construct, and use an
SMP to implement them.

■ Do not let IT management limitations inhibit your adoption of SaaS applications. Use an SMP to
get the necessary governance and administration to allow end-user adoption.

■ Stay informed of your SaaS vendor’s roadmap to determine if your needed IT management
capabilities will be added to the native administrative console. Use PowerShell scripts (in the
case of Office 365) if you simply need a small amount of additional automation and custom
reporting.

Note 1
Representative Vendor Selection
Gartner, Inc. | 342784
Page 7/9
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
The representative vendors listed in this research are a subset of the total market. The vendors
included here are ones that offer most of the critical capabilities of an SMP and that we have seen
clients include in their own vendor evaluations.

Document Revision History

Market Guide for Cloud Office Management Tools - 14 September 2017

Recommended by the Authors

How to Organize IT to Support Office 365, G Suite and Other Digital Workplace Applications
Maximize the Value of Office 365 or G Suite by Making It Part of a Digital Dexterity Program

Solution Path for Implementing and Managing Office 365

A Framework for Working Toward GDPR Compliance While Using Google G Suite or Microsoft
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
Office 365

Recommended For You

Magic Quadrant for Cloud Management Platforms

Critical Capabilities for Cloud Management Platforms

How to Manage SaaS Performance When SLAs Remain Immature

Use Monitoring for SaaS Despite Its Limitations

Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’: Client Management Tools

© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc.
and its affiliates. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without Gartner's prior
written permission. It consists of the opinions of Gartner's research organization, which should not be construed
as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources
believed to be reliable, Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such
information. Although Gartner research may address legal and financial issues, Gartner does not provide legal or
investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this
publication are governed by Gartner’s Usage Policy. Gartner prides itself on its reputation for independence and
objectivity. Its research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from
any third party. For further information, see "Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity."

Gartner, Inc. | 342784

Page 8/9
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.
 About Gartner Careers Newsroom Policies Privacy Policy Contact Us Site Index Help Get the App

© 2020 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.

This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.

Gartner, Inc. | 342784

Page 9/9
This research note is restricted to the personal use of emilie.tremauville@insead.edu.