CloudEagle.ai Recognized for it's AI/ML Capabilities in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ For SaaS Management Platforms

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July 24, 2024
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$1,000-$3,500.

That’s how much enterprises are spending per person for software tools. That is a LOT.

This means a large enterprise could be spending $40 to $100 million a year just on SaaS tools, according to CloudEagle.ai’s 2023 SaaS Spend Report.

Even though the numbers show a growing adoption of SaaS applications, more than half of that spend is not utilized properly, as Gartner estimates that 30% to 40% of enterprise IT spend goes to Shadow IT, contributing to SaaS sprawl and increased costs resulting in poor ROI and impacting the bottom line.

Enterprises often lack the resources to curb this uncontrolled proliferation (sprawl) of SaaS apps. Ask us; we’ve observed this in close quarters across some of the world’s biggest companies.

So, in 2021, we started CloudEagle.ai to tackle all this and more!

CloudEagle.ai helps IT, procurement, and finance teams streamline SaaS management, access governance, and procurement.

Image of CloudEagle's magic quadrant

And in just three years, our AI/ML innovation has been recognized in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SaaS Management Platforms.

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What are the problems that enterprises are grappling with?

1. Lack of comprehensive visibility and features to manage the entire SaaS lifecycle

CloudEagle.ai’s 2023 SaaS Spend Report reveals that enterprises typically use between 300 to 400 SaaS applications. Most enterprises believe that their software asset management or IT service management tools will be sufficient to manage SaaS.

However, SAM and ITSM tools are designed for on-premise software and lack the key features needed to manage SaaS applications, starting with limited integrations. While they can integrate with SSO and use browser plugins for some visibility, it remains insufficient for comprehensive SaaS management.

2. Surface-level insights leading to poor optimizations

SAM and ITSM tools typically provide basic insights into software usage, but they lack the deep visibility needed for optimizing SaaS applications as they don’t have direct integrations with applications.

For instance, while these tools may show overall app usage, they don’t give granular data on specific feature adoption or underutilized licenses across your SaaS stack. Without detailed insights, enterprises miss opportunities to streamline spending and usage, leading to inefficient SaaS management and wasted resources.

3. Lack of automation

Lack of automation is a critical challenge for enterprises today. Teams must manually track and manage SaaS renewals, license downgrades, and cancellations for tools like HubSpot and Jira, leading to missed deadlines, overspending, and unused subscriptions. Without automation, valuable time is wasted, and the risk of costly errors rises.

Additionally, the absence of automated procurement workflows forces procurement teams to chase stakeholders for approvals and requires IT teams to manually provision and deprovision apps.

These manual processes create bottlenecks, consume resources, and increase the potential for human error, leaving enterprises vulnerable to inefficiencies and security risks.

4. Change management struggles

Change management is a significant challenge for enterprises, particularly when users struggle to navigate or understand new SaaS applications. This often leads to productivity issues, as employees face a steep learning curve with each new tool.

Traditional tools that enterprises use now don’t offer the comprehensive support needed to manage these transitions smoothly, which results in miscommunications, delays, and frustration.

The lack of bidirectional workflows forces users to jump between multiple platforms just to complete tasks like renewals or approvals, disrupting their flow and increasing frustration.

Instead of being able to handle these tasks within the tools they're already on and comfortable with, like Jira, ServiceNow, etc., employees are forced to navigate unfamiliar interfaces, leading to wasted time and inefficiencies.

5. Lack of actionable insights in negotiations

Without complete visibility into SaaS usage and spend, enterprises are at a disadvantage during contract negotiations. SAM and ITSM tools might provide high-level data but fail to offer actionable insights like usage patterns, vendor benchmarks, or feature adoption rates, all of which are crucial when renegotiating contracts.

For example, without knowing exactly how much of your Salesforce or Slack licenses are actually used, you can’t push for better pricing, leaving money on the table.

6. Poor ROI due to unused licenses

Another major challenge for enterprises in SaaS management is poor ROI caused by unused licenses. Without proper visibility into how licenses are being utilized, companies often end up paying for seats that sit idle.

The absence of license harvesting workflows means organizations are unable to reclaim or reassign these unused licenses effectively. Instead, they unknowingly let them accumulate, and when renewal time comes, these unused licenses are still billed, further inflating costs.

This lack of insight and optimization leads to significant budget waste, as enterprises continue to pay for licenses that offer no real value, ultimately driving down ROI.

Even with the availability of dozens of SaaS management platforms, these problems don’t just exist; they "thrive". These traditional SAM, ITSM tools, and other run-of-the-mill SaaS management platforms fall short when it comes to providing actionable insights, realizing savings, and automating tedious IT and procurement processes.

Why CloudEagle.ai, And why is it the key to managing the entire SaaS lifecycle?

CloudEagle.ai is driven by a deep obsession with solving customer challenges. We actively listen to our customers' pain points, understanding their unique needs and frustrations, and build solutions tailored to address those issues.

This customer-centric approach has allowed us to evolve beyond a SaaS discovery tool into a comprehensive platform that meets the real-world demands of modern enterprises.

Now, CloudEagle.ai caters to organizations struggling with the challenges of subpar SaaS management and enables them to discover, optimize, govern, and renew SaaS from one platform, realize savings, and automate complex processes.

1. Complete Visibility on the SaaS Lifecycle

With SaaS purchases happening across various departments, gaining full visibility into the organization's SaaS stack is crucial. CloudEagle.ai provides a single pane of glass into every SaaS application, from procurement to renewal.

Using spend and app discovery, IT and procurement teams can uncover both managed and unmanaged SaaS applications, enabling them to visualize their entire SaaS landscape.

This level of visibility ensures that every tool, subscription, and vendor contract is accounted for, eliminating shadow IT and wasteful spend.

Image of CloudEagle's shadow IT module

Automated alerts will notify any unsanctioned applications (purchased using corporate credit cards) entering the system, enabling the admin to mitigate the risks of shadow IT in its early stages and keep the portfolio optimized.

2. Deeper Telemetry on Assets

Beyond basic monitoring, CloudEagle.ai stands out for its industry-leading integration library of 500+ applications, highlighted by Gartner as a key differentiator.

These direct integrations offer unparalleled telemetry, allowing organizations to track granular details across their entire SaaS portfolio. Unlike other SMPs, which often provide surface-level insights, CloudEagle.ai delivers deeper visibility into critical data points such as user activity, license utilization, and application performance.

Image of CloudEagle's usage data

With CloudEagle.ai, teams can not only track who is using each application but also access detailed insights, such as how Zoom licenses are being used—tracking the number and duration of meetings—or how many envelopes have been sent through DocuSign.

This level of detail enables organizations to optimize license allocation effectively, ensuring every license is used to its full potential.

This deeper telemetry is a significant advantage, offering precise, actionable insights that drive more accurate optimization and governance of the SaaS lifecycle, something that other SaaS management platforms cannot match.

3. Meet People Where They Are - Bi-Directional Integrations

CloudEagle.ai offers bi-directional integrations not only with popular platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams but also with Jira, ServiceNow, and other essential enterprise applications.

These integrations allow users to manage renewals, review intake requests, handle access requests, and approve them directly within the tools they already use.

Image of CloudEagle's renewal management module

By enabling teams to perform these actions without leaving their familiar platforms, CloudEagle.ai significantly reduces the learning curve for new users.

This minimizes disruption, allowing users to focus on their tasks rather than navigating a new system. Whether approving SaaS purchases or managing renewal workflows, CloudEagle.ai simplifies change management, making the platform easier to adopt and master.

4. Automated Workflows to Eliminate Manual Processes

The complexity of managing SaaS contracts, renewals, and licenses can often burden IT and procurement teams due to time-consuming manual processes.

While many platforms offer solutions only for specific tasks, only CloudEagle.ai consolidates all critical workflows under one roof, providing a comprehensive solution to manage the entire SaaS lifecycle.

One of the major pain points enterprises face is the manual effort involved in onboarding and offboarding employees—requiring teams to visit each application individually.

Procurement teams also struggle with chasing stakeholders for purchase request approvals, and renewals tracked in spreadsheets frequently result in unexpected auto-renewals and increased spend.

Image of CloudEagle's onboarding module

CloudEagle.ai automates these processes through configurable workflows that streamline SaaS management. The platform automates employee onboarding and offboarding, ensuring new hires are productive from day one and that access is securely managed.

It also assigns intake requests automatically to relevant stakeholders, with built-in escalations to ensure timely approvals.

Image of CloudEagle's procurement workflows

Further, CloudEagle.ai’s AI-driven capabilities extract metadata from contracts, creating a centralized renewal calendar so teams can proactively manage renewals and avoid unnecessary auto-renewals.

By unifying these workflows, CloudEagle.ai reduces administrative burdens, saves time, and enables teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.

5. License Entitlement Optimization

CloudEagle.ai goes beyond just identifying savings and offering surface-level insights; it delivers real-time actionable data that enables organizations to realize savings immediately.

The platform highlights underutilized licenses and inactive users, allowing teams to configure workflows that automatically downgrade or remove these licenses, turning potential savings into actual savings.

Image of CloudEagle's license harvesting feature

Gartner highlighted CloudEagle.ai’s license harvesting feature, which allows enterprises to improve ROI by harvesting unused licenses and downgrading license tiers. Through direct integration with Slack and Microsoft Teams, CloudEagle.ai streamlines communication with employees and SaaS application owners, expediting the process.

Image of CloudEagle's license downgrade alert

For example, with Office 365, CloudEagle.ai can identify inactive licenses, track product adoption like Teams or OneDrive, and recommend license downgrades or reclamation workflows to save on SaaS spend.

With CloudEagle.ai’s license harvesting feature, you can configure automated workflows to reclaim and reassign unused licenses to new users, maximizing utilization and ROI.

6. Accurate Pricing Intelligence for Negotiations

One of the biggest challenges procurement teams in enterprises face is the lack of actionable pricing intelligence when negotiating SaaS contracts. Contacting peers every time to understand the latest vendor pricing data can be frustrating.  

Image of CloudEagle's price benchmarking insights

CloudEagle.ai solves this by offering AI-powered price benchmarking, providing real-time insights into vendor pricing and industry trends.

Using CloudEagle.ai’s extensive SaaSMap, powered by AI and machine learning, enterprises gain access to an up-to-date database that automatically collects and analyzes pricing data from 2B+ transactions, on-field experts, and a vast network of SaaS buyers.

This innovation, highlighted by Gartner, ensures that procurement teams are equipped with the latest pricing intelligence and buying guides, enabling more effective negotiations and avoiding overpaying for SaaS licenses.

Image of CloudEagle's price benchmarking module

By leveraging this data, organizations can confidently negotiate better deals and ensure they are paying a fair price based on market trends.

In addition, if your procurement team lacks the bandwidth to negotiate with vendors, our SaaS buying experts are readily available to work with as an extension of your procurement team and purchase the right product at the right price while your team can focus on their core tasks.

How CloudEagle.ai can benefit enterprises like yours?

We’re not overstating it—CloudEagle.ai truly manages the entire SaaS lifecycle, from vendor research and procurement to governance, optimization, and renewals. Here’s how it benefits enterprises, aligned with Gartner’s insights:

  • Gain complete visibility into all SaaS purchases, eliminating shadow IT and unnecessary spend.
  • Identify underutilized licenses and use reclamation workflows to instantly realize savings.
  • Streamline procurement, onboarding, offboarding, and renewals with no-code workflows and reduce manual effort.
  • Maximize ROI by harvesting unused licenses and reallocating them efficiently for optimal utilization.
  • Leverage AI-powered price benchmarking for data-driven negotiations and avoid overpaying for SaaS.
  • Manage intake request approvals and renewals seamlessly within Slack, Teams, Jira, and ServiceNow. No platform hopping
  • Receive proactive renewal alerts to avoid costly auto-renewals and optimize contract negotiations.
  • Rely on CloudEagle’s expert buying support to secure the best deals while focusing on strategic tasks.

Eric Silver, AVP and Head of Procurement at RingCentral shared how CloudEagle helped them achieve a 3X ROI through automated license harvesting, accurate cost benchmarking, and improved negotiations for better software rates.

Watch how CloudEagle.ai worked closely with the team to right-size usage, reduce costs, and surpass expectations!

How are we innovating to meet future SaaS management needs?

As you already know, we are customer obsessed and our product roadmap reflects this!

Our product roadmap is centered around leveraging AI and machine learning to offer smarter, more efficient SaaS management capabilities to help organizations optimize, govern, and renew SaaS without breaking a sweat.

By focusing on automation, deeper insights, and advanced optimization, we’re ensuring that our platform evolves to tackle the future challenges of SaaS management while empowering organizations to maximize efficiency and savings.

“CloudEagle’s roadmap is directly aligned to customer needs and looks to help close the gap with its leading competition,” Gartner said about CloudEagle.ai in their 2024 Magic Quadrant for SaaS Management Platforms.

Here’s what we are cooking up in our tinkering labs:

  1. Predictive Suggestions: AI-driven recommendations and prefilled fields based on user behavior to streamline tasks.
  2. Contextual Automation: Dynamically adjust workflows and tasks based on user context, department, or role.
  3. Natural Language Processing (NLP): Users can interact with CloudEagle.ai using simple natural language commands.
  4. One-Click Actions: Provide AI-predicted, one-click options for common tasks like approvals and report generation.
  5. Collaborative Workspaces: Create channels for teams to collaborate on tasks like contract renewals and updates.
  6. Interactive Chatbots: Use chatbots to perform tasks, retrieve data, and automate workflows within messaging platforms.

Conclusion

I am truly honored to have CloudEagle.ai recognized as the most innovative AI player in Gartner’s 2024 Magic Quadrant for SaaS Management Platforms. This acknowledgement is a testament to our dedication to solving the critical SaaS management, security, and procurement challenges enterprises face today.

Our focus has always been on listening to our customers, and this recognition validates our commitment to delivering exactly what they need. With over 500+ out-of-the-box integrations and our patented SaaSMap, we're setting a new standard in the industry by leveraging AI and ML to streamline SaaS governance and optimization.

I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our customers, especially forward-thinking organizations like RingCentral, Shiji, ICEYE, and many more.

Their trust and partnership have been key to our success, and I’m excited for what’s to come. We remain committed to pushing boundaries, innovating, and helping enterprises achieve greater efficiency and cost savings with ease. This recognition from Gartner is just the beginning—there’s so much more ahead!

— Nidhi Jain, CEO & Founder, CloudEagle.ai

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for SaaS Management Platforms, Tom Cipolla, Yolanda Harris, et al., 22 July 2024

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Written by
Nidhi Jain
CEO and Founder, CloudEagle
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