Flexera Software, the leading provider of next-generation software licensing, compliance, security and installation solutions for application producers and enterprises today announced the launch of FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure. The first solution from a Software Asset Management (SAM) vendor addressing the management of cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure gives organizations centralized visibility into their cloud services use and allows them to optimize utilization and control costs.

“The cloud services industry is growing more than five times faster than other IT categories as organizations shift away from internal hardware to greater use of public cloud infrastructures. This shift in spend means having the ability to track, manage and optimize cloud services usage is essential for responsible governance and cost management,” said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Flexera Software. “With FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure as part of FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises, Flexera Software enables companies to manage and optimize cloud infrastructure services and the software running in the cloud, along with traditional on-premises software.”

This first release of FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure focuses on optimization of Amazon Web Services (AWS) – the most widely adopted cloud infrastructure service. Most organizations have multiple cloud accounts that are often purchased in a decentralized fashion by different departments and business units. Because of this, FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure will automatically import usage and billing data from multiple accounts to deliver a centralized view of all AWS accounts and instances across the enterprise.

Moreover, a cloud dashboard provides an executive-level view of the organization’s use of cloud resources, presenting aggregated consumption patterns and total spend across all AWS cloud subscriptions. Cloud usage analysis and reporting enables organizations to eliminate waste and optimize spend. Organizations can analyze data and view consumption reports and breakdowns based on AWS instance types(On-demand and Reserved Instances), view consumption rates by departments and perform trending analysis.

As organizations continue to adopt cloud services and create even more complex, heterogeneous IT environments, their asset management tools must evolve and expand to optimize not only on-premises hardware and software assets, but cloud infrastructure services as well. FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure enables companies to:

• Track cloud services spending and usage across all departments to eliminate over-buying and underutilization of cloud capacity and instances
• More effectively negotiate volume discounts and rationalize usage of cloud instances
• Enable IT’s transition to a service-based organization by centralizing management of cloud services, minimizing overhead, managing costs and facilitating chargeback of cloud services
• Optimize usage of pre-paid capacity (reserved instances) to minimize costs

“The new frontier in Software Asset Management is Infrastructure as a Service,” said R “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst & Founder at Constellation Research. “Organizations are rapidly subscribing to public cloud services as a means to reduce their infrastructure costs and deliver flexible computing resources that can be quickly scaled upward or downward according to demand. But you can’t deliver true cost reduction and efficiency without visibility into, and control over, cloud services spend. Software Asset Management processes and technology must be able to account for, track and manage cloud infrastructure services.”