Neil Buckley, MD of Apex BI.

Local business intelligence (BI) solutions provider Apex BI is partnering with US-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider Zylo to bring the company’s management enterprise software solutions to SA.

Apex BI is a provider of technology expense management software solutions.

According to Neil Buckley, MD of Apex BI, the partnership enables the company to offer existing and prospective customers a new tool for identifying, analysing and optimising spending on SaaS.

Apex BI says market analyst firm Gartner forecasts worldwide public cloud revenue will grow by 17% in 2020 with SaaS remaining the largest market segment, which is forecast to grow to $116 billion in 2020.

It notes Zylo's SaaS management platform will enable new and existing Apex BI customers to discover every SaaS subscription, track every SaaS expense spent, and fully rationalise every application in a single system of record.

Users will be able to proactively manage applications by leveraging granular contract level information, including renewal details, in one dedicated platform.

“It also provides capabilities that strengthen lifecycle management, such as application monitoring, measurement of adoption and utilisation, and renewal management. The fit with our in-house-developed core platform, Clarity, means we can now provide the SA market with even further visibility into their technology environments,” says Buckley.

“The fit with our business and existing platform is incredibly strong. The addition of Zylo to our offerings creates an exceptionally robust and unique value-proposition as well as a broader offering to our customers. It also holds immense significance for the SA market at any time, but especially in the current COVID-19 economic turmoil when the spotlight is on expense management.

“The ability to provide organisations with visibility, management and complete control of their SaaS licences, across their businesses, is significant.”

Buckley notes the timing couldn’t be better for this engagement. “In the age of work from home with people working remotely, shadow IT creeps in and with it – increased costs and further lack of visibility or control around SaaS applications.

“In line with what Clarity does, we can bring it all back together and centralise visibility across decentralised remote working environments and offer company-wide visibility – the power of knowing – a valuable commodity at any time.”