While we’re always happy to launch an updated version of our vManager platform to the public, our week’s release of vManager 13.1 has got us super excited!
There are three big stories under a singular guiding principle within 13.1, all focused on how we empower our customers with the value of information, time, and money.
Let me share a few of the highlights:
First, vManager now includes native support for cloud assets and spend. As we all know, cloud infrastructure spend is out of control, and IT organizations need help. To paraphrase Amalgam Insights analyst Hyoun Park from a recent vCom event, cloud is the next frontier of cost for IT and Finance organizations to contain. It’s become even more pressing with organizations accelerating the migration to cloud in response to the pandemic.
Clients work with vCom because we make it easier—and more cost effective—for them to manage the day-to-day of their IT spend. vManager automates the planning and procurement, operations management, and expense management of IT assets—centralizing all cloud, network, hardware, mobile, collab, and SaaS assets under one roof—with fingertip access to every detail relating to that asset. One tool to rule them all.
vManager 13.1 brings support for the big 3 Infrastructure or Platform as a Service (PaaS or IaaS) providers—Azure, AWS, and GCP—directly into the platform, delivering centralized access from a cost, asset, and cost allocation perspective. This greatly simplifies and speeds the operational management of cloud assets: there’s no need to go to 3 different vendor portals to manage the inventory, alerts, invoices, or more. Real-time access to utilization reporting helps IT teams manage performance; while tools like vAnalyzer enable finance organizations to get a 13-month running trend of cloud expenses. Perhaps more importantly, vCom also provides automated recommendations and suggestions on how to optimize your cloud environment to ensure that cloud investments are maximized and working in the most cost-effective way (hello money savings!). Having that information at your fingertips is invaluable when it comes to understanding not just the “what” of your cloud spend, but the “how,” “where,” and “why.”
Managing Cloud spend within the same platform as Network, Mobile, Collaboration, SaaS, and Hardware, is the right solution. To again quote Hyoun Park, “CIOs and CFOs do not want 5-10 niche solutions each managing a single area of IT; they want a single vendor platform to manage costs.”
Another big part of vManager 13.1 is Marketplace, or the artist formerly known as Shop & Buy. Over time, the ability for companies to shop, compare, and purchase IT services has shifted from a nice to have to a must have. Who has time to call 10 different vendors looking for pricing? IT organizations are more stretched than ever, and they need the ability to shop quickly for live pricing options across a multitude of vendors, especially for commoditized IT services. With Marketplace they get exactly that…a one-stop shop for pricing and purchasing mobile, network, hardware, and collaboration services. Customers can compare pricing across thousands of service providers, service terms and technology combinations in real-time. Purchases are tracked, and assets are automatically added to your inventory for a time-saving, seamless flow of information. What’s more, we enhanced the platform to support functions like Quick Order, which lets customers create templates to save time ordering and onboarding employees.
Finally, with managing the allocation of assets generally falls to the finance team, our new PayNow functionality makes it easier for them to “complete the lifecycle” of any asset, i.e., pay and account for the costs. We took a realistic approach to an old problem: in the work-from-anywhere world of stretched resources, the idea of cutting and mailing checks is archaic, time-consuming, and inefficient. With PayNow, customers can easily automate the payment of their invoices with a few simple clicks. So, in addition to centralizing and normalizing the invoices via vManager, customers can now centralize the payment of their invoices! This much-needed digitization of invoice management workflow saves time and since payments are tracked within vManager, all the payment information is right there.
This is by no means the complete list of the new enhancements. All of the enhancements vManager 13.1 are geared toward our commitment to our customers: to help them save time, provide them the visibility and information they need make better decisions faster, and increase shareholder value through significant savings.
