SaaS Subscription Execution Platform

"SaaS will account for ~$73.6bn of software spending in 2018; a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 19.9% - this growth rate is approximately 5x faster than on premises software. This significant growth and wide-scale adoption and attractiveness of SaaS applications is attributed to ease of consumption, purchase, installation and maintenance, and BYOD trends where users can access apps anywhere. However, SaaS has also created a whole fresh set of pitfalls that cost companies billions annually through redundancies, unused licenses and assumption-based purchasing decisions. Gartner states cloud spending will represent [24%][0] of the IT budget by 2020 while at the same time, [30%][1] of software license costs are wasted through insufficient management. Furthermore, recent research reported in ITAM review estimates that by 2020 over £23bn per year will be wasted on unused SaaS subscriptions.

Despite being recognised as a critical business challenge (at both government and individual organisation levels), there are few existing technologies (Binadox/Aspera/Snow/Scalable) designed to help companies overcome the problem, with manual practices being common (90% of cases) -- if software is tracked at all. These technologies are limited by poor interfaces, difficulty of connections, inaccurate reporting or they only track specific SaaS (not all information), high cost handling or difficult to set up and scalability.

**It is recognised that a new approach is needed to move beyond current limited offerings, to provide a universal solution, generating real benefits in terms of reduced costs and improved efficiencies.** The Business Software Centre (TBSC) seeks to address these challenges through the development of 'SSEP' an advanced, accurate and automated intelligent software and services efficiency execution platform based on SQL database flatform -- capable of accurately tracking and analysing an organisations software usage (universally across all SaaS), and providing personalised recommendations for improvement (reports on subscription savings/re-harvesting non-used SaaS etc) -- ultimately enabling individual organisations to optimise efficiencies, reduce costs and meet compliance requirements.

The project builds on desk-based research to validate market need, with support from Microsoft; extensive competitor analysis indicating full Freedom-to-Operate; and an established route to market with significant interest expressed. This project aims to prove the technical feasibility of SEEP through proof-of concept prototype development and testing (TRL5).

The project represents excellent value for money and is strongly aligned to the Open Competition scope. The project will deliver significant export led growth, a substantial ROI, increased employment and further opportunity for R&D investment.

[0]: http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/gartner-sees-$1-trillion-shift-in-it-spending-to-cloud/d/d-id/1326372
[1]: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3382317"