BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 12 – Apptio, the leading provider of on-demand Technology Business Management (TBM) services, today introduced Apptio Cloud Express, a free service that allows businesses to track the usage and costs of public cloud services including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Windows Azure, and Rackspace. Based on the aggregated data, Apptio Cloud Express provides recommended ways to optimize usage and reduce costs.

Technology leaders are increasingly being asked to develop new strategies to adopt cloud computing, but they often lack the necessary data and analysis required to make informed decisions. In order to maximize value to the business, IT must collaboratively make data-driven decisions about which products and services should be kept in-house or moved to the cloud, along with which cloud model is right for each initiative.

"Understanding the behavior of the applications and services you plan to deploy to the cloud is crucial to achieving success with cloud economics. Blindly buying cloud services and expecting substantial savings is a recipe for disaster," wrote James Staten, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. in the May, 2012 report: "Drive Savings And Profits With Cloud Economics." "Understanding the business model behind the application is how you know whether cloud economics are simply a cost savings tool or a profit-maker for your company."
Apptio Cloud Express users can view their cloud costs in an itemized bill format, identify and aggregate spending outside of IT's approval, and perform "what-if" analyses to quantify potential savings of shifting to private or hybrid cloud strategies.

"Apptio allows us to rapidly model and understand the cost and performance impacts of our various cloud projects," said Don Tierny, CTO at Park Nicolett Healthcare. "As a result, we have been able to partner more closely with our business affiliates to align IT with corporate priorities."

In the case of AWS, Apptio also provides recommendations on potential cost savings of moving from On-Demand to Reserved Instances. To get started, users simply register their accounts from these third-party cloud service providers in Apptio Cloud Express, which then automatically imports billing and usage data.

"Windows Azure's global presence, virtually unlimited scalability, and usage-based billing give customers a cloud platform that can grow with their business and easily adapt to peaks in demand," said Bill Hilf, general manager, Windows Azure Marketing, Microsoft. "By giving customers the flexibility to focus on their business rather than their technology, Windows Azure and technology business management solutions such as Apptio's Cloud Express help customers optimize cloud costs, as these technologies and services become an increasingly important component of enterprise IT resources."

"As the open cloud company, our customers count on us to provide a clear cost structure for our Public Cloud solution," said Mark Roenigk, chief operating officer at Rackspace. "The integration performed by Apptio helps our customers track their spend in a scalable, simple manner. We are excited that this integration has been performed to encompass the Rackspace open cloud."

Apptio Cloud Express is based on technology from Apptio's recent acquisition of Raveld, a Seattle-based company providing software to help companies more effectively measure and optimize the cost and performance of public cloud computing services.
The new offering further establishes Apptio's leadership in technology business management, and is another step in bringing Apptio's TBM best practices to organizations adopting cloud computing services.

"Apptio powers some of the world's largest and most innovative IT departments," said Sunny Gupta, CEO at Apptio. "We've captured the emerging best practices for analyzing costs and performance across different types of cloud scenarios, and made that information broadly available to our customers. Now, IT leaders can spend less time manually validating data and more time confidently providing answers."

The free service is available now at www.cloudexpress.com.

About Apptio

Apptio is the leading independent provider of on-demand Technology Business Management (TBM) solutions for managing the business of IT. Apptio enables IT leaders to manage the cost, quality and value of IT Services by providing deep visibility into the total cost of IT services, communicating the value of IT to the business through an interactive Bill of IT™ service, and strategically aligning the planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. Apptio's TBM solutions play a critical role in helping companies understand and drive chargeback, virtualization, cloud and other key technology initiatives. Global enterprise customers such as Bank of America, Boeing, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, St. Luke's Health System, and Swiss Re rely on Apptio products and services to reduce costs and align IT with business priorities.

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Source: Apptio