Comprehensive, accurate, and actionable insight into cloud infrastructure usage

1. DATASHEET
FlexNet Manager
for Cloud Infrastructure
Comprehensive, accurate, and actionable insight into cloud infrastructure usage
Benefits:
• Reduce expenditures on
cloud services
• Enable efficient use of
cloud infrastructure
• Understand usage trends
for better budgeting
and forecasting
• Make more effective
deployment decisions
• Inhibit shadow IT and
cloud sprawl
The cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) industry
is growing fast – over 15% per year according
to IDC1
. And it is easy to understand why. Cloud
infrastructure services add terrific benefits to an
organization. They are easy to purchase. They
give you immediate access to computing power,
storage, and database services without the need or
overhead of setting up or adding to a datacenter.
And, they can mean a faster time to value when
delivering IT services.
In many cases, infrastructure services such as
those provided by Amazon Web Services can be
acquired at lower cost than a company can achieve
if it builds them in-house. But the adoption of
cloud services does not come without new business
challenges. The ease of purchase and lower initial
cost can easily result in:
• Lack of visibility into total spend on cloud
infrastructure services across multiple
departments and business units
• The growth of “shadow IT” and cloud sprawl
which can lead to spiraling costs
• Poor insight into cloud operational data
• Difficulty in the ability to chargeback for
cloud expenditures
And the ease of purchase and ability to quickly
leverage cloud compute power does not lessen the
need to manage the cloud infrastructure in your
enterprise. Without effective tools and processes,
you risk overspending on cloud instances and
paying for infrastructure that you may not be using.
FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure
FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure provides
enterprises with comprehensive, accurate and
actionable insight into cloud infrastructure usage to
optimize use and spend on these services.
Built on proven Flexera Software license
management technology, it automates the collection
and aggregation of cloud usage data and billing
information to produce a complete view of cloud
service consumption throughout the enterprise.
Provide a 360 Degree View of Cloud Usage
and Spend
FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure provides
the means to see, at a glance, a complete view of
your cloud operations using role based dashboards.
The Financial Dashboard (Figure 1) shows which
business units are spending the most money, how
much unused or underutilized cloud instances are
costing you, spending patterns and trends, and
spending by service type.
The Operational Dashboard (Figure 2) shows
utilization patterns by instance type, which
instances are underutilized, when your AWS EC2
reservations are expiring, and usage trends.
Combined, these dashboards provide
unprecedented visibility into cloud infrastructure
usage and spend, and enable you to perform more
detailed analysis for fact-based decision making.
“After being involved
with thousands
of cloud contracts,
I have learned
that successful
management
of your cloud
instances and
accounts is a basic
requirement for to
optimize usage
and spending.”
“Ray” R. Wang
- Principal Analyst
Chairman
Constellation Research
1: 2015 “Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker®
.” International Data Corporation (IDC)
Understanding Cloud Infrastructure
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) – a cloud computing service provided by Amazon.com
• Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) – an AWS product that provides virtual and resizable
computing capacity in the cloud
• Amazon Reserved Instances – allow you to reserve computing capacity for 1 or 3 years at a discount
• On-Demand Instance – provides compute capacity by the hour with no long-term commitments

2. Figure 1: Cloud Financial Dashboard
Figure 2: Cloud Operational Dashboard
Configurable dashboard view
Track all AWS service costs
Detailed instance utilization
Manage all instances
A
A
A
B
B
B
A
B
B

3. What is the best mix of Amazon EC2 services for your
organization? FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure
helps determine the most cost effective option with two key
capabilities—Cloud Cost Analysis and Cloud Usage Analysis.
Cloud Cost Analysis
FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure enables
organizations to perform detailed cost analysis of their total
cloud infrastructure spend. It begins by providing visibility
of how much you are spending for Amazon Web Services,
including EC2 On-Demand and Reserved Instances, Amazon
Redshift, Amazon S3, Amazon VPC and Amazon RDS. In
addition, it shows spending trends over configurable time
periods, and allows organizations to project future spending
month-to-month.
This will help to:
• Choose the most cost effective instance type
• Optimize spend and make better purchasing decisions
• Improve budgeting and financial management
• Provide business relevance of collected data
Cloud Usage Analysis
Analyzing the cost of cloud infrastructure services is only part
of managing the cloud. Companies need to make sure that
Amazon EC2 instances in use are utilized properly, whether
ensuring that Reserved Instance capacity is consumed before
On-Demand instances are launched, or by ensuring that right-
sized instances are used. This helps prevent an organization
from buying more expensive virtual machine configurations
than they really need.
With FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure, organizations
have complete visibility of their utilization of Amazon Web
Services Reserved Instances, understand the cloud instance
utilization rate, and can see their cloud instance usage trends
over configurable time periods.
This allows organizations to:
• Manage the cloud instance lifecycle to make better
decisions about the best mix of on-demand and
reserved instances
• Have the most cost effective instance configurations that
best meet their needs
• Eliminate idle cloud instances to reduce waste
Configurable Reporting
Effective decision making requires the right information at the
right time. An extensible report engine included with FlexNet
Manager for Cloud Infrastructure enables users to easily
visualize cost or usage data and perform in-depth analysis.
A library of out-of-the-box reports enables a quicker time to
value, providing answers to cloud usage and cost questions.
And you can easily share reports and data with key
stakeholders, tailoring them to meet their needs throughout
the enterprise.
Automatic Data Collection and Aggregation
Amazon provides volumes of usage and cost data, sometimes
multiple gigabytes in size. The challenge, however, is the
enormous time and effort needed to turn this immense volume
of raw data into information that has business relevance.
FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure automatically
collects and aggregates billing and usage information
from multiple accounts. Data can be classified by multiple
parameters, including AWS Tags, account, instance type,
and account owner, to align cloud service billing to your
organizational hierarchy.
Intelligent Solutions for Managing Enterprise Software
FlexNet Manger for Cloud Infrastructure is part of FlexNet
Manager Suite for Enterprises, a comprehensive, proven,
next generation hardware asset management, software
asset management, license compliance and software license
optimization solution. The Suite provides entitlement based
license management and software license optimization to
enable organizations to reduce ongoing software licensing
Figure 3: AWS Cost Per Service
Figure 4: EC2 Instance Breakdown

4. Flexera Software LLC
(Global Headquarters):
+1 800-809-5659
United Kingdom (Europe,
Middle East Headquarters):
+44 870-871-1111
+44 870-873-6300
Australia (Asia,
Pacific Headquarters):
+61 3-9895-2000
For more office locations visit:
www.flexerasoftware.com
Copyright © 2016 Flexera Software LLC. All other brand and product names mentioned herein may be the trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners.
FNM_DS_CloudInfrastructure_Apr16
costs and maintain continuous license compliance. It is used
by thousands of enterprises to gain control of and optimize
software spend while reducing the time and effort required to
manage the software estate.
Only Flexera Software enables organizations to manage cloud
services and the software running in the cloud, as well as
managing and optimizing on-premises software.
About Flexera Software
Flexera Software helps application producers and enterprises
manage application usage and increase the value they
derive from their software. Our next-generation software
licensing, compliance, security and installation solutions are
essential to ensure continuous licensing compliance, optimize
software investments and future-proof businesses against
the risks and costs of constantly changing technology. Over
80,000 customers turn to Flexera Software as a trusted and
neutral source for the knowledge and expertise we have
gained as the marketplace leader for over 25 years and
for the automation and intelligence designed into our
products. For more information, please go to:
www.flexerasoftware.com
Next Step:
Visit www.flexerasoftware.com/cloud for more information,
or contact a Flexera Software representative.