Item: IBM Apptio
Rating: 9
Author: Reid Solomon

Overall Satisfaction with ApptioOne

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use the tool for a variety of different purposes, primarily for technology, showback, and chargeback. We use it to calculate costs for our applications, teams, and services, which we then use to help facilitate our chargeback model, which goes back directly to the business lines, and impacts their profitability. So it's very important that the Apptio model that we use and have built is accurate and maintainable and up to date with everything that changes in the business. We also use it for technology reporting, so not businesses, but straight directly in technology for application rationalization, a kind of team labor management between innovation-related work and app BAU work. We are also using it more now than ever for understanding our hybrid infrastructure world of cloud versus on-prem, what the cloud costs in terms of consumption versus shared services of cloud, the labor to support the cloud, and things like that. We have to report on that and have our tech understand it, look for areas of opportunity to decrease spending while maintaining the quality of the outputs is very important.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Does very well at handling complex allocations and automation. Also great at bringing in data automatically, manipulating that data, and allowing you to feed that data into a complex model. So all the behind-the-scenes stuff works really well. It's also pretty good at visualization. It has some similar capabilities like a Power BI and Tableau, but generally provides most of the visualization technology that somebody would need with the tool.

Cons

I would say the big thing is just the complexity sometimes on the reporting surface. It can be a lot of different buttons, and a lot of different tools, and it can be occasionally overwhelming for somebody to come in and see a report built one way and then look different in another place. So really maintaining consistency and how the reports look, how they function, is very important. So I would say just simplicity on the front end has been a little bit of a challenge for us. We've gotten better, but with training obviously things like that, but that's been the main challenge.

Features

I would say data link, which is the Apptio ingestion is extremely important for us. I felt like the new kind of data link user interface is a lot better than the old data link classic as they termed it. So that new data link is very important to us. That would be the main thing. I would say we are kind of getting into Apptio BI, which is a kind of ApptioOne product and we haven't used it a ton, but we are thinking about possibly using it for some of our cloud reporting alongside Cloudability. But I really say datalink is our main one. Aside from the standard cost transparency TBM studio.

Return on Investment

I would say it's definitely seen savings, already seen some savings on the cloud front. Specifically an app that got out of control. We're very early in our cloud migration process, so a lot of the engineering teams are still new to the process of migrating apps to the cloud. So it was an app that got out of control, it was caught with app year reports and they were able to drop the costs substantially, we'll say for that application. So that's an example of a cloud savings that we've made.
We've also seen savings in the business lines in terms of device consumption, so people with multiple laptops and VDI, trying to just trim down the ratio of devices to people has been important for our business lines to save money. Also helps our technology teams forecast unit consumption, volume consumption of those devices in the future if there's not having to worry about the same person having multiple laptops.

Support Rating

Apptio Portfolio Solution

Targetprocess

I would say together we haven't seen any impacts yet. We're still kind of disconnected, so one of our objectives obviously coming up is to connect things like Targetprocess to ApptioOne get TP stood up and brought into ApptioOne or cost transparency and we're planning to bring in Cloudability as well. So I wouldn't say at the time we have any business outcomes.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI

I would say it's more focused on technology value, outcomes, outputs. It's not as distributed in terms of how the outputs are given to you. It's more focused on technology, a little bit more user intuitive would be another example and just more finance oriented.

Key Insights

Do you think IBM Apptio delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with IBM Apptio's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM Apptio live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of IBM Apptio go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy IBM Apptio again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

I would say for larger companies that don't have any sort of automation of their reporting today, so it's all done in Excel or it's all done in Power BI reports that are fed off of Excel documents, especially technology expense, it can be really helpful. I would also say companies that are early in their cloud journey, it can be helpful to start early. So that's a few that would be helpful. Not helpful, I would say companies that already have a really good handle of their technology spend via any tools they might have. So it can get to a point where they have multiple different tools. Apptio is one and multiple different sources of truth, and if you bring in Apptio later, people won't trust Apptio. So really if you already have a bunch of tools stood up, it's harder to bring in another.

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