Apptio Tracks Costs, Helps CIOs Sleep At Night

Company:

Headquarters: Bellevue, Wash.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Technology Business Management (TBM)

Year Founded: 2008

Number of Channel Partners: 9, all U.S.

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise Focused Solution Provider

Why You Should Care: Apptio not only helps companies cut costs, it's also aligned with services partners with expertise in helping companies align their business models with cloud computing.

The Lowdown: As cloud computing occupies more and more waking (and sleeping) brain cycles for enterprise CIOs, the need to measuring costs with pinpoint accuracy has never been greater. Apptio, a Bellevue, Wash.-based SaaS vendor, is winning customers by giving them all-important visibility into their IT cost structures.

Apptio occupies an emerging software industry segment known as Technology Business Management, which essentially gives CIOs insight into all the various IT costs associated with running a business.

"One recurring theme in enterprises these days is the need to help figure out the cost of IT," said Jeff Day, director of marketing at Apptio. This extends from the project side, to deployment and maintenance, and to infrastructure and software costs, he said. "Companies want to be able to dive into that data to identify key cost drivers."

Apptio started out in 2008 just prior to the economy's nosedive, and Day doesn't deny that the timing benefited the company. "The economy has been a terrible thing for most people, but very helpful for us," Day said. "Here's the story we got over and over. Once companies have done the normal thing of cutting projects, staff and budgets, and renegotiating vendor contracts, they need insight to figure out where else to cut."

Apptio's partner base includes services firms that assist companies in the transformation to a service provider organization, and Day said the company is seeing a steady stream of project engagements from these relationships. At the moment, Apptio has around 40 customers, including several Fortune 100 firms. For these customers, where cost savings quickly scale, Apptio's SaaS model makes particular economic sense, Day said.

Although larger players like HP and IBM are looking at this market, Day expects Apptio's cost-savings advantage to keep it ahead of the pack. "This is very much an emerging market, and we're seeing a ton of interest from some of the biggest companies," said Day.