web application usage/metering data collection options

[sdbash]

Hi all,

Have a customer who that is looking for potential options for gathering web application usage/metering data.  They migrated over from Snow Software, who has a browser extension to track that usage.

Thanks in advance.

Shawn

[mfranz]

Hi Shawn,

There used to be a browser extension, but it has been deprecated years ago. You'll need to resort to other data sources for this kind of data, perhaps a proxy server?

Best regards,

Markward

[ChrisG]

Do you have any insight into what kinds of outcomes this customer is seeking to achieve? i.e. What is the actual need behind this question? Identifying options and technologies will depend on what they are actually trying to achieve (rather than how they are looking to do it).

Some examples of the types of things they might be looking to achieve are:

• Example use case 1: Understand what users are and are not using SaaS applications, in order to optimize SaaS subscriptions. Gathering data from SaaS application APIs or other sources will generally give more comprehensive insight into SaaS application usage than web browser extensions, as it is difficult to control and manage which web browsers people use to access SaaS applications. The SaaS management capabilities in Flexera One can help with gathering usage data for many SaaS applications.
• Example use case 2: Track what websites people are visiting from corporate devices for security purposes. Microsoft Defender may be a good choice for this kind of need.

[m2019sam]

Hi Chris,
while SaaS API Integrations is definitely a better choice and offer metering/usage data, they do not cover the Shadow spend detection. I have a customer who does not use any SaaS Expense provider to uncover unsanctioned spend and struggle with indirect integrations. Browser extensions or CASB scans would be actually helpful. I would appreciate any ideas at this point too.

[ChrisG]

For that use case I would suggest looking at Microsoft Defender and its CASB capabilities.

[aswindells]

Hi Shawn,

Apologies that I missed this the first time around, this is an area that the Flexera One SaaS Manager product team have been heavily engaged in.

• Based off customer conversations, we rejected the idea of using a web browser plug-in:
  • Different browsers need different technology.
  • Security and privacy concerns.
  • Needing to deploy the plug-in.
  • Limited information captured by the plug-in.
  • Retrieving the information back from the plug-in.
• Instead, we have chosen to use data obtained from what are commonly known as Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB). At a high level these are a gateway between a device and the internet and as such provide up information to meet several use cases, with one of those being Shadow IT and in particular SaaS.

Right now, we have a solution that is using the Microsoft solution (Defender for Cloud Apps) and are looking to introduce Zscaler to this list in Q4 ’23.

The solution for the Microsoft capabilities is still in preview but is available, supported and in use by customers in their production environment. At present we are using a Microsoft Power BI report to provide the 'UI'. This is a deliberate approach as it allows us to have customers use the report, highlight what is good, not so good and also bad! We can quickly iterate, improving the report and providing this back in a short cycle. 

Once this process is completed, we will be looking to build the UI within Flexera One.

If this is something you are interested in, please let me know and we can have a discussion around getting this on-boarded.

Thanks