Cloud computing is firmly established as the new normal for enterprise IT. Across industries, cloud continues to be one of the fastest-growing segments of IT spend.
It’s why MSPs need to focus more of their cloud efforts on helping to deploy and then manage these cloud applications.
With cloud computing and DevOps the de facto standard, service providers are increasingly looking for next-generation analytics tools and services to help them build, run, and secure modern applications.
The problem is that, as Gartner explained, native SaaS administration consoles have several limitations.
A knock-on effect is a delay in the rollout of new services. It also limits the ability to manage your clients’ environments and increases security risk. All this erodes the value of their SaaS solutions.
Use SaaS Scripting to Overcome These Limitations
While SaaS applications typically have native management consoles, the depth of their capabilities often doesn’t completely meet a company’s requirements.
These limitations include insufficient reporting, coarse IT permissions, and burdensome administrative tasks that require significant manual effort.
SaaS management platforms like Augmentt can help by embedding complex administrative scripts and processes into a single-click workflow.
For example, you can fully automate complex IT admin processes, secure and control user activity, and prevent unauthorized data access across your client’s SaaS application stack.
As a result, the automation afforded by SaaS scripting gives time back to your technicians so they can concentrate on helping grow your MSP practice by delivering a broader range of more valuable services to your customers.
How SaaS Scripting Can Help With Security
It’s no surprise then that with near-universal SaaS adoption, SaaS security issues have increased too.
SaaS products are relatively straightforward to deploy, and therefore individual business units within a company can often procure them without oversight from you.
First and foremost, MSPs need visibility. We mean visibility into what data their client has in the cloud, and who has access to it.
The second thing they need is to apply security and data access policies consistently across their client’s cloud applications.
Whether it’s multiple instances and applications from a single provider or various applications across cloud providers, security teams need assurance that appropriate access controls are in place.
Manually trying to uncover these platforms is time-consuming and inefficient. Plus, as Jon Oltsik of CSO wrote before, “In cybersecurity, whatever can be automated should be automated. This includes gathering data, analyzing suspicious files, and applying simple remediation rules to block malicious activities.”
That’s one of the main benefits of SaaS scripting. For example, a script can make sure your customers’ networks don’t have any unauthorized SaaS products in use, dramatically reducing instances of shadow IT.
Automating User Lifecycle Management
As you know by now, companies are using more and more cloud applications in their daily workflows. Each cloud app has a user roster with sets of privileges. As users join or leave the company, they need to be provisioned or deprovisioned in all the appropriate apps.
This means IT departments manage individual user IDs and passwords associated with different cloud apps for each user. (A hasty employee offboarding is a significant security risk.) User lifecycle management in general is much more complicated.
It’s no surprise then that “much of an IT pro’s day is spent bogged down by routine maintenance requests, ticket documentation, and troubleshooting.”
When provisioning is automated, employees get the tools they need as soon as they join the company. Companies also want to reduce possible security risks by deprovisioning users from all cloud apps when they leave the company.
With automation, you can set up user provisioning to create, update, or delete user profile information in one place and have it reflected in all your cloud apps.
The Wrap on SaaS Scripting
In both use cases above, you’re allowing a technician to accomplish more in a shorter period by automating and orchestrating once manual processes. The knock-on effects are that:
- A technician can now service more clients
- You have a repeatable process
- Junior technicians can handle what were once more complex tasks.
Scripting provides for better security (especially when combined with credential storage) and a more efficient team. What MSP doesn’t want that?
