Apptio, the leading provider of on-demand IT Cost Optimization solutions, is helping companies reduce IT costs and improve profitability to navigate one of the most challenging economic environments in decades. The current financial crisis is placing incredible pressure on IT organizations to reduce costs, provide transparency into spending, and look for new ways to reduce operational expenses. Recently, companies including Alaska Airlines, Skytap and SumTotal have turned to Apptio to develop a deep understanding of IT cost drivers and leverage powerful data analytics to optimize the cost and profitability of their IT services.

Alaska Airlines, an international airline carrier, understands the need to increase its competitiveness in today’s economic environment. As a leader in applying technology to improve business profitability, the company was searching for a way to track and analyze IT service costs in order to improve the efficiency of IT operations. “We’re excited that a solution like Apptio is finally available,” said Arnie Stapnes, managing director, IT customer service and infrastructure, Alaska Airlines. “In these tough financial times, better insight into our per-application costs and their cost drivers will really help us improve the overall efficiency of IT.”

Skytap is a pioneer in commercial cloud computing services, providing customers with a 100% on-demand Virtual Lab environment that extends customers’ own internal computing resources. As Skytap uses server virtualization in every customer service, it is imperative that the underlying shared infrastructure be accurately allocated to the appropriate customer. Apptio is able to support Skytap in its growth by providing accurate analysis into the underlying shared infrastructure and associated costs to the appropriate customer and service. “We have seen a tremendous amount of interest in providing customers with computing capability on-demand via the Skytap Virtual Lab,” said Scott Roza, CEO, Skytap. “As we scale this business it is critical to have a detailed understanding of our IT costs, customer utilization and revenue. Apptio is the only IT focused solution we found that gives us cost transparency in an easy to use, low cost solution.”

While all industries are facing financial pressure, providers of hosted IT services including outsourcing, collocation, SaaS and Cloud Computing depend on keeping IT service costs down to drive profitability up. It is critical that these companies have an accurate, flexible and sophisticated solution to track IT costs at the service level, correlate that to customer revenue, and have a solution that helps them optimize this relationship over time.

Apptio’s on-demand software solution helps customers identify otherwise unknown opportunities to reduce cost by providing a detailed and accurate model of all IT cost drivers, analyzing costs for excess and known best cost reduction practices and comparing against industry benchmarks to identify areas for improved productivity and operational efficiencies.

“We’re pleased with the success we’re seeing. Since Apptio’s launch, customers are finding millions of dollars in savings through Apptio,” said Sunny Gupta, CEO, Apptio, Inc. “We’re prepared to continue to provide customers with the much needed visibility into their IT costs, especially in the current climate.”

To get more information on Apptio’s IT Cost Optimization solution please download the solution whitepaper at: http://www.apptio.com/solutions/resources/whitepapers/.

To get started with an IT Cost Optimization project please sign up for a free trial at: http://www.apptio.com/company/contact-us/evaluate/.