Altitude 2024: Recap | BetterCloud

The BetterCloud Altitude Conference 2024 brought together the rising stars in IT and we won’t be forgetting it anytime soon!

This year, over 150 attendees joined us in New York city for a day full of meaningful discussions on how today’s IT admin is managing their tech stack and how collaboration across the organization helps drive success. Oh and we learned about the newest features coming to BetterCloud and a roadmap of where BetterCloud is heading!

Just in case you missed it, here are 10 key highlights and takeaways.

We started things off by turning the lights down

The computer glow at 2AM is no stranger to IT. Jesse Levin (CEO, BetterCloud) kicked off the day with an homage to the late nights that IT has had to sacrifice over the years and how BetterCloud is here to make those late nights a thing of the past with Unified SaaS Lifecycle Management.

Levin highlighted IT’s potential to bring order to the chaos. By transitioning from a cost center to a strategic value creator, IT can leverage Unified SaaS Lifecycle Management to work collaboratively with the organization to optimize IT spend automatically, compliance audits are ready on-demand and your team is freed to focus on initiatives that drive business growth. This transformation empowers IT to turn daily challenges into strategic opportunities, driving significant business impact.

We announced our second acquisition, Tricent!

As new data breaches continue to come up daily, it’s no surprise that IT is looking to keep their tech stack secure to prevent such incidents from occurring.

To further support this need, BetterCloud has acquired Tricent to deliver a more robust solution for comprehensive file sharing governance across Google Workspace and Microsoft 365!

IT is under stress, but even a hurricane doesn’t break them

Your tech stack can make or break your team. This statement was put to the test for the IT team at Kin Insurance.

Colleen Alaimo, Senior IT Manager at Kin Insurance, shared how aerial imagery applications allowed them to proactively process claims during the two latest hurricanes that hit the southeast of the United States.

Kin Insurance’s IT team leverages BetterCloud to maintain control of their tech stack, enabling rapid scaling and seamless response to extreme challenges like back to back hurricanes.

IT is now a driver of business strategy

Post-COVID, businesses really started to realize the importance of IT not only as an employee experience driver, but a success driver.

Mindy Lieberman, CIO at MongoDB, alongside David Politis, Founder and Executive Chairman at BetterCloud, chatted about how IT is more than just about hardware and software access.

IT teams that possess a bilingual understanding of business and technology can significantly advance organizational goals by prioritizing outcome-driven solutions over simply provisioning a new application.

Data is IT’s friend when it comes to optimizing spend

Contract negotiations are no easy feat, but as Christina Walton (AVP of Procurement, Definitive Healthcare) and Nick Zimmerman (Senior Manager, Bullhorn) shared, it doesn’t have to be impossible.

“Be armed with the correct data for not only internal decision makers, but with vendors,” Walton shared. Key insights into your software spend from tools like BetterCloud, allows IT to uncover massive savings and continue to maintain software spend.

Another key part of optimizing software spend? Working alongside application end-users.

“Partnering with your end users is not a want, but a need,” Zimmerman said. “Asking things like, ‘Is this something you absolutely need?’ and ‘Is there an alternative tool already in our tech stack?’ help build a tech stack that works for you rather than against you.”

Automated end-user self-service is here

The endless user requests for password resets, software requests, file permissions, and more is truly never ending.

As many of the speakers at Altitude shared, there is always a better way. That better way is the BetterCloud Self-Service Agent.

Laura Perez, Senior Product Manager at BetterCloud, shared how BetterCloud’s newest feature will particularly help IT during this upcoming holiday season, a period known for an influx of new BYO devices.

With BetterCloud Self-Service Agent, IT is able to meet users where they are, directly in their Slack workspace. End Users can reach the self-service agent and submit a help request directly via Slack. So when your colleagues get a shiny new phone this holiday season, they can submit a ticket to reset authentication factors.

This request triggers a workflow in BetterCloud, including a Wait for Approval via Slack to verify the employee’s identity before the workflow can continue and reset authentication factors successfully. 

This streamlined approach saves time and effort for both IT and end-users.

Aspiring IT leaders need to be agile

Many in IT often wonder, what do CIOs look for when hiring? Mindy Lieberman shared her take on what she looks for when hiring new IT professionals.

As IT delivers on employee experience, Lieberman looks for customer success skills, a solid work ethic, and a sense of humor.

But more than those three traits, Lieberman looks for agility. Being agile in IT is the key necessary skill to be able to roll out the kinks when processes are being made.

IT backlogs aren’t going anywhere, but automation helps

Powerhouse automation users discussed how they tackle backlogs.

Tarah Valencia, Data Engineering Manager at Green Dot Public Schools, shared that their first workflows were made for offboarding. “With ten thousand students, offboarding was a mess to do manually,” Valencia said. “One of the first workflows with BetterCloud was to set up offboarding automation for students and staff.”

Chris Ritter, Lead Collaboration Services Engineer at GlobalPay, discussed the complexities of IT efficiency, “I like doing my job so much that you don’t know that I’m even doing my job. But I still need to advocate for myself.”

Breaking the IT backlog bottleneck requires empowering those who truly know the priorities. “We’ve built a centralized access management system,” Carl Michael Strauss, IT Manager at VOI Technology explained. “The IT moves into a review role and the approval power shifts to managers and those requesting access to the system.”

The best advice panelists shared with attendees? Know your organization, create simple yet adaptable processes, and always ask why.

Attendees learned how to best collaborate with finance

Margaret Minter, CIO at BazaarVoice, shared how working under the CFO has been a huge advantage.

When it comes to managing software spend, Minter lives by the motto, “Are we getting the best bang for our buck out of our applications?”

When the IT team at Bazaarvoice approached spend optimization, it wasn’t about unused licenses, it was about the team not using applications correctly. One application in particular lacked any data to act on and another had 100+ admins.

After many process improvement campaigns, Minter and her team are looking to narrow in on duplicate applications and subscriptions.

Altitude attendees also heard from BetterCloud’s own CFO, Sean Hill, and IT manager, Damian Etienne, to learn how they were able to collaborate better.

“I’m a CFO, I love excel, but Damian encouraged me to do software spend tracking differently,” Sean Hill (CFO at BetterCloud) shared. Together, Damian and Sean were able to implement BetterCloud’s spend optimization module and saw immediate savings. 

We celebrated IT excellence with the SaaS All Star Awards to honor outstanding individuals and teams

As in Altitudes past, we recognized outstanding IT leaders and teams in the SaaS All Star Awards.

Winners included 5 individuals who streamlined processes within their organization through automation, excelled at bringing innovation and collaborating to the SaaS Management industry, and delivered significant value to their organizations.

Congratulations to the All Stars of 2024!

Check out the full list of SaaS All Star winners of 2024 here.

The legend of Altitude lives on

We’re still buzzing from the energy of Altitude 2024! It was incredible to reunite with the IT community for the first time in 5 years. Altitude 2024 was a truly unforgettable experience filled with inspiring discussions, valuable insights, and exciting announcements.

We would be remiss to not recognize and appreciate each and every attendee who brought their energy and passion to this conference. Thank you for joining us and contributing to the vibrant IT community.

We can’t wait to see what the future holds for all of you!