Spot by Flexera Reviews

For the past two years, I have been developing a project to implement Spot by Flexera as a software asset management tool. It is used to manage all the IT assets and software licenses within all the legal entities of the company that I work for.

I used Spot by Flexera to connect different data sources to be aware of all software installations in different legal entities of the company. I also became aware of the IT assets that the company had and was able to manage different software licenses.

Before using Spot by Flexera, we had to combine Excel sheets to perform different reports. The best feature for us was that we were able to cross over different data sources and in a couple of seconds we could create a report that connected all the IT assets, all the software licenses, and all the software installations. We were able to filter this information, and it was very useful to make decisions and analyze our data.

Spot by Flexera Academy was also very important. Since we were implementing Spot by Flexera in different legal entities, we had to train different stakeholders to start using the tool. It was very important that Spot by Flexera had already a huge amount of data that we could use to train other people to start using the tool.

Since Spot by Flexera is an open source tool, we had more flexibility and freedom to connect Spot by Flexera within our servers and different data sources. That was the reason we chose Spot by Flexera as our software asset management tool.

Since we were implementing Spot by Flexera in different legal entities in a multinational company, we were talking about many different data sources and many APIs that we had to perform to connect Spot by Flexera within all of our servers and Active Directory from Azure. This flexibility made it possible for us to connect all of our data and trust that Spot by Flexera had accurate and updated data to perform reports in different offices across the world.

One problem that we faced using Spot by Flexera is that in certain servers, the data was not being updated correctly, and we had a certain delay. For example, someone was using a computer, and then this user received a new one. In Spot by Flexera, we could see both computers, the old and the new one, but the system was not recognizing that the old one was no longer being used. We had a couple of IT assets that were not being used, and we had this information in our internal servers, but Spot by Flexera was not able to update on time. We had to fix this information manually.

I have been using Spot by Flexera for two and a half years.

One problem that we faced using Spot by Flexera is that in certain servers, the data was not being updated correctly, and we had a certain delay. For example, someone was using a computer, and then this user received a new one. In Spot by Flexera, we could see both computers, the old and the new one, but the system was not recognizing that the old one was no longer being used. We had a couple of IT assets that were not being used, and we had this information in our internal servers, but Spot by Flexera was not able to update on time. We had to fix this information manually.

Spot by Flexera was a very easy tool to implement in different regions and different legal entities. It had very good usability for teaching new stakeholders to use it. It is also a very easy tool to connect to different data sources and different servers since it is open source. The scalability was very good to implement in a multinational context.

The customer support was very good. We did not have to use it many times, but the few times that we did use it, it was very fast and very useful.

We did not have any software asset management tools before, so Spot by Flexera was our choice as our software asset management tool.

Spot by Flexera was a very easy tool to implement in different regions and different legal entities. It had very good usability for teaching new stakeholders to use it.

My main advice is to have executives and management stakeholders be part of the project to implement Spot by Flexera, but also to have stakeholders with expertise in Spot by Flexera and APIs related to Spot by Flexera. At a certain point, when we were connecting a couple of servers and data sources, we had to hire someone with this expertise. We were able to translate our business needs and be 100 percent sure that the API was being created and was going to provide the information that we needed.

Using Spot by Flexera made it possible for us to save a lot of cost. We were also able to monitor our software installations better. By using Spot by Flexera across a year, we were able to save more than 500,000 euros.

A lot of time was saved. We were taking a couple of days to create and provide certain reports that by using Spot by Flexera we were able to create in a couple of minutes by crossing over different data sources. We were then able to make better decisions based on that. A lot of money was saved after starting to use Spot by Flexera. I would say around 500,000 euros per year, and the software was not even used in all the legal entities yet. We were just implementing in a pilot group. The potential for cost savings was even bigger. We did not have any negative impact of having fewer employees because of Spot by Flexera. We were actually using more stakeholders by making more stakeholders use the tool, and we were then training those people as well.

I was working as a license manager, so I was aware of different pricing, setup costs, and licensing across the company, but I was only responsible for a couple of vendors and the setup cost was actually provided by procurement, so it was not my direct responsibility.

We evaluated ServiceNow and also other software asset management tools, but since Spot by Flexera was the only one that was open source and it was more compatible with our servers, we also had a software vendor that provided Spot by Flexera, so it was our main choice because of those reasons.

The interface of Spot by Flexera was very simple to use. Spot by Flexera Academy had lots of important information that made the usage even easier. In general, I do not think there are any additional needs to improve. Spot by Flexera is a very good tool that provides different possibilities for managing software licenses, IT assets, and creating reports in a very fast and up-to-date way. I would rate this review 9 out of 10.

My primary use case for Spot revolves around managing and optimizing my compute infrastructure across AWS, mainly EC2 and EKS on a daily basis, such as monitoring the workloads and ensuring that Kubernetes and EC2 instances are provisioned, scaling, and replacing spot instances for ephemeral tasks.

Recently, I have been using Spot for Kubernetes through Ocean, which continuously analyzes pod capacity requirements and adjusts the node groups accordingly. It helps handle node drains, rebalancing, and spot interruption gracefully without requiring custom automation. I have been using it recently for provisioning ephemeral tasks for applications such as stateless applications.

Another main use case for Spot revolves around managing ephemeral tasks or stateless application workloads. Additionally, I focus on cost optimization and optimization of my overall work nodes so that I do not need to manage everything or the nodes for my workloads.

Spot overall is a really good tool, and the best feature is the intelligent autoscaling engine it has. It looks at pod requests, historical usage, interruption risk, and pricing trends to choose the best instance type at the lowest cost. The fact that it can mix dozens of instance families dynamically is something which the AWS native autoscalers simply cannot do. I also love the zero-downtime node replacement.

Spot's zero-downtime mode replacement has helped my team by enabling us to reduce our operational overhead. I no longer maintain custom scaling scripts, which has saved several hours or weeks of SRE and DevOps time.

Spot has impacted my organization positively by delivering a very clear ROI. My compute costs have reduced, capacity and production output have increased, and my overhead for maintaining custom scripts or doing some of the tasks manually has been saved. It has saved significant time and resources and given my organization a better competitive edge.

I think overall Spot is quite good. The UI is powerful, but it can feel a bit dense for some new users. More guided onboarding would help teams adopt advanced features faster, and deeper insights into Kubernetes resource usage would be beneficial. Overall, it is a really good platform that is quite mature and stable.

I chose a rating of nine because it may sometimes be a bit overwhelming for newcomers, and there are also a few areas in which the EKS Kubernetes level granularity is a little missing. Overall, I think Spot is a really good and stable tool.

I have been using Spot for two years.

Spot is stable and quite mature.

Spot's scalability is quite good, and it can be expanded to multiple environments.

The customer support is quite good. I did not need to reach out to them a lot, but I think it was good.

Positive

Previously, I was using native solutions only.

Before choosing Spot, I evaluated other options. I was totally dependent on native tools, but I assessed some alternatives such as Cast AI, which was a combination of a few tools including Cast AI and Carpenter for EKS. However, I chose Spot because it provided more automation, smarter instance selection, and had features of many other alternative tools combined in one.

I purchased Spot through the AWS Marketplace.

I cannot share the exact number, but I can share the figure that my EC2 and EKS compute cost reduced by around 65 to 75% with Spot. This was because I was able to reduce some workloads for stateless applications, which needed ephemeral storage for running tasks and processing. This has helped me a lot because my overall operational overhead has been reduced significantly, and I save a lot of time from otherwise managing the servers or maintaining everything properly.

I have seen a return on investment as I was able to reduce my compute cost by 60 to 65% for some of my applications that needed light temporary processing tasks with ephemeral storage and stateless applications. It has also reduced some of my overheads because I do not need custom scaling scripts. It has saved me several hours a week for my key SREs and my DevOps teams.

The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been quite good. The pricing is reasonable and convenient, and the value it offers is completely in line with what I am spending. I think this is really good. However, the exact licensing part is handled by some other members of my team.

I would definitely recommend Spot for those looking to run their workloads on AWS, especially those needing cheaper compute for tasks that will not require much for temporary processing. For scaling up and down existing applications, Spot is really one of the best investments you can make, especially for EKS. I gave this product a rating of nine out of ten.

Our main use case for Spot is to optimize our cloud cost, specifically the AWS cloud cost, by buying proper savings plans and commitments so that we can effectively manage the overall compute savings that we are doing. That is the immediate use case, and in the future, we would like to use Spot Instances and conduct a POC with that to reduce further AWS costs.

In the future, we would like to utilize Spot Instances and implement some automation in place to leverage that aspect from AWS, thereby reducing the overall running compute costs.

The best features Spot offers include the overall tool, the dashboard, and the major impact it has in our organization, which is to reduce costs from both a commitment management perspective and with Spot Instances along with the automation behind it.

The dashboard and automation features stand out to me because currently, we do not have a mechanism to detect whether a particular instance is going to expire within AWS when we are using a Spot Instance. Spot helps us detect such changes within AWS at least one hour prior, allowing us to have a mitigation plan in place and host other servers within the same setup to avoid impacting the application. This automation has helped us significantly since previously we were trying to use Spot Instances but were unable to implement that. One use case we plan to implement within the next few months is the overall commitment savings, which we used to manage manually, but with Spot, it automatically helps us detect when and what kind of instances to purchase, making it easier for us to manage our overall commitment for the savings plan.

Spot has impacted my organization positively so far, showing some cost savings to a certain extent. I believe that over the next few months, we will obtain a proper number in terms of cost savings, but I can already see certain cost savings from the past few months.

Spot could be improved by adding features that help identify data to optimize storage costs by detecting datasets within our environment based on criteria such as age and usage.

Storage optimization is the only need on my wish list for Spot.

We have been using Spot very recently, so it has been close to a year that we are using it.

Spot has been stable so far.

I have not yet checked the scalability of Spot because we are using it for all the services running on AWS. As of now, I feel it is meeting our expectations, though I have not tested it for scalability at higher volumes.

My experience with customer support has been good.

Negative

We did not previously use any other solution.

Deploying Spot in my environment was quite easy; it did not take long at all, just a few hours to integrate with AWS.

My experience with the configuration process was good; it was straightforward as we followed the documentation and were able to complete it successfully.

I found the procurement process easy since we completed it through the AWS Marketplace, making it straightforward.

There was nothing concerning regarding pricing, setup costs, or licensing, as it was processed through the Marketplace and based on the savings model.

I have not seen a return on investment yet. I believe it will take another four to five months to get the return on investment.

My experience with the metering and billing has been very good.

There is nothing specific that I did not like about the metering and billing experience.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Spot. We were looking at other kinds of tools, but none had the same kind of features as Spot.

I purchased Spot through the AWS Marketplace.

My experience with Spot so far has shown a few noticeable changes. We are not renewing the new savings plan that we were doing earlier, and the changes we have been implementing have helped us to reduce some fraction of cost. However, I believe it will take another five to six months to reflect the actual savings since certain EC2 instances we are running still have an existing savings plan. Once those savings plans expire, we will be able to get the maximum savings out of it.

I find these two features quite useful for us and we have been using them. Spot is very new to us, and over the next few months, we may evaluate more features and possibly conduct a POC with those.

As of now, I can forecast approximately 5% to 7% cost savings that I have noticed.

Cost saving is the main benefit, and the manual effort required for reviewing and purchasing savings plans and other RIs is something we do not have to manage manually now, as we get automatic suggestions from Spot. This additional aspect has helped us significantly. It will take a few more months for us to further review the other features that this product has.

I rated Spot as a four out of five because storage optimization would make it a five for me.

My advice for others looking into using Spot is to definitely proceed with it for a more robust solution in terms of cost management. Spot helps manage savings plans and RIs that are difficult to handle manually. Leveraging the automation feature for managing Spot Instances can provide additional benefits.

We use Spot for optimization by leveraging real-time optimization as well as auto-optimization. The company allows organizations to achieve substantial savings on their cloud spend and helps realize a reduction in costs by 50 to 70 percent. It improves resource utilization and reliability, enhances agility by enabling teams to adapt seamlessly to changing demands, and supports FinOps practices for better financial governance. It integrates with major cloud providers such as AWS and is available in the marketplace, allowing customers to benefit from decreased spend while sellers mutually benefit due to their compensation, which enables us to account plan and achieve the best outcome for the customer.

Overall, the main takeaway is that Spot helps the organization maximize efficiency while reducing costs across cloud environments.

Spot's automated cost optimization works by continuously analyzing the workload and applying policies to minimize cloud spend without sacrificing performance. Spot automatically chooses the most cost-effective mix of pricing models such as spot instances, reserved instances, savings plans, and on-demand based on real-time demand and availability.

Spot has positively impacted our organization by automating cloud resource management, which has significantly cut costs and improved efficiency. We have seen up to 70 percent savings, as well as better scalability, reliability, and tighter integration with AWS. This integration has opened several doors to the partner ecosystem, different marketplaces, and has allowed us to leverage programs while tapping into the Amazon network and ecosystem more effectively.

Positive

We use Spot Ocean to manage our Kubernetes infrastructure, including AKS and EKS.

The solution helps us to manage and scale automatically whenever there is a limit to the increase in the application workflow.

The solution doesn't have support from OCI, and it should start working to onboard OCI.

I have been using Spot Ocean for nine months.

The solution has a lot of bugs.

Around four people use Spot Ocean in our organization.

The solution’s technical support is fantastic.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

Spot Ocean is deployed on the cloud in our organization. I would recommend the solution to other users. You need to have an experience with Kubernetes, or else this product is of no use. It is not difficult to learn to use Spot Ocean.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Spot by NetApp is primarily used for backup and also for Fiservware.

The product is valuable due to features such as the SASA solution and the disk array from NetApp. The solution offers both block access and file access, making it a nice solution for customers.

There are no particular areas for improvement I can identify.

I have been working with Spot by NetApp for around ten years.

Spot by NetApp is stable, and there are no problems with it.

Spot by NetApp has quite good scalability.

We have contacted their support, and they are responsive and helpful.

Positive

We previously worked with Dell Avamar but are now using NetApp solutions.

Deployment usually takes around one day.

Only one engineer is usually involved in the deployment process.

It provides a good financial benefit for the organization.

Spot by NetApp is reasonably priced compared to other products on the market. Pricing is around a nine out of ten.

Spot by NetApp is a reliable product with good support, making it recommendable.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.