5 Hot Cloud Apps to Boost Your IT Department's Efficiency and Productivity

One of the exciting things about being the CTO of OneLogin is that I'm constantly learning about fantastic cloud applications to boost IT performance and security. There are now cloud applications for IT teams of every size and focus.

For example, in the world of software development, there are now cloud-based apps to help build security into your app from day one. Take SD Elements, which is kind of like tax planning software for application security: you describe the technology stack, features and compliance requirements of your system, and SD Elements presents you with a series of tailored, prescriptive requirements.

Like many software companies, we rely on the Agile (News - Alert) Project Management methodology. Agile is great, but sometimes there are challenges stemming from ‘islands of activities’ – that’s where a cloud-based work and project management solutions like Clarizen help get everyone on the same page. Clarizen centralizes all of your release backlog data, task updates, bugs, documents and communications into a single system.

Once your app goes live, New Relic is the killer app for preventing downtime due to application errors. New Relic helps you make sense of the noise by allowing you to monitor the metrics that really matter. For example, you can quickly identify application errors, fix the underlying problem and improve your mean time to resolution (MTTR).

For those IT departments juggling dozens of applications and resources, Innotas provides an integrated platform for both Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and Application Portfolio Management (APM (News - Alert)). With so many projects competing for resources, Innotas gives you that holistic view so you can prioritize projects, optimize shared resources, govern core processes and ensure alignment across your entire IT landscape.

And when things go wrong or end-users need help with a new service, they often end up at the IT help desk. That's where BMC Remedyforce can be a real life saver. Remedyforce is a comprehensive IT service management solution built on the force.com platform. It helps you connect with customers to provide fast, accurate services in a way that optimizes IT efficiency.

Christian Pedersen is CTO and co-founder of OneLogin, an identity and access management platform that provides single sign-on into 3,000 cloud apps.