Why Ternary is the leading FinOps solution for MSPs

Ternary is the leading FinOps solution for MSPs (managed service providers). A FinOps Certified Platform, Ternary manages more than $7B in multi-cloud spend across leading enterprises and MSPs.

Offering an MSP platform is surprisingly uncommon among FinOps vendors. Of the 80+ vendors in the FinOps landscape, only a handful provide a FinOps solution purpose-built for partners. In this blog, we’ll dive into what makes Ternary best positioned to help partners grow their FinOps services business and enable them to do it more efficiently than ever before.

A brief history of the market

Let’s rewind to the early days of cloud cost management, when only two vendors provided partner platforms: CloudHealth Technologies and CloudCheckr. Since then, both of these companies have been acquired and rebranded. Those shake-ups have affected partners in adverse ways.

Broadcom, the most recent parent company of CloudHealth, has been in the news for terminating VMware’s existing partner agreements, announced at the end of 2023. More recently, Arrow Electronics has become the sole provider of the product currently branded as VMware Tanzu CloudHealth. These changes cast doubt on Broadcom’s strategy, as well as its reliability for partners. They also leave practitioners, partners, analysts, and vendors uncertain about CloudHealth’s future.  

CloudCheckr, on the other hand, was acquired by NetApp in 2021 and placed under the Spot by NetApp brand. CloudCheckr has largely faded into the background within NetApp. On the Spot by NetApp website, neither the FinOps solutions page nor the MSP page mentions CloudCheckr. Interestingly enough, you can still find CloudCheckr listed in the product navigation. But that page directs users to sign in to CloudCheckr, implying that the two brands were never fully integrated. The question becomes “Is CloudCheckr still relevant?”

Fast-forward to earlier this year: Another first-generation cost management solution, Cloudability, finally decided to take advantage of the MSP opportunity. Cloudability is no stranger to acquisitions: Apptio acquired it first; then IBM scooped it up. That begs the question: Why is Cloudability just throwing its hat into the partner ring now? It could have built a channel motion anytime over the past five years, while competitors faced acquisition and rebranding challenges. Are Cloudability’s current partnership efforts too little, too late?

Unlike the first generation of cloud cost management tools, Ternary is a FinOps-native platform. We have had a channel-first approach since our inception.

Ternary’s channel-first approach

Ternary launched in 2021, with a focus on acquiring and servicing Google partners and customers. Today, the Ternary MSP Platform and Partner Program are being leveraged by some of the world’s leading multi-cloud MSPs. 

Simply providing a multi-tenant SaaS platform with billing features (like re-rating) is not sufficient to lead this market segment. At Ternary, we see those capabilities as table stakes. Ternary provides much more than functionality to help you manage your customers’ cloud costs: We help you deliver differentiated FinOps services to drive profitability. 

Ternary’s solution demonstrates our understanding of MSPs’ operational needs—and our commitment to serving them. Read more about how Rackspace Technology, a leading managed service provider globally, partners with Ternary to deliver value to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers.

We’ve had the experience of working with and trying out quite a few tools in this process, but the way the Ternary GUI works is pretty simple and very well laid out. Everything is absorbable for the customer or the user, more palatable. We’ve seen that the time it takes for us to enable customers has not been as long as we were anticipating.

Akshay Jituri, Cloud Cost Optimization Specialist, Rackspace Technology

What makes Ternary unique

Ternary runs on modern, secure, and cost-effective serverless technology. Operating on serverless technology ensures our ability to scale elastically, across all dimensions. Our multi-tenant platform can host thousands of customers, with undiminished security and performance. In turn, as a MSP partner, you can provision and onboard a limitless number of customers, at any size and scale.

MSP partners have complete control over their managed Ternary customer tenants across implementation, onboarding, and ongoing user management. The Ternary MSP Dashboard provides you a holistic view across your entire FinOps services business. Specifically, it allows your service delivery team to quickly and easily view the most important information across your customer base. Even better, that visibility does not require you to access each individual customer tenant. The dashboard includes cost history and monthly trends, anomalies, savings opportunities, cloud data status, and access logs for each customer tenant. 

The Ternary MSP Billing Rules Engine enables you to re-rate costs for your customers. You can create, apply, and reuse one or multiple rules for your applicable customer tenants. Ternary provides feature parity across all leading cloud service providers (AWS, Azure, and GCP). From cost transparency to partner billing and rate/usage optimization, Ternary is dedicated to supporting multi-cloud use cases.

At Ternary, we are your partners, not your competitors. We’re committed to the success of your business and our joint customers. That’s why we do not have a professional services organization. Instead, following our channel-first approach, we refer clients to you and we’ll jointly sell with you to close net-new logos.  

At Ternary, we pride ourselves on listening to partners and customers, responding quickly to your feedback. But we’re more than just responsive; we’re proactive. We regularly enlist design partners who contribute insights to Ternary’s product and engineering organization. Our team is dedicated to developing and delivering the features that are most important for running your FinOps services business.

A trusted partner for your success

Ternary has the expertise to help you accelerate business growth, boost profitability, and continuously deliver value to your customers. Our team members include early leaders from CloudHealth and Cloudability. We have experienced the evolution from cost management to FinOps. We know where the market has been, and we understand where it is going. Bob Kilbride, at the helm as Ternary’s Head of Channel and Alliances, will solidify our standing as the leading FinOps solution for MSPs. 

As part of our commitment to your success, Ternary provides our partner program free of charge. Our partner program empowers you to take advantage of the enormous opportunity that FinOps presents. While delivering go-to-market support and ongoing training, it assists with platform adoption and service creation.

Ready to learn more?

We hope you found this blog article helpful in demonstrating why Ternary is the leading FinOps solution for MSPs. To learn more about the Ternary MSP Platform, request a demo today.