Flexera 2022 State of ITAM Report Highlights the Urgency for Companies to Focus on New Technology for Future Success

The acceleration of digital transformation across all industries and organizations brings complexities that were unforeseen in years past. The roles of those in ITAM, including the related fields of software asset management (SAM) and hardware asset management (HAM), must evolve with the intricacies and pace introduced by the digital enterprise. Enterprises rely increasingly on ITAM to drive their Technology Value Optimization (TVO) efforts – identifying and harvesting IT Operations and digital supply chain efficiencies to drive new investments in revenue and loyalty bearing initiatives.

“We’ve identified that many ITAM practices are still prioritizing efforts related to compliance in order to avoid future audits,” said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Flexera. “This is certainly understandable and makes sense tactically, however these efforts fail to advance the tools and processes that incorporate new technology and environments. An ELA involving licensing spread across data centers, public, private and multi clouds, all littered with containers, is hard enough to manage. Inevitably, the methods we’re using today to monitor and manage hybrid usage will quickly become insufficient. ITAM teams need to shift their focus from avoiding audits and penalties and evolve to accommodate complex hybrid IT environments and the new technologies that are being adopted.”

Report highlights

The Flexera 2022 State of ITAM Report survey has captured insights into how organizations are progressing in their ever more critical IT asset management programs. The information includes the current maturity of technology teams, their role in the enterprise, top corporate initiatives, challenges and success metrics from respondents across the globe.

• Cost-savings and cost-avoidance are top of mind for SAM teams
  • The top initiative in 2022 for SAM teams is to optimize and save on software spend (54 percent)
  • Almost half (49 percent) of SAM teams are looking to reclaim underused/unused software licenses
  • Almost half (48 percent) of SAM teams have an initiative to improve the management of their SaaS applications
• SAM teams lack resources to support new environments
  • Dealing with new environments such as SaaS, cloud and containers is a challenge for three-fourths (75 percent) of SAM teams
  • Increasing the maturity of SAM practices is a challenge for the vast majority (76 percent)
  • Seventy percent of SAM teams experience a lack of qualified resources
  • Fifty percent of SAM teams lack a viable SAM tool to assist with their asset management activities
• Audits are a significant drain on ITAM resources
  • Eighty-three percent of SAM teams’ time is consumed by audit-related activities, an increase of 20 percent over last year
  • Microsoft, Oracle and IBM are the top three vendors auditing SAM teams over the past three years
• The critical and strategic importance of ITAM is rapidly increasing
  • Twenty-two percent of ITAM teams report to the chief information officer (CIO) or chief technology officer (CTO)
  • ITAM teams interact directly with many other functional areas in the organization, including infrastructure (54 percent of respondents) and IT service management (ITSM, 54 percent)
• The responsibilities of SAM and HAM teams are still evolving
  • One-third (34 percent) of SAM practices have reached advanced maturity, while 30 percent are still in the beginner phase
  • On-premises software license tracking (65 percent) is more prevalent than similar tracking in all other areas of the IT estate
  • Responding to audits is the most commonly reported responsibility of SAM teams (70 percent)

Report methodology

A total of 465 technical professionals from around the globe and across a broad cross-section of organizations participated in the Flexera 2022 State of ITAM Report survey. The participants provided insights into their ITAM practices.

This survey includes organizations with at least 1,000 employees. More than half of participating organizations employ at least 5,000 people, while more than one-third employ 10,000 or more.

For more information on the Flexera 2022 State of ITAM Report, download the report here and sign up for the webinar here.

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