SaaS audit and management costs are rising
The path enterprise software takes is changing fast. As more organizations shift their infrastructure and software tools to the cloud, they’re also inheriting something else, complexity. Managing it is no longer just difficult, it’s becoming expensive. Traditional methods of software asset management (SAM) are losing ground because they weren’t designed for today’s decentralized and feature-rich digital ecosystems.
We’re not just talking about rising vendor bills. It’s the broader impact of modified license terms, add-on services you didn’t plan for, and a lack of visibility across the full tech stack. What used to be manageable is now fragmented across hundreds of software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools, each updating their policies and pricing structures independently. There’s no central source of truth. This creates surprise costs and operational inefficiencies for even the most disciplined enterprises.
Nicole Trevino, an experienced voice in SAM, captured the situation well when she said, “The definition of what software asset managers cover keeps expanding. You fix one thing and then a new thing pops up.” She’s right. The goalposts are constantly moving.
Leaders need to understand that this isn’t a problem of spending more, it’s a challenge of seeing clearly. Cost optimization today requires modern tooling, cross-functional teams, and people who can track usage at the granular level while keeping an eye on enterprise-wide priorities.
According to Flexera’s 2023 survey, the number of companies prioritizing SaaS cost savings grew by seven percentage points year-over-year. Focus on contract rightsizing rose by eight points. These aren’t small movements, they show that top organizations are starving for clarity.
If you want to bring your costs under control, first make sure your team actually knows what they’ve bought, and who’s using it.
FinOps and IT asset management (ITAM) teams are evolving toward a more collaborative approach
Cost control in software used to be simple, track what you buy and what it’s used for. That’s no longer the case. Today’s software environment is distributed, dynamic, and always evolving. As organizations move deeper into cloud infrastructure and SaaS adoption, the cost structure becomes more rooted in real-time usage, personas, renewals, and compliance nuances that require detail across multiple functions.
FinOps and IT Asset Management (ITAM) were once parallel tracks. Now, they’re converging. FinOps professionals typically look at cloud usage data, they follow the numbers to understand cost trends, cost drivers, and where to optimize. ITAM, on the other hand, focuses on vendor contracts, licensing terms, renewal cycles, and duplication. When both teams operate in isolation, blind spots are inevitable. You’ll see part of the picture but miss critical context. That leads to overspending.
Bringing these teams together isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s essential. It’s the only way to unify financial oversight over cloud expenses and licensing. That’s why the FinOps Foundation and the ITAM Forum are building joint protocols and working groups. They’re turning a fragmented process into something coherent. J.R. Storment, Executive Director of the FinOps Foundation, summed this up clearly: “On the FinOps side, we’ve got the billing data, but we don’t have visibility into contract renewals and compliance, historically, that’s been ITAM. Together, it’s like they’re two peas in a pod.”
The convergence of FinOps and ITAM is now standard practice among high-performing teams. If your organization hasn’t adapted, you’re running with operational debt. Top-down alignment is required for FinOps and ITAM leaders to work side by side. That alignment makes data actionable, licensing smarter, and decisions faster.
For C-level executives, this comes down to control and insight. You either integrate both cost and contract intelligence or continue making decisions on partial information. In a multi-cloud, multi-vendor world, partial information isn’t good enough.
Industry alliances and best practice initiatives
Many organizations are overspending on cloud resources, not because they lack data, but because they lack cohesive processes. Kubernetes deployments run inefficiently. SaaS licenses are underused or misaligned. Cloud infrastructure bills continue to surprise finance teams. These aren’t isolated issues, they’re system-wide gaps in governance, and they’re escalating.
The tech industry now recognizes that uncoordinated approaches to managing cloud and SaaS costs can’t scale. That’s why serious efforts are underway to build standard frameworks and tools for better oversight. This is being led by institutions like the FinOps Foundation and ITAM Forum. In June, they formalized a joint alliance to address this fragmentation. That partnership is building working groups and launching best practice initiatives that bridge FinOps’ usage data with ITAM’s contract expertise.
J.R. Storment, Executive Director of the FinOps Foundation, emphasized the intent: “We’re spinning up a series of working groups and best practice sessions, bringing in the experts from the ITAM world to work with our FinOps experts to figure out how we codify this into a consistent set of best practices.” It’s not just about sharing ideas, it’s about operationalizing them in a way that’s scalable and repeatable across enterprises.
This development matters to C-suite leaders because unified standards create business leverage. When your teams work off consistent models, you reduce internal friction and accelerate decision-making. Finance, procurement, IT, and operations can collaborate based on a single, usable source of financial intelligence. It lowers audit risk, improves compliance, and locks in measurable value faster.
If you’re leading transformation in your organization, pay attention to these frameworks. They’ll define how cost governance in technology runs over the next decade.
Managing containerized cloud environments are a challenge in software asset management
Organizations are deploying containers at scale. Kubernetes, in particular, is now a core part of how many enterprises run services in production. But most teams still don’t have full visibility into the cost structure behind it. Containers make workloads portable and dynamic, but without control measures, they quickly introduce complexity in tracking usage and software licenses across environments.
Software Asset Management (SAM) frameworks have not fully caught up to the containerized world. Licensing is harder to trace, usage spikes are difficult to predict, and cost attribution is inconsistent across teams. That’s why managing containers now ranks as a top SAM concern for most IT organizations.
This complexity isn’t theoretical, it’s quantifiable. Flexera’s latest survey shows that over 75% of organizations see cloud container management, including Kubernetes, as a primary challenge in their asset oversight strategy. Costs are rising, and teams are struggling to match resource consumption to business value in real time.
Leaders running mission-critical systems in containers need frameworks for governance, not just orchestration. That’s the gap, teams can deploy and scale workloads, but few can accurately audit what’s being consumed, who owns it, and how much it should be costing. Without that clarity, licensing risk grows, and cost overruns go unnoticed until it’s too late to rebalance.
For C-suite executives, this reinforces the need to invest in oversight capabilities that are purpose-built for containers. This includes financial observability, real-time usage tracking, and license-aware infrastructure monitoring. Without these systems in place, cost precision in Kubernetes, and most cloud-native platforms, remains out of reach.
Key executive takeaways
- SaaS cost visibility is breaking down: Leaders should invest in tools and cross-functional teams that surface real-time SaaS usage and licensing data, as traditional software asset controls no longer keep up with evolving cloud ecosystems.
- FinOps and ITAM must operate in sync: Executives should drive collaboration between FinOps and ITAM functions to unify usage data with contract oversight, unlocking accurate, enterprise-wide cost governance.
- Standardization efforts are gaining traction: Support and align with emerging industry frameworks from groups like the FinOps Foundation and ITAM Forum to reduce internal process friction and make spend control scalable.
- Container environments need better cost controls: Prioritize financial observability in Kubernetes and other container platforms, as most enterprises continue to struggle with untracked consumption and compliance risks.
