Complex software licensing in hybrid environments poses audit and compliance risks
Enterprise technology stacks are more distributed than ever. Hybrid cloud is now standard, and while that brings scalability and flexibility, it also brings complexity, especially when it comes to managing software licenses. The challenge isn’t the software itself; it’s what surrounds it. Licensing terms have evolved, and fast. IT asset management (ITAM) and software asset management (SAM) professionals are now expected to stay ahead of shifting policies under pressure from frequent vendor audits, especially from vendors like Oracle.
The reality is simple: if your organization doesn’t know exactly how, where, and by whom software is being used across your infrastructure, on-premises or in the cloud, you’re running blind. And when a vendor audit hits, that lack of visibility becomes expensive, fast. Software license compliance, when mishandled, isn’t just an operational hiccup, it’s a six-to-seven-figure financial risk year after year.
According to the ITAM/SAM Survey & Report, 73% of organizations have been audited by Oracle Java in just the last three years. Even more concerning, almost one-third, 27%—said they’re now spending over $500,000 annually just fixing non-compliance issues. That’s half a million dollars wasted on firefighting processes instead of investing in smarter systems or growth-driven priorities.
What’s required now is intentional compliance management, not reactive damage control. That doesn’t mean throwing more bodies at the problem, it means building smarter processes with the right monitoring tools and governance. Businesses that invest in real-time visibility into their software usage, across all environments, will avoid the audit trap and spend significantly less time negotiating penalties.
If you can measure accurately, you can manage proactively. Compliance doesn’t have to be a liability, it can be a competitive advantage.
ITAM/SAM functions are evolving into strategic, high-impact roles
Traditionally, IT asset management was seen as an administrative task, track software, manage hardware, ensure compliance. That’s changed. Fast. Today, ITAM and SAM teams aren’t just record-keepers. They’re strategic operators sitting closer to the core of every smart enterprise’s digital and financial stack.
Why? Because licensing compliance has real budget impact. Because cybersecurity depends on knowing which software is approved, and which isn’t. And because technology decisions need to be guided by clear data on what tools deliver value and which ones are underutilized or duplicated.
According to the ITAM/SAM Survey & Report, 41% of ITAM teams are now actively involved in identifying unsupported software, while 44% play a role in cloud security monitoring. These aren’t side tasks, they’re mission-critical. Unsupported software introduces risk. Poor security monitoring leads to exposure. Executives need teams that can surface that information early, before regulators or ransomware operators do.
The role has expanded, and that shift needs executive support. If you’re in the C-suite, this is your moment to elevate oversight of asset management. Give these teams direct access to strategic discussions. Empower them with the automation tools that reduce error, boost visibility, and make compliance continuous instead of episodic.
Smart executives are learning that clean ITAM data improves decisions well outside IT. When you know how your software is being used, by team, by region, by function, you can optimize contracts, reduce redundancies, and negotiate from a position of strength.
Done right, ITAM and SAM fuel strategic agility. They make your organization leaner, faster, and more resilient. And in a world where productivity, compliance, and risk are top concerns, that’s not just helpful. It’s essential.
In-house management of software audits remains prevalent but presents challenges
Most companies still prefer to manage their license audits internally. In the ITAM/SAM Survey & Report, 74% of organizations said they conduct license discovery and software audits primarily or entirely in-house. That suggests confidence in internal resources, but also reveals a pressing problem, many of these same teams admit they struggle with maintaining accurate records, mapping usage, and interpreting increasingly complex vendor agreements.
Managing audits internally isn’t inherently flawed. The problem arises when teams are overextended and reliant on manual processes or insufficient tooling. Software environments have scaled. The number of applications running across on-prem, hybrid, and cloud platforms continues to grow. Without automation and expert support, internal teams won’t keep up, and the backlog shows up in high audit costs and unnecessary compliance penalties.
Licensing missteps are often invisible until they’re audited. Over-reporting wastes money. Under-reporting leads to fines. Both stem from the same issue: incomplete or outdated asset intelligence. Internal ITAM teams frequently lack the time and tools to maintain real-time, accurate data across distributed environments. And if leadership hasn’t invested in systems that enable that visibility, internal audits can’t operate at enterprise scale.
This is a leadership issue. Decisions about whether to centralize, outsource, or adopt advanced license management platforms can’t be delayed. C-suite executives should evaluate the ROI of internal management versus working with third-party specialists who can provide fast access to expert licensing knowledge, intelligent tooling, and continuous compliance reporting.
Success here is not about doing everything in-house. It’s about knowing where internal efforts add strategic value, and where external support produces higher returns and lower risk.
Fragmented data from disparate IT environments hinders effective compliance and tracking
Many organizations operate in fragmented technology environments, part cloud, part on-prem, often stretched across regions and business units. While this model increases flexibility, it also generates disjointed data systems. Asset information is siloed, incomplete, or inconsistent. That’s a risk.
Without a unified view of software deployments and usage trends, ITAM/SAM teams are left with guesswork. They can’t accurately account for where software is installed, who is using it, or how license entitlements are applied. That lack of clarity slows everything, license renewal decisions, audit preparation, and security response.
Getting full visibility is technically possible. Most companies already have the data. The problem is it’s stored across incompatible systems or managed by isolated teams that don’t share a common process. Inventory controls are often built for legacy infrastructure and don’t scale well into cloud-first environments. That fragmentation is what undermines compliance, and creates unnecessary exposure to financial risk.
Leadership needs to simplify this. A unified asset data model should be non-negotiable. Integrating ITAM workflows across applications, infrastructure, and business units requires alignment at the top, and investment in platforms that can normalize and centralize data inputs across different systems.
Clean data isn’t a luxury. It’s the foundation of compliance, security, and accurate reporting. Getting there isn’t about adding complexity. It’s about standardizing how information is captured and used, organization-wide. That’s what enables real-time decision-making, avoids audit surprises, and puts the business in control.
Manual ITAM/SAM processes reduce operational efficiency and increase the risk of errors
Manual processes still dominate large parts of IT asset and software license management. Teams spend hours entering data, reviewing deployments, and validating usage metrics line by line, often across spreadsheets or disconnected systems. This approach is slow, resource-heavy, and prone to error.
When your compliance depends on manual checks and point-in-time snapshots, mistakes happen. Mistakes lead to misreporting, which leads to fines, wasted spend, and disrupted audits. It also burns out valuable internal resources. Monitoring software usage isn’t where strategic IT teams should be concentrating their time.
Automation delivers a higher return, not just in speed, but in consistency. Repetitive tasks such as license tracking, application usage monitoring, and entitlement reconciliation should be machine-driven. This allows your asset managers to shift focus to areas that carry real value, like strategic planning, vendor negotiation, and risk reduction.
If your organization is still relying on manual discovery and reporting processes, that’s a signal your operations aren’t scaling with the business. The more distributed and dynamic your environment becomes, the more important it is to have real-time, automated systems to detect and respond to changes in software deployment and usage.
This isn’t a question of preference, it’s a question of capability. Software portfolios are too large, and licensing terms are too complex. The only sustainable approach is automation. Executives should be driving that shift with urgency. It reduces compliance gaps, protects budgets, and puts teams in a stronger tactical position.
Security vulnerabilities are increasingly becoming intertwined with ITAM responsibilities
IT asset managers are being pulled into daily cybersecurity efforts, and for good reason. The software your business runs is one of the largest threat surfaces in your environment, especially when that software is outdated, unpatched, or unsupported. ITAM/SAM teams now play a growing role in identifying, escalating, and helping close these gaps.
This is playing out in real time. In Java-specific environments, critical production security issues are being reported weekly or even daily. According to the 2025 State of Java Survey & Report, 41% of organizations encounter critical Java security issues at that frequency. And a third of teams say they spend more than half their time chasing false positive alerts, wasting effort on problems that don’t exist while the real risks persist.
IT asset management now sits at the intersection of compliance and risk. Teams are not just managing installations, they’re flagging vulnerabilities and unsupported applications that lead to threats. In the ITAM/SAM Survey & Report, 41% of respondents said their teams help identify unsupported software, and 44% said they contribute to cloud security monitoring. That’s no longer optional, it’s expected.
Executives need to respond accordingly. ITAM should not be walled off from security functions, it should be integrated. The teams responsible for software and hardware visibility must be aligned with those responsible for threat detection, resilience planning, and compliance enforcement.
Security posture depends on knowing what assets exist and where vulnerabilities might emerge. That knowledge lives within ITAM. To reduce risk in a measurable way, the lines between asset management and security operations must close. And leaders should be investing in tools and platforms that support both functions at once.
Licensing compliance challenges are intensified by evolving vendor pricing models
Software vendors are moving quickly to adopt new pricing models, and those shifts are creating friction for enterprise compliance teams. A good example is Oracle’s employee-based pricing for Java, which ties licensing costs to the number of employees, regardless of direct software usage. That changes the compliance equation entirely.
Most organizations aren’t structured to monitor software use at that scale. They track installations and application activity, not total employee counts or indirect access. As pricing models evolve, businesses are being forced to adjust how they measure entitlement and exposure. That’s not a simple operational change. It affects how legal, procurement, HR, finance, and IT communicate.
According to the ITAM/SAM Survey & Report, more than one-third of professionals say compliance, including the challenge of managing excessive licensing, is their organization’s top issue. Costs are rising not because software is being overused, but because measurement frameworks are changing faster than internal systems can adapt.
For leadership, the takeaway is clear. Licensing compliance is no longer just a technical responsibility, it needs executive-level alignment. These changes impact IT budgets, internal audits, procurement contracts, and even talent planning. Executives must ensure that ITAM/SAM teams are not only informed of future pricing trends but also empowered to redesign how compliance is tracked at scale.
This also means closer collaboration between licensing experts and business decision-makers. Vendor negotiations must now account for organizational structure and workforce shifts. Strategic planning around software adoption now requires a combined view of technical deployment and enterprise-wide access. The complexity is rising, but staying ahead of it will reduce long-term financial and legal risk.
Rapid growth in the ITAM/SAM market signals expanding career opportunities amid increasing complexity
The IT asset management (ITAM) and software asset management (SAM) markets are growing, fast. The global ITAM sector expanded from $1.15 billion in 2019 to $1.49 billion in 2023, a 6.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). SAM is moving even faster, with a projected 16% CAGR through 2029. There’s sustained enterprise demand for expertise in this space.
That growth reflects what’s happening on the ground. Software environments are more varied, data volumes are higher, and compliance demands are more intense. ITAM and SAM teams are now expected to oversee not only software tracking, but also cost optimization, security visibility, and cloud governance.
The upside is clear, career growth, increased influence, and broader responsibilities for professionals in these roles. The challenge is equally clear, skills must evolve, tooling must scale, and organizational silos must break down to keep up with demand.
For executives, this is a long-term planning issue. ITAM/SAM capabilities won’t scale just by expanding teams. They’ll scale by streamlining systems, deploying automation, and supporting career development. Investing in this area doesn’t just solve today’s compliance problem. It builds future resilience across procurement, cybersecurity, operations, and finance.
This momentum also creates opportunities to rethink the role of ITAM/SAM in the enterprise. These teams have access to high-value data, on usage, licensing terms, user behavior, and infrastructure trends. That data should be integrated into high-level strategic decisions. Organizations that treat ITAM/SAM as a static, back-office function miss the larger opportunity: actionable intelligence that reduces cost and risk while aligning IT strategy with business performance.
A strategic ITAM/SAM approach enhances organizational agility, reduces risks, and improves developer productivity
Modern IT environments are constantly shifting. Software development has become more automated, more modular, and more reliant on third-party code. That’s why IT asset management (ITAM) and software asset management (SAM) aren’t just compliance safeguards, they’re becoming core enablers of business agility and engineering velocity.
Strategic ITAM/SAM helps organizations avoid being slowed down by technical debt, misused licenses, or tangled vendor agreements. When asset visibility is high, license terms are tracked in real-time, and usage rights are clearly governed, engineering teams can focus on what they do best, building. Without this layer of control, developers may unknowingly use tools, containers, or components that introduce misaligned licensing terms or security gaps, increasing downstream risk.
More importantly, a strategic ITAM/SAM model enhances the organization’s ability to respond to change. Whether you’re shifting workloads to the cloud, scaling new products, or undergoing vendor negotiations, the ability to understand and act on software usage data gives leadership an operational edge. Real-time intel replaces guesswork. Forecasts become accurate. Decisions are made faster, with full regulatory and financial awareness.
This has a clear effect on broader performance goals. Teams that don’t have to pause to resolve audit issues or trace improper deployments move more confidently. IT leaders can deploy budget more precisely, avoiding excess license expenditures that deliver no added value. With engineering resources freed from unexpected licensing constraints, innovation is no longer delayed by compliance drag.
C-suite leaders should see ITAM and SAM strategy as a business performance multiplier. Investing in best-in-class platforms, automating license tracking, and integrating asset visibility into engineering workflows creates a system that’s both compliant and flexible. The companies that structure this well will gain speed, cut risk, and create space for their teams to operate at full capacity in an increasingly regulated tech environment.
The bottom line
Every business running enterprise software today is exposed to licensing risk, unnecessary spend, and growing pressure from audits. The complexity isn’t going away, cloud adoption, automation, and evolving pricing models are accelerating it. That means ITAM and SAM can’t stay in the background. They need to be embedded in high-level strategy, not buried in operational checklists.
Executives who get this right won’t just avoid penalties. They’ll turn software visibility into a strategic advantage. They’ll improve security, enable smarter vendor negotiations, and give developers the freedom to execute without unexpected compliance issues standing in their way.
This is the moment to stop treating asset management as reactive. With the right tools, cross-functional engagement, and leadership alignment, ITAM and SAM can evolve into forward-looking functions that reduce risk, unlock performance, and make IT a real driver of business value. If your teams aren’t there yet, the leadership opportunity is obvious. Set the pace.
