News - Par Habibou M'baye, le 12 Feb 2025

IT and Software Asset Management 2021: Priority on Savings

The State of ITAM 2021 report published by Flexera last October provides an overview of IT Asset Management (ITAM) and Software Asset Management (SAM) within companies with more than 1,000 employees*. Summary of the main findings of this study.

A clear observation emerges: in 2021, ITAM must evolve and go beyond compliance. Companies must ensure that their IT asset management is aligned with strategic IT initiatives. This is especially critical in the current uncertain economic context due to the health crisis and as IT environments tend to become increasingly hybrid and complex.

Saving Money: Companies' Number One Priority

In response to the Covid-19 crisis, some firms like Gartner estimate an 8% decrease in IT budgets in 2021 [1]. Thus, 4 out of the 5 main SAM initiatives in 2021 are focused on savings. Indeed, for 69% of respondents, their company's priority in 2021 is to optimize and reduce software spending.

An economic objective that, in more than half (52%) of companies, will be accentuated in 2021 due to the Covid-19 crisis. And 51% of IT managers surveyed declare that their main focus for saving money will be on optimizing software licenses to avoid future costs.

Finally, nearly three-quarters (74%) of software asset management teams plan to focus more on public cloud spending over the next three years, with 70% of them citing SaaS as a top priority.

Costly Software Compliance Audits

Why such attention to software assets? Because not only do almost all companies spend 25% of their software expenses on hidden costs [2]. But also because publishers are increasingly conducting software audits within companies to verify license compliance. In this area, Microsoft is the most "aggressive": nearly half of companies (49%) have been audited in the past three years.

The cost of compliance can be significant: a third of companies paid more than $500,000 last year due to software audits, with 10% paying more than $5 million. Among the reasons: few SAM teams track software in the cloud (46%), SaaS (35%), or in containers (34%).

* Flexera 2021 State of ITAM Report – Methodology: report conducted among 461 professionals worldwide, who manage and participate in ITAM and SAM processes in medium and large organizations with at least 1,000 employees.

[1] According to Gartner estimates, May 2020 – https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-05-13-gartner-says-global-it-spending-to-decline-8-percent-in-2020-due-to-impact-of-covid19

[2] According to a Flexera Software report, November 2016 – https://www.decideo.fr/Le-cout-invisible-des-logiciels-d-entreprise_a8906.html

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