2025 Software Asset Management Office Hours: Year-End Recap

[Kieron Dean]

2025 Software Asset Management Office Hours: Year-End Recap

Managing Software Asset Management (SAM) can often seem like navigating a landscape that's constantly changing. The obstacles range from ensuring accurate foundational data to tackling the nuanced world of datacenter licensing, making the journey as multifaceted as the software itself. Imagine if you had a guide—one shaped by the collective experiences of hundreds of organizations facing similar challenges.

We've gathered the most commonly raised and persistent issues discussed during ServiceNow SAM Office Hours sessions in 2025. To make these insights actionable, we've categorised them within the Crawl, Walk, Run maturity framework. This step-by-step model offers a structured pathway for developing a robust SAM program, beginning with obtaining basic visibility and advancing toward delivering strategic enterprise-wide value.

By learning which questions your colleagues and peers are asking at every phase, you'll be better prepared to identify obstacles, avoid frequent missteps, and thoughtfully lead your own SAM initiative from a strong starting point to outstanding operational effectiveness.

🐛The Crawl Phase: Laying a Solid Foundation

The Crawl phase is the most critical stage of any SAM program, focused on establishing foundational visibility and control over the software estate. The questions we hear from organizations in this phase reveal a universal truth: success here prevents significant, costly problems later. As one of our ITAM Rangers said: “SAM is fundamentally 80% process and governance and 20% tool”. The challenges in this stage underscore the importance of getting that 80% right from the very beginning.

Takeaway 1: "Where Do I Even Start?" – The Foundational Question

By far, the single most common high-level question customers ask is, simply, "Where do I start with SAM, period?".

This question arises because SAM is an inherently complex discipline that intersects with compliance, finance, and security, each with its own set of priorities and stakeholders. From our sessions, a clear consensus emerged on the essential starting points:

• Identifying Stakeholders: Before any tool is configured, the first step is to build a solid governance foundation. This means identifying key stakeholders from across the organization—procurement, finance, security, and IT—to ensure alignment and executive support for the program's goals.
• Choosing Data Sources: A flood of questions centres on integrations and identifying the best sources of software inventory data. Gaining initial visibility is paramount, and this requires a clear strategy for what to connect and in what sequence.
• CMDB Health: A recurring theme is that a healthy Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is non-negotiable for the success of any SAM program. It's a primary focus of this phase, as all subsequent compliance and optimization activities depend on the quality of its data.

Ultimately, this foundational question highlights the critical need for a strategic plan. Diving into the technology without first establishing governance and a data strategy is a recipe for failure.

Takeaway 2: Data Governance from Day One: The Software Model Discipline

A frequent pain point for organizations in the Crawl phase is the struggle with inconsistent or inaccurate data, often manifesting as perpetually failing reconciliations. A major reason customers don't see the results they expect is because of poor foundational data.

During our Office Hours, one piece of concrete, actionable advice consistently emerged as a key to preventing this data chaos: disable the automatic creation of software models.

In the Crawl phase, this step is crucial. It prevents the software model table from becoming an unwieldy and unmanageable repository of discovered software, much of which may be irrelevant or noisy. By turning this feature off (which is the default setting), the SAM team can build a clean, curated foundation of software models that matter, enforcing data governance from day one and preventing a classic "garbage in, garbage out" scenario.

Takeaway 3: The Quick Win – Demonstrating Fast ROI with SaaS

Once the foundational work begins, leadership inevitably asks a pressing question: "What is the fastest way to get real hard cash return on investment?".

Our consistent advice to leadership teams is to focus on direct SaaS integrations for the quickest path to tangible value. These integrations provide the fastest way to demonstrate savings. The process is straightforward: connect to your major SaaS providers to identify user subscriptions that have been allocated to inactive employees or guest accounts—a common form of "SaaS sprawl" that represents low-hanging fruit for savings.

By enabling automated reclamation of these unused licenses, organizations can demonstrate immediate cost avoidance. This quick win is a powerful tool for securing executive buy-in and building momentum for the program's future initiatives.

Once these foundational elements are in place and initial value is demonstrated, the program is ready to tackle more complex challenges in the Walk phase.

🚶‍The Walk Phase: Scaling for Complexity and Value

The Walk phase is about maturing the SAM program by expanding its scope beyond the basics. Here, the focus shifts to tackling more complex, high-risk, and high-value areas, most notably the datacenter. The questions shift from "How do I get visibility?" to "How do I manage and optimize this complex environment?"

Takeaway 4: The Datacenter Gauntlet: Managing Core-Based and Virtualized Licensing

A clear indicator of a program entering the Walk phase is the shift in questions from simpler End-User Computing (EUC) and SaaS to the daunting complexities of datacenter software.

We consistently see discussions evolve to managing core-based licensing for major publishers like Oracle and Microsoft, navigating the intricacies of virtualization, and handling Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) scenarios in the cloud. This complexity arises because virtualization and cloud environments introduce layers of abstraction between the physical hardware and the software, making it difficult to correlate installations with the underlying processor cores that dictate license cost. This is a quintessential 'Walk' phase challenge because it requires a deeper understanding of publisher licensing rules and demands more sophisticated discovery than the initial phase.

Takeaway 5: The Art of Inference – Optimizing Software Suite Licensing

One of the most nuanced—and frequently confusing—topics for maturing SAM programs is the application of inference percentages for software suites, such as the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Server Suite.

In simple terms, the inference number is a setting that determines how many components of a software suite must be installed on a device for the system to license it using the valuable (and often expensive) suite license. Think of it this way: a suite contains Product 1 and Product 2. If the inference count is set to 2, a device must have both Product 1 and Product 2 installed to consume the suite license. If it's set to 1, a device with only Product 1 or Product 2 installed will consume that same license. Note - legacy software models use percent instead of number.

This setting is a powerful optimization lever. An incorrectly configured percentage or count can lead to significant issues: either non-compliance from under-licensing or wasting a costly suite license on a device that only needed a license for a single, cheaper component. Mastering this refinement is a key step toward true cost optimization and demonstrates a program's growing sophistication.

Learn more about Software suites inference here.

Takeaway 6: Juggling Data Sources – The Agent vs. Agentless Debate

As the SAM program's scope expands into the datacenter, a common operational challenge emerges: how to handle multiple discovery sources. This frequently sparks the "agent vs. agentless" debate. The trade-offs discussed in our sessions are clear:

• Agentless Discovery: This approach is often favoured to avoid potential conflicts with IT and security teams who are typically resistant to installing yet another agent on their devices.
• Agent-based Discovery: While it requires more organizational coordination, deploying an agent can significantly increase the reliability and consistency of data collection from endpoints.

In the Walk phase, managing data from multiple sources (e.g., SCCM, ServiceNow Discovery, Intune) becomes a central challenge. The key to success lies in correctly configuring the Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE). The IRE acts as the definitive 'referee,' applying configurable precedence rules to decide which data source 'wins' when conflicts arise, thereby creating a single, trustworthy configuration item (CI) from multiple, potentially contradictory inputs.

With complex environments now under management, the focus shifts in the Run phase to achieving peak operational efficiency and automation.

🏃‍The Run Phase: Driving Efficiency and Enterprise Value

The Run phase represents the pinnacle of SAM maturity. The program is no longer just a compliance or cost-saving function; it is a strategic, automated, and deeply integrated part of the enterprise. The questions at this stage move beyond tactical execution to focus on full automation and expanding the program's strategic influence.

Takeaway 7: Full Automation – From Metering to Proactive Reclamation

A defining characteristic of a 'Run' phase program is the evolution of license reclamation from a manual process to a fully automated one.

Questions from organizations at this stage centre on establishing robust software metering and automated reclamation to control costs proactively, not reactively. While the Walk phase introduces semi-automated reclamation often gated by manual review, the Run phase achieves a higher state of maturity by removing that human gatekeeper. The system is trusted to execute reclamation autonomously based on predefined policies, shifting the team's focus from tactical execution to strategic oversight. This represents a significant maturity leap: the program is no longer just identifying potential savings but is now systematically and automatically realizing them with minimal human intervention.

💡Expert Tips Shared in 2025

• Establish governance before configuring anything.
• Treat CMDB health as a continuous programme, not a one-off project.
• Use SaaS for early wins; use datacenter optimization for long-term savings.
• Revisit inference percentages periodically.
• Document your IRE precedence rules—future you will thank you.

📌Key Themes from 2025

• Strong SAM programmes prioritise people and process before technology.
• Clean, trusted data remains the single greatest predictor of SAM success
• Organisations want faster, more visible ROI—driving demand for automation.
• Datacenter complexity is still the largest obstacle to maturity.
• The SAM discipline is shifting from license compliance to continuous optimization.

Looking Ahead to 2026

As SAM Pro capabilities expand and automation becomes the norm, programmes will increasingly aim for full lifecycle integration, predictive optimization, and enterprise-wide visibility. The evolution continues—and the questions raised in 2025 provide a clear blueprint for what comes next.

A huge thank you to every community member who joined our SAM Office Hours sessions throughout 2025. Your questions, insights, challenges, and shared experiences are what make this community such an invaluable space for everyone working with ServiceNow SAM Pro.

Your participation helps shape better discussions, better solutions, and ultimately a better product. We truly appreciate your time, curiosity, and collaboration. ❤️

👉 Join us in 2026 and be part of a growing, supportive, and expert community that’s elevating SAM success across the ecosystem. Sign up for future SAM Office Hours here.

🙌 Thank You — And See You in 2026!