Software Asset Management release notes
Summarize
Summary of Software Asset Management Release Notes
The Software Asset Management (SAM) application on the ServiceNow Store provides ongoing enhancements and fixes to support effective software license reconciliation, compliance, and optimization. These release notes detail version updates from the initial launch in August 2024 through July 2026, highlighting new features, critical fixes, and improvements relevant to ServiceNow SAM customers managing complex licensing environments.
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Key Features
- License Compliance and Optimization: Support for Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise licensing, including server and CAL optimization, and high availability configurations such as Always On Availability Groups.
- Cluster Licensing Assignments: Enables customers to apply preferred licensing strategies for Microsoft software deployed on hypervisor clusters, aligning license tracking either to physical hosts or virtual machines with built-in compliance validations.
- Publisher Packs for Microsoft and VMware: Track and manage licenses for Microsoft Server products including Hyper-V environments, and VMware vSphere Standard and Essentials Plus suites, accounting for core counts and licensing minimums.
- Group License Allocations: Streamlines management of user-based licenses by allowing bulk allocations to user groups, with automatic adjustments based on group membership changes.
- Enhanced Reporting: Flexible reports on Effective License Position (ELP) and reconciliation results by customizable groupings allow deeper insights into license usage, costs, and compliance status.
- Support for CrowdStrike Products: Management of CrowdStrike entitlements via license metrics such as Sensor Subscription and Reserved Hourly Average Sensor, improving tracking of endpoint protection products.
Maintenance and Improvements
- Regular minor defect fixes addressing reconciliation flow performance, software normalization, lifecycle reporting, and suite reconciliation to ensure accuracy and efficiency in license tracking.
- Critical fixes such as regex normalization improvements and resolution of reconciliation failures related to per-core or per-processor consumption rules.
- Improved handling and clearer explanations of unlicensed entities within license usage reports to support better decision-making and remediation actions.
- Ongoing updates to address software lifecycle management issues, ensuring precise tracking throughout software usage phases.
Practical Impact for ServiceNow Customers
By leveraging these releases, ServiceNow customers can expect enhanced accuracy in software license reconciliation, compliance management, and cost optimization. The added capabilities to manage complex licensing scenarios for Microsoft, VMware, and CrowdStrike products help reduce risks associated with non-compliance and enable more strategic software asset management. Enhanced reporting and group license allocation features streamline administrative tasks and improve visibility into license usage and entitlements, supporting informed license management decisions.
Version history for the ITAM Software Asset Management application on the ServiceNow Store.
Version history
- Version 4.1.4 - July 2026 (Australia)
- Minor defect fixes related to reconciliation flow performance and lifecycle report.
- Version 3.2.8 - July 2026 (Zurich)
- Minor defect fixes related to reconciliation flow performance and lifecycle report.
- Version 4.1.3 - June 2026 (Australia)
- Critical fixes for regex normalization
- Version 3.2.7 - June 2026 (Zurich)
- Minor defect fixes related to suite inference and reclamation candidates.
- Version 3.2.6 - May 2026 (Zurich)
- In this version, a defect causing software reconciliation failures with common per-core or per-processor consumption rules has been fixed.
- Version 4.1.1 - April 2026 (Australia)
- Minor defects related to reconciliation and software normalization were fixed in this release.
- Version 3.2.5 - April 2026 (Zurich)
- Minor defects related to software reconciliation were fixed in this release.
- Version 2.1.18 - April 2026 (Yokohama)
- Minor defects related to reconciliation and the software product lifecycle were fixed in this release.
- Version 4.1.0 - March 2026 (Australia)
- In this version, changes to the explanation of rights have been added for CrowdStrike license consumption through SaaS-based integration.
- Version 4.0.0 - March 2026 (Australia)
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- New:
- Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise (Server+CAL licensing): Use the updated licensing rule to optimize legacy SQL Server Enterprise Edition licenses with Software Assurance (SA). Under this rule, one server license can cover up to four virtual machines as long as their combined usage does not exceed 20 cores or hardware threads at any time.
- Microsoft Server Infrastructure and License consumption report: View a single, unified report that shows Microsoft server installations and license usage across all license types. The report combines device infrastructure data with license usage and exemptions and clearly explains reasons for exemptions, such as unlicensed or ignored installs—making it easier to track, analyze, and optimize your IT resources.
- Changed: Improved handling of unlicensed entities in License Usage: The license usage now shows clearer reason codes and guidance for unlicensed entities. This helps SAM managers and users understand exactly why something is unlicensed and what actions to take to fix it.
- New:
- Version 3.2.4 - March 2026 (Zurich)
- Minor defects related to reconciliation and the software product lifecycle were fixed in this release.
- Version 3.2.3 - February 2026 (Zurich)
- Minor defects related to Reconciliation and Software Product lifecycle were fixed in this release
- Version 2.1.17 - February 2026 (Yokohama)
- Minor defects related to Reconciliation and Software Product Lifecycle were fixed in this release
- Version 3.2.1 - January 2026 (Zurich)
- Minor defects related to Reconciliation and Software Product Lifecycle were fixed in this release
- Version 2.1.13 - January 2026 (Yokohama)
- Minor defects related to Reconciliation were fixed in this release.
- Version 3.2.0 - December 2025 (Zurich)
- This release introduces support for BYOL using the Microsoft Per Processor license metric on Azure for Windows Server, as well as several minor fixes related to reconciliation.
- Version 2.1.12 - December 2025 (Yokohama)
- Minor defects related to Reconciliation and Software Product lifecycle have been fixed in this release.
- Version 2.1.11 - November 2025 (Yokohama)
- Minor defects related to reconciliation performance have been resolved in this release.
- Version 3.0.2 - October 2025
Minor bug fixes related to Reconciliation.
- Version 2.1.10 - October 2025
Minor defects related to Reconciliation were fixed in this release.
- Version 3.0.1 - September 2025 (Zurich)
- Minor bug fixes related to Reconciliation and Software Product Lifecycle
- Version 2.1.9 - September 2025 (Yokohama)
- Minor bug fixes related to Suites and Reconciliation
- Version 2.1.7 - September 2025 (Yokohama)
- Fixed minor bug fixes related to Reconciliation and Software Product Lifecycle
- Version 3.0.0 - August 2025 (Zurich)
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- This application enables the following features when installed with:
- Software Asset Management Foundations: None
- Software Asset Management Professional:
- Apply preferred licensing assignment to Microsoft software products that are deployed on clusters: Define and apply preferred cluster licensing assignments to the Microsoft software products that are deployed on your hypervisor clusters. By using a preferred cluster licensing assignment, you can choose whether you want to license these software products at either the physical host layer or the virtual layer, helping you better align with your organization's predetermined licensing strategy. Built-in validations help verify that your licensing strategy setup complies with the relevant Microsoft licensing requirements.
- Manage licensing for Microsoft server products on Microsoft hyper-v virtualization technology: Use the Software Asset Management publisher pack for Microsoft to track and manage licensing for Microsoft Server products, such as Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server, on Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technology. Track license usage and determine your license compliance position so that you can better optimize your licensing costs.
- Automatically identify and license MS SQL Server high availability configurations: Use the Software Asset Management publisher pack for Microsoft to automatically identify and license Microsoft SQL Server deployments in high availability configurations, such as Always On availability groups. This capability enables the Software Asset Management application to automatically classify each replica within a configuration as either active or passive, resulting in more accurate license compliance for Microsoft SQL Server.
- Efficiently manage user allocations in bulk using group allocations: Allocate licenses to user groups instead of individual users for a software entitlement using the group allocation feature for the user-based licensing metric software. Group allocation feature enables Software Asset Management managers to streamline and manage the license allocation process efficiently. User allocation is created for the group members based on the availability of unallocated licenses. Any changes made to the composition of the user group automatically updates the license allocation.
- Manage licensing for VMware vSphere Standard (VVS) and VMware vSphere Essentials Plus (VVEP): Following the updates to VMware's licensing policy, use the Software Asset Management publisher pack for VMware to track and manage licensing for VMware vSphere Standard (VVS) and VMware vSphere Essentials Plus (VVEP), which are updated suite-based product offerings for VMware vSphere. With these updated product offerings, you can measure compliance and optimize licensing for multiple VMware vSphere products under a single subscription.In addition, the publisher pack can account for the number of cores and the licensing minimums when calculating licensing requirements for VVS and VVEP.
- Use flexible reporting capabilities to gain deeper insights into your Effective License Position (ELP): Improve analysis of your ELP with flexible reporting on reconciliation results. Reports can be run on existing reconciliation groups or customer-defined groups, and the report data can be organized by unique combinations of group, subgroup, publisher, product, version, and edition. For each combination, the average cost is calculated and provides the total number of required licenses. The results are presented in a structured format for easy analysis and reporting.
- This application enables the following features when installed with:
- Version 2.1.6 - August 2025 (Yokohama)
- In this version, a few minor bugs related to reconciliation have been fixed.
- Version 2.1.5 - July 2025 (Yokohama)
- In this version, a few minor bugs related to reconciliation have been fixed.
- Version 1.0.13 - July 2025 (Xanadu)
- In this version, the reconciliation issue related to RedHat suites has been resolved.
- Version 2.1.4 - June 2025 (Yokohama)
- In this version, the reconciliation issue associated with Microsoft SQL Server has been resolved.
- Version 1.0.12 - June 2025 (Xanadu)
- In this version, the reconciliation issue associated with Microsoft SQL Server has been resolved.
- Version 2.1.3 - May 2025
- Minor bugs related to performance and suite reconciliation have been fixed in this release.
- Version 2.1.2 - April 2025
- Minor reconciliation performance issues have been fixed.
- Version 2.1.1 - March 2025
- Minor fixes to improve the accuracy of Subscription License calculations were made.
- Version 2.1.0 - February 2025 (Yokohama)
- This release includes support for CrowdStrike products with license metrics such as Sensor Subscription and Reserved Hourly Average Sensor. This improvement enables the efficient management of entitlements for various CrowdStrike products, including Falcon Endpoint Protection, Discover, and others, ensuring better tracking and compliance.
- Version 2.0.0 - February 2025 (Yokohama)
- This release includes the following features when installed with: SAM Foundations: Enables use of the common license metrics: Per User, Per Device, Per Core, Per Processor SAM Professional: Includes features available with SAM Foundations. Enables license compliance for the following publishers: Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, VMware, and Citrix Improved experience with detailed explanations of licensing calculations for the above publishers.
- Version 1.0.10 - December 2024 (Xanadu)
- Minor bug fixes related to Microsoft Reconciliation and Software Lifecycle Report.
- Version 1.0.9 - November 2024
- Minor bug fixes related to Microsoft Reconciliation.
- Version 1.0.1 - September 2024
- Minor bug fixes related to Microsoft Core License Optimization Report.
- Version 1.0.0 - August 2024
The Software Asset Management App supplements the capabilities of the Software Asset Management (SAM) Professional plugin.