Software Asset Management overview

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Software Asset Management overview

    The Software Asset Management (SAM) application in ServiceNow Zurich release provides comprehensive tools to help you manage software installations, licenses, compliance, and optimization across your IT environment. It integrates with discovery tools and supports license reconciliation and software reclamation to optimize software usage and compliance.

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    Key Features

    • Dashboards: Visualize software installation data through various dashboards including Software Asset Analytics, Software Publisher Analytics (for Citrix, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, VMware), and specialized dashboards for Office 365 and Adobe Cloud. Publisher pack add-on activation is required to access some analytics dashboards.
    • Licensing: Manage software models and entitlements that link installed software with owned licenses. Features include license detail definitions, publisher part number lookups, license metrics, entitlement discovery maps, exclusion listings, license change projections, and entitlement import with error tracking.
    • Discovery and Normalization: Use discovery tools like ServiceNow Discovery or Microsoft SCCM (versions 2012 v2, 2016, and supported newer versions) to detect installed software. Normalization matches discovered data against a ServiceNow repository for consistent software identification. Supports custom product creation, manual normalization, and includes tools like License Workbench and normalization suggestions. Note that legacy SCCM plugins are deprecated, with migration tools available for Service Graph Connector use.
    • Reconciliation: Calculate compliance status by comparing discovered software with entitlements. Identify removal candidates for unused software to reclaim licenses. Includes grouping and remediation workflows to address compliance issues.
    • Optimization: Automate software reclamation by uninstalling unused software and recovering licenses using Client Software Distribution (CSD). Supports creation of removal candidates, workflows, usage listings, and integration with Procurement for direct purchase order creation.
    • Downgrade Rights: Built-in support for license downgrade rights allows use of licenses for earlier software versions while holding rights for the latest versions.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    This SAM application enables you to gain detailed insight into software usage, maintain accurate license compliance, and optimize software spend by reclaiming unused licenses. Integration with discovery and procurement systems streamlines asset management and enforcement of licensing policies. The normalization and reconciliation processes reduce manual effort and errors, helping you maintain a cost-effective and compliant software environment.

    An overview of the functionality of the Software Asset Management application.

    Software Asset Management functionality consists of these main features.

    Feature area Description
    Dashboards These dashboards show software installation results for your environment in the form of statistics and charts.
    • Software Asset Analytics: Overview, License Summary, Compliance Summary, and Removal Summary
    • Normalization and Content Service: Normalization trend charts
    • Software Publisher Analytics: Citrix, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and VMware.
      Note:
      The publisher pack add-on must be activated to see the Software Publisher Analytics dashboard.
    • Office 365 and Adobe Cloud
      Note:
      The publisher pack add-on must be activated to see the Office 365 and Adobe Cloud dashboard.
    • Software Asset Management: Overview, Optimization, Compliance Analysis
    Licensing Software models created for all installed software products are used to tie software installations (software being used) with entitlements (software owned). Entitlements define license details and are assigned to software models.

    Features include publisher part number lookup, common per core and per processor license metrics, entitlement discovery maps, exclusion listing, client access, license change projection, entitlement import, and entitlement import error results list.
    Discovery and normalization A discovery process, such as ServiceNow Discovery or Microsoft SCCM (2012 v2 or 2016), can be used to discover the software installed in your environment.

    The normalization process compares the discovered publisher, discovered product, and discovered version values against the ServiceNow repository of normalized equivalents

    An OOB Normalization library contains all content except publisher and product. Custom products can be created if a software product does not exist in the Software Library. Discovered software can also be manually normalized for reconciliation. A software discovery model is then matched to discovered software installations.

    Features include partial, full, and publisher normalization, License Workbench, License Position report, custom pattern normalization rules, normalization suggestions, on-premise customer support, and an optional Software Asset Management content service to update the Normalization Library with pattern normalization rules.

    The Integration — Microsoft SCCM 2016 plugin is compatible with SCCM version 1606, 1906, 1910, and 2002.

    Note:
    Legacy SCCM plugins, SCCM 2012 and SCCM 2016, will be deprecated in the upcoming releases.If you are creating the integration for the very first time, then begin with Microsoft SCCM Service Graph Connector SG Connector. If you are already using one of these plugins then use the application titled Migration Readiness Tool for Service Graph Connector for SCCM in the ServiceNow Store to prepare for migration to the Service Graph Connector.
    Reconciliation The reconciliation process calculates the compliance status of software products regarding discovery and entitlements.

    Removal candidates are generated for unused software that can be used to reclaim software rights.

    Features include reconciliation grouping, and remediation actions for resolving compliance issues.
    Optimization The reclamation process remediates non-compliance by uninstalling software from devices and reclaiming those software rights. The reclamation process can be automated using Client Software Distribution (CSD).

    Features include removal candidate and workflows, reclamation rule creation, software usage listing, and support for creating a purchase order directly using Procurement integration. For more information, see the Procurement overview.
    Downgrade Rights The concept of downgrading licenses is built into the Software Asset Management plugin feature. Downgrade rights is the process of having acquired the rights to the latest version of software but using the rights to license earlier versions of the same software. For more information, see Downgrade Rights.