Future-proofing your IT: the strategic imperative of IT Asset Management
Future-proofing your IT: the strategic imperative of IT Asset Management
Do you know what IT assets your organisation uses - and whether they're accelerating strategy, draining resources, or quietly introducing compliance and security risks?
Published on 20th January 2026
ITAM: A strategic imperative for managing explosive IT growth
Gartner values worldwide software and IT services at US$3 trillion in 2025, representing a 12% increase from 2024, with strong growth also predicted in datacenter systems (15%), devices (10%), and communications services (9%). We are seeing vendors increase costs by 200-300% (Broadcom as a recent example), which is leading to an explosion of IT costs that is only expected to increase as other vendors follow suit.
This major investment in IT and increase in vendor costs means that IT spend is a key topic in the boardroom, and ITAM is now at the forefront of C-suite discussions due to its ability to significantly reduce and control software and hardware spend. Organisations are seeking to rationalise their IT asset portfolios to consolidate vendor spend, and leverage previously overlooked areas, such as tail spend, to bring costs down.
Organisations have been consistently seen to achieve up to 15x ROI on software cost-out initiatives, and ITAM’s role has been lifted to a strategic business partner as companies push for IT asset cost governance and strive for spend transparency. The rise of AI and new IT asset classes (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, XaaS) has resulted in an even greater need to control IT asset costs and overlap with FinOps/cloud costs, and major SAM tools are rapidly evolving to support this.
The ITAM advantage: Bolstering cybersecurity
Mitigating cybersecurity risk is a top five agenda item for CIOs and CTOs. Providing security teams with the right data to manage and mitigate software and hardware asset risks is essential for removing vulnerable and end-of-life software, and a lack of visibility of IT assets and weaknesses within existing ITAM tools represent the greatest limitations that organisations face in achieving better alignment with their IT security teams.
A well-run ITAM function provides the visibility to minimise security risk and reduce the attack surface by optimising the number of software and hardware assets. This enables security teams to proactively manage IT risk and improve operational risk assurance.
Top 5 ways ITAM reduces cyber risk:
- Improved visibility into all IT assets.
- Faster identification and remediation of vulnerabilities.
- Reduced attack surface through application rationalisation.
- Enhanced compliance with security regulations (e.g. NIS2).
- Stronger collaboration between IT and security teams.
Navigating the regulatory landscape
The rise of new IT regulations, including DORA, CRA, NIS2, and emerging AI regulation puts pressure on IT functions to maintain compliance with these increasingly strict regulations; and non-compliance can result in heavy fines and penalties. ITAM enables IT teams to meet these requirements by tracking software and hardware updates, maintaining transparency of IT assets across their lifecycle, and providing detailed information about software components and versions to support vulnerability management and incident response. ITAM supports holistic governance of technology assets, ensuring compliance with evolving regulatory demands.
Regulatory requirements that ITAM helps manage:
- Data privacy regulations (e.g. GDPR).
- Cybersecurity regulations (e.g. NIS2, CRA).
- Financial regulations (e.g. DORA).
Driving operational excellence: How ITAM improves IT efficiency
ITAM enables operational IT efficiency by providing users with quicker access to software and hardware assets, leveraging smarter insights to support decision-making (e.g., future investment in software and IT services), and automating IT asset lifecycle processes to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and drive risk reduction. Implementation and automation of ITAM processes provide businesses with the opportunity to improve operational efficiency by 25-35%, improving the user experience and reducing the administrative effort of repeatable tasks, which allows IT functions to shift their focus to strategic ITAM priorities.
Mastering cloud migration: ITAM's role in IT transformation
ITAM is essential to enable IT transformation. Managing cloud spend is top of mind when it comes to cloud migrations, and organisations risk significant cost overruns if new licencing models are not understood when migrating to the cloud. Additionally, the risk of dual-running costs during cloud transition is often realised, and ITAM helps mitigate the risk of dual-running costs during cloud transitions, preventing potentially tens of millions of pounds in unnecessary expenditure.
Looking forward: Managing IT assets and environmental stewardship
The explosion of AI and AI assets comes with management complexity, and while the requirements of AI asset management have not been clearly defined, ITAM will play a crucial role in managing AI assets, including tracking how AI assets are used and deployed to ensure effective management across their lifecycle and managing unique licensing models; integrating with monitoring tools to track the performance of AI tools to ensure they are operating efficiently (e.g. monitoring the response time of an AI-powered fraud detection system); and managing costs (e.g. tracking licence, cloud computing resources, and data storage costs associated with AI tools).
ESG is a prominent board-level agenda item, and ITAM plays a critical role in reducing e-waste through optimising asset reuse and simplifying application layers to reduce computational energy requirements for in-use applications. Mature ITAM functions are beginning to integrate asset data directly into enterprise sustainability reporting.
The verdict
In today’s rapidly evolving IT landscape, ITAM is a strategic imperative that delivers significant value by addressing the need for cost optimisation, robust cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, and successful IT transformation. Elevating ITAM to a strategic business partner and driving ITAM maturity empowers organisations to confidently navigate the complexities of new IT asset classes and hybrid environments, ensuring IT costs are controlled and future-proofing how IT assets are managed in the years to come.
Source
Image Credit
Ikrom Ma-Ela via Vecteezy