Audit Archives - EasySAM https://easysam.co.uk/tag/audit/ Software Asset Management. Simplified. Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:46:34 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.4 https://easysam.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/easysam_icon-60x60.png Audit Archives - EasySAM https://easysam.co.uk/tag/audit/ 32 32 How to audit your cloud spend without a FinOps tool https://easysam.co.uk/knowledge-base/how-to-audit-your-cloud-spend-without-a-finops-tool/ Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:34:55 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=38075 Avoid unnecessary spend by using native platform insights and AP data to identify and eliminate wasted SaaS and cloud resources.

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Avoid unnecessary spend by using native platform insights and AP data to identify and eliminate wasted SaaS and cloud resources.

Published on 17th August 2026

For five years, IT was slowly winning the war on cloud waste. Tech pros got better at tagging what they built and shutting off what nobody needed. In Flexera’s annual State of the Cloud survey, the estimated share of infrastructure spend going to waste shrank a little every time. That streak ended in 2025. Wasted IaaS and PaaS spend rose to 29%, the first increase in five years. The survey’s authors state that the cost complexity of AI workloads and the introduction of new PaaS offerings may be contributing factors to the overall increase in costs, particularly regarding AI workloads.

If you run IT at a smaller company, you can guess where your share of that waste hides because it never arrived as one approved line item. More likely, this waste accumulated through a departmental software trial that continued beyond its pilot phase and a virtual machine (VM) that was sized for a peak demand that never materialised.

Enterprise teams can put a FinOps platform and a dedicated analyst on this problem. You can get most of the way there with the cost instruments AWS, Microsoft, and Google already built into their consoles, on the infrastructure side and the subscription side alike. If you approach the job the way you approached a telecom bill before renewal—the target is bigger and messier, but you’ll find that the instincts transfer.

Make sense of the cloud bill first

Your cloud provider probably spreads your month across services, regions, and pricing dimensions. Almost none of the line items carry names a department head would recognise. You won’t get anywhere reading it as-is, but all three platforms include a view that translates the raw feed into something you can question.

In AWS, you can do this in Cost Explorer, grouping the month’s spend by service to see where the money concentrates. Azure keeps the equivalent in the cost analysis view inside Cost Management. On Google Cloud, the built-in billing reports chart spend by project, service, SKU, or location. Consider pulling the last full month and sorting by cost, then working down the top 10 entries until you can say what each one is, which workload it serves, and who would notice if it disappeared. (Fair warning, the first sort may produce results that are a bit startling.)

Once you’re done, put anything you can’t explain on the audit list and work from there.

Where infrastructure waste piles up

As with most audits, low-hanging fruit is your friend, so start there. When a VM is deleted, many of its dependencies may remain, resulting in continued charges for those remnants until they are identified. Three kinds show up on almost every bill.

  • Unattached storage: Disks are the classic culprit. Those volumes are still there months afterward, attached to nothing and still costing you money.
  • Addresses and network leftovers: A reserved public IP with no workload behind it, an idle load balancer, or an orphaned network interface will each appear on the invoice every month until you release it.
  • Snapshots from projects long finished: Backups multiply during migrations, and once a cutover succeeds, nobody goes back to prune what it produced. Storage prices per gigabyte look tiny until the gigabytes are three years deep.

You don’t have to hunt any of this down by hand, thankfully. AWS Compute Optimizer includes idle detection that flags unattached EBS volumes and idle instances. On Azure, the community-built Orphaned Resources workbook pulls that whole category into one dashboard. Google Cloud’s idle VM recommendations automatically run and are free of charge.

After removing the dead weight, you should compare what remains with its usage. Lift-and-shift migrations replicate on-premises specifications in the cloud, and since those servers were sized for peak load, the cloud copy inherits capacity that its application barely uses. Cost Explorer’s rightsizing recommendations identify EC2 instances you can down-size or terminate, and Azure Advisor surfaces idle and underutilised resources as well.

One caveat applies to AWS accounts on the basic tier, since Trusted Advisor’s checks require a paid support plan – Compute Optimizer and Cost Explorer are your free lane. For a steady, predictable workload or two, the better destination may be outside the cloud entirely because cloud repatriation has become a live option for exactly that profile.

Whatever you resize, drop one size and watch for a week. An aggressive cut that causes an outage runs the risk of costing the audit its credibility and setting you back.

Your SaaS stack deserves the same scrutiny

Subscription waste is harder to see than anything on the infrastructure side because it spreads across expense reports and departmental cards. The renewal emails go to whoever signed up first, and the inventory itself becomes the hard part.

Spiceworks community @walsash summed up the problem this way: “In a lot of small/mid-sized companies, ‘SaaS management’ basically means someone manually comparing an HR Excel/CSV with user lists in Google Workspace, Slack, etc.” You’ll probably need to build the list from your accounts payable data and card statements before you open a single admin console because the subscriptions IT never heard about won’t show up anywhere else.

  • Seats nobody uses: Zylo’s 2026 SaaS Management Index, drawn from its platform data, found license utilisation averaging just 54% of purchased seats. That’s right, nearly half of what companies pay for goes unused. Zylo sells the fix, so you may want to keep that in mind. Additionally, it’s important to mention that the percentage of wasted software spending has increased by one point in Flexera’s statistics, and your own dashboards will provide you with your specific figures. The usage reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center are there to spot who barely uses a service and might not need the license. Google Workspace tracks the same signals in its Apps usage report.
  • Pilots on autopilot: Plenty of smaller IT environments have a three-seat pilot auto-renewing on a corporate card with nobody watching, and by year two it can cost more than the tool the team adopted. So, match every recurring software charge in your AP data to a person who’ll claim it. If nobody claims one, it might be because the owner left the company or the tool stopped mattering, and either way you can cancel.
  • Two tools doing one job: AI subscriptions are multiplying this problem fastest, between the consumption-driven creep of usage-billed tools and the AI price increases bundled into suites you already own. A BlackFog study reported by Forbes found 49% of workers use AI tools in ways their employer hasn’t approved. As that piece notes, five employees expensing personal $20-a-month ChatGPT accounts spend the same money as one business account with usage controls and audit logs. Getting buy-in for consolidating those accounts shouldn’t be that hard.

Keep the audit from unwinding

At this point, you can bask in the glow of having saved the company some money. That said, everything you cleaned up will come back within a few quarters if the conditions that produced it stay the same. New tools will likely come on board, too. Gartner projects public cloud spending to grow 21.3% in 2026 as AI demand accelerates.

So, consider doing a quarterly repeat of the whole audit. Even a light one will keep the invoice more readable year-round. You can make continual pruning easier by giving every survivor a tag naming its owner and purpose. Budget alerts in AWS Budgets, Azure Cost Management, and the Google Cloud console can then flag mid-month surprises before the bill lands. Subscription renewal dates deserve a calendar of their own, of course.

As you go, total what you cut and take the number to your next budget conversation. You may or may not get to allocate it to other IT priorities in the short term, but it buys you something better in the long term—credibility the next time you ask for what your team needs.

Is your cloud spend skyrocketing?

Hopefully the advice given in this guide will help - but for a bespoke look at how that spend can be brought back to the ground, why not get the experts in?

Get in touch

Source

https://www.spiceworks.com/it-networking/how-to-audit-your-cloud-spend-without-a-finops-tool/

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Sompoch Sivakosit via Vecteezy

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]]> The First 72 Hours: what to do when a software audit letter lands on your desk https://easysam.co.uk/knowledge-base/the-first-72-hours-what-to-do-when-a-software-audit-letter-lands-on-your-desk/ Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:51:00 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=38052 That crucial first period can be the difference between a reasonably smooth experience, or a significantly costly one.

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That crucial first period can be the difference between a reasonably smooth experience, or a significantly costly one.

Published on 12th August 2026

The email arrives on a Tuesday afternoon. It is polite. It is addressed to someone in procurement or IT who has never seen one before. It references a section number in an agreement signed years ago by people who no longer work at the company. It asks for a call to “discuss your licensing position” and requests that you run an attached script and return the output within thirty days.

There is no dollar figure in it. That comes later — and by then, the number will have been built almost entirely out of information your own team handed over in the first week.

This is the central and counterintuitive fact about software license audits: the most consequential decisions are made before anyone knows what is at stake. By the time a seven- or eight-figure demand arrives, the evidentiary record supporting it is already closed, and your company built most of it.

The audit demand is not calculated from what you deployed. It is calculated from what you reported, measured the way the publisher’s tools measure it.

You are not being singled out

Clients often assume an audit letter means the publisher suspects something. Usually it does not. Audits are a revenue channel, run on a schedule, and the volume is substantial.

Flexera’s 2026 State of ITAM Report, drawn from a survey of ITAM professionals conducted in early 2026, found that nearly half of organisations — 48 percent — received a software audit in the prior twelve months. Microsoft was the most frequently reported auditor at 64 percent of those audited, with Oracle close behind at 50 percent. Oracle’s reported audit activity jumped roughly fourteen percentage points year over year. Adobe and VMware activity also rose.

The cost side is where it stops being a compliance annoyance and becomes a balance-sheet event. Forty-four percent of organisations reported spending more than $1 million on software audits over a three-year period. In earlier Flexera data, the share of companies reporting audit costs above $10 million nearly doubled year over year, from 7 percent to 12 percent.

Two conclusions follow. First, receiving a letter is not evidence that you did anything wrong. Second, the process that follows is expensive enough that it deserves the same seriousness as any other bet-the-budget dispute — from hour one.

Hours 0 to 4: contain the response

The single most damaging thing that happens in a software audit usually happens in the first afternoon, and it is almost always well-intentioned.

A systems administrator receives the letter, wants to be helpful and cooperative, and replies directly to the auditor. In doing so, he or she confirms deployment figures from memory, describes the virtualisation architecture, explains that a subsidiary has been using the software too, or apologies for something. None of it is verified. All of it is admissible. All of it is now the publisher’s baseline.

What to do instead:

  • Acknowledge receipt and nothing else. A one-line email confirming the letter was received, stating that the company is reviewing it and will respond through a designated point of contact, is sufficient and appropriate.
  • Designate a single channel immediately. One named person routes all communications with the publisher and the auditor. Everyone else in the organisation is instructed, in writing, to forward rather than respond.
  • Engage counsel before substantive analysis begins. This is not merely about advocacy. Internal compliance analyses generated after an audit notice — spreadsheets, gap assessments, candid emails about whether the company is over-deployed — are discoverable unless they were created under privilege. Involving counsel at the outset is what makes it possible to assess your own exposure honestly without handing the publisher its case.
  • Do not run the vendor's scripts yet. Measurement tools embed the publisher's licensing interpretations. Running one and returning the output is not neutral fact-gathering; it is agreeing to a methodology before you have read the clause that governs it.

Hours 4 to 24: preserve everything, change nothing

Two instincts surface once the seriousness registers, and both are dangerous.

The first is to clean up — uninstall software that may be over-deployed, decommission instances, tidy the environment before anyone looks. Do not. Depending on the contract and the circumstances, this can convert a commercial dispute into an allegation of spoliation or bad faith, and publishers have begun litigating precisely this point. In the Broadcom litigation now pending in the Northern District of California, the publisher’s position is essentially that a customer cannot extinguish audit obligations by removing the software mid-review. Whatever the outcome, you do not want to be the test case.

The second is to delete — to purge old email threads about license planning or the failed true-up conversation from two years ago. That is worse.

What to do instead:

  • Issue a litigation hold. Immediately, in writing, covering procurement records, license entitlement documentation, deployment logs, correspondence with the publisher and its resellers, and internal discussions about licensing.
  • Freeze the environment as it stands. Document its current state. Changes that were already planned and documented before the audit notice can generally proceed; changes prompted by the notice should not, absent advice.
  • Gather your entitlements before you gather your deployments. Master agreement, every order form, every amendment, every assignment or novation from an acquisition, every reseller paper trail. Companies routinely under-count their own entitlements because the documentation is scattered across three departments and two acquisitions.

Hours 24 to 48: read the contract, not the letter

The audit letter describes what the publisher would like to happen. The contract describes what the publisher is entitled to make happen. In our experience these two documents diverge more often than they align, and the gap is where the leverage is.

Working through the actual audit clause, ask:

  • What is the permitted scope? Audit rights are frequently limited to specified products, entities, or territories. Letters are frequently not.
  • What notice is required, and was it given? Many clauses require thirty or more days' written notice, delivered a particular way, to a particular person.
  • How often may the publisher audit? Once per year and not more than once in any twelve-month period is a common formulation. Sequential audits of different product families can breach it.
  • Who is permitted to conduct it? A clause allowing an audit by the publisher “or its designee” is not the same as one permitting an independent accounting firm, and the identity of the auditor materially affects what you should agree to disclose.
  • How long do record-retention obligations run — and do they survive termination? Retention periods measured from the expiration of support and subscription services are common and are often the provision customers overlook entirely.
  • What triggers cost-shifting? Many clauses require the customer to bear audit costs only if the audit reveals underpayment above a stated threshold — often 5 or 10 percent. That threshold is a negotiating instrument, not a formality.
  • What confidentiality protections apply to what you hand over, and is a separate audit NDA warranted before any data moves?
Note what is generally not in the clause: an obligation to run the publisher’s tooling, an obligation to accept the publisher’s counting methodology, an obligation to grant direct access to your systems, or an obligation to answer open-ended questionnaires about your architecture. Those are requests. They are frequently presented as requirements.

Hours 48 to 72: build your own number first

An audit is a valuation dispute conducted under the appearance of a factual inquiry. Whoever establishes the measurement framework first usually wins the argument that follows.

Before responding substantively, and under privilege, develop an independent internal picture: what is actually deployed, what entitlements actually exist, and what the defensible license position looks like under a reasonable reading of the contract. This accomplishes three things. It tells your leadership the realistic range of exposure rather than the publisher’s opening number. It surfaces the contractual ambiguities worth fighting over. And it means that when the publisher’s figure arrives, you are comparing two analyses rather than reacting to one.

Where the technical measurement is genuinely complex — virtualisation, containerisation, indirect or digital access, disaster-recovery environments, development and test instances — a licensing specialist working at counsel’s direction is usually worth the cost several times over. The distinction matters: retained through counsel, that work carries a privilege argument. Retained directly, it generally does not.

The five mistakes that cost the most money

1. Treating it as an IT problem: audits are contract disputes that happen to involve technology. Routing one to the infrastructure team because it mentions servers is how companies end up bound by admissions no lawyer ever reviewed.

2. Volunteering scope: answering questions that were not asked, disclosing affiliates the publisher had not identified, and describing environments outside the audited product family all expand the audit at your own expense.

3. Accepting the publisher’s maths: deployment counts under contested interpretations — core-counting in virtualised environments, user definitions that sweep in service accounts, indirect access theories — are legal conclusions dressed as measurements. They can be contested. They frequently should be.

4. Negotiating on the publisher’s clock: audit findings tend to arrive near a quarter or fiscal year end, accompanied by a deadline and a discount that expires. The urgency is manufactured, and the resolution offered is almost always a purchase rather than a settlement — the compliance gap is forgiven in exchange for a subscription commitment considerably larger than the gap.

5. Waiting to involve counsel until there is a demand: by then the record is fixed. Counsel engaged at the demand stage is negotiating over evidence the company created without advice. Counsel engaged at the letter stage is shaping what that evidence is.

What resolution actually looks like

Most audits do not end in litigation. They end in a negotiated commercial resolution, and the quality of that resolution depends almost entirely on the strength of the customer’s independent position and its credible willingness to litigate if pushed.

A well-defended audit typically produces some combination of a substantially reduced compliance figure, a release covering the audited period, an agreed and documented licensing interpretation going forward, amended audit provisions with tighter scope and notice requirements, and — where the publisher’s conduct warrants it — a negotiated standstill on further audits for a defined period. What it does not produce is a rushed subscription commitment signed three days before the publisher’s fiscal year closes.

Have you had an audit letter arrive on your desk recently?

How did you deal with it - calm and measured, or blind panic?

You don't have to go through it alone - whether it's your first, fifth or fiftieth time, we're always here to help.

Get in touch

Source

https://www.tacticallawgroup.com/oracle-software-audit-blog/the-first-72-hours-what-to-do-when-a-software-audit-letter-lands-on-your-desk-and-the-five-mistakes-that-cost-companies-the-most-money

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]]> Allstate accuses Broadcom of auditing it because it quit VMware https://easysam.co.uk/news/allstate-accuses-broadcom-of-auditing-it-because-it-quit-vmware/ Tue, 14 Jul 2026 08:16:00 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=37831 The allegation is a direct response to CA and VMware both suing the insurance giant for failing to comply with said audits.

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The allegation is a direct response to CA and VMware both suing the insurance giant for failing to comply with said audits.

Published on 14th July 2026

Allstate Insurance Company has accused Broadcom of haphazardly issuing audits against it because the insurance firm decided not to renew its contracts with VMware and CA Technologies.

The allegations were made in relation to a lawsuit that VMware filed against Allstate in December 2025, according to The Register. In the complaint, Broadcom alleges that Allstate failed to comply with license audits, which Broadcom claims its contract with Allstate requires.

In a June 12 filing, Allstate suggested that Broadcom issued the audits in response to Allstate deciding to end business with its companies. Allstate’s statement reads:

This case is about VMware’s decision to initiate a haphazard “audit” of Allstate, once it was aware that Allstate did not intend to renew its contracts with VMware or its sister company, CA.

The statement reveals that Allstate is one of thousands of companies that have migrated or plan to migrate partially or completely from VMware after Broadcom’s takeover. Other sizeable companies include T-Mobile, Tesco, and Western Union.

The Register reported that “the relationship between Allstate and Broadcom has not been good for quite some time, and that the insurer decided to move away from both VMware and CA at around the time Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware closed” but was unable to provide any comment from Allstate.

According to the filings, Allstate and VMware have been in business since 2008. In its complaint against Allstate, VMware claims that it issued a formal audit notice to Allstate in March 2025. Despite reportedly acknowledging receipt of the audit materials on May 7, 2025, and multiple communication attempts from VMware and audit partner Connor Consulting, Allstate “continued to stonewall and withheld the requested materials.” VMware claims.

The complaint reads:

On September 12, 2025, Allstate informed VMware’s consultant that it had “removed VMware from all devices,” and therefore Allstate was no longer able to “execute the Scripts provided by Broadcom as the scripts are dependent on having VMWare components running in the environment.”

Allstate reportedly followed up in October to tell VMware that “all VMware instances have been terminated and removed from Allstate’s VMware ELA environment” and that its audit obligations were fulfilled, per VMware’s complaint.

Allstate’s story differs. In the June filing, Allstate claimed that after it decided not to renew its VMware and CA contracts, Broadcom “simultaneously and unreasonably initiated four separate audits of Allstate’s use of its licensed CA and VMware software.”

“With respect to VMware, Allstate substantially and in good faith complied with the audit and reporting requirements set forth in its contracts with VMware, and Plaintiff’s claims to the contrary are unfounded,” the statement reads.

Broadcom has a separate case against Allstate under CA Technologies (PDF). In the lawsuit filed in May 2025, CA accuses Allstate of copyright infringement and breach of contract by selling Allstate’s Employer Voluntary Benefits business and the Symantec products that the business used to Oregon-based insurance company StanCorp Financial Group. CA alleges that Allstate initially “sent a letter to Symantec (a company no longer in existence)” about the decision, but “did not send a similar notice letter addressed to CA.”

In both cases, the parties have until May 17, 2027, to file dispositive motions seeking to resolve each case without a trial.

The cases demonstrate Broadcom’s litigious side and a willingness to battle disgruntled VMware customers. Allstate hasn’t said how reliant it was on VMware or what virtualisation tech it uses now. But it’s notable that the insurance firm has joined a growing list of known, enterprise-size firms that have decided to move away from VMware and dispute its owner’s business practices in court.

Another week, another headline

The number of desertions keep stacking up, after related stories involving Tesco's and T-Mobile's own battles with the virtualisation giant recently.

But do VMware have enough to still thrive amongst this exodus? Let us know your thoughts.

Get in touch

Source

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/07/allstate-accuses-broadcom-of-auditing-it-because-it-quit-vmware-ca/

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Ahmad Juliyanto via Vecteezy

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]]> Flexera 2026 State of ITAM Report: How governance gaps are driving costly software audits https://easysam.co.uk/news/flexera-2026-state-of-itam-report-how-governance-gaps-are-driving-costly-software-audits/ Mon, 29 Jun 2026 09:12:32 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=37694 Software audits are becoming more frequent, more complex, more expensive...and they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

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Software audits are becoming more frequent, more complex, more expensive...and they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

Published on 29th June 2026

Software audits aren’t new; nearly half (48%) of the organisations surveyed in Flexera’s 2026 State of ITAM Report said they had been audited in the last year. But they are becoming more frequent, more complex and more expensive. They’ve become a constant reality for IT leaders who are constantly asking themselves:

How do I reduce software audit risk while maintaining control across SaaS, cloud and AI?

The answer sits with governance, visibility and proactive ITAM practices.

44% of respondents spent more than $1 million on audits over the past three years

Audit exposure remains one of the most persistent risks across the IT estate. Audit costs are rising because environments are harder to track. SaaS, cloud and AI introduce new licensing models, new usage patterns and new areas of non-compliance. On top of that, 64% of audited organisations report Microsoft audits, while Microsoft was also listed as the most relevant vendor to respondents’ SAM program. This should be concerning to businesses.

Lack of visibility is the root cause: only 36% of organisations report complete visibility into their IT estate

Audit exposure is often a visibility problem first—and a compliance problem second. Maintaining accurate inventory is the top priority for 78% of ITAM teams, because you can’t prepare for an audit if you don’t know what you have. With that said, visibility remains a major gap with only 36% of organisations report complete visibility into their IT estate.

SaaS and cloud environments expand outside traditional procurement controls, while AI introduces new consumption models with tokens and limits. The result? Missing licenses, untracked usage and unclear ownership.

Audit preparation has shifted from an event to an always-on capability

Traditional audit preparation was reactive, with organisations preparing when notified. That model no longer works, and teams that embed continuous compliance into ITAM will be better positioned.

The data shows why:

  • ITAM teams now spend a meaningful portion of their time responding to audits
  • Audit activity remains consistently high year over year
  • ITAM responsibilities now include cloud, SaaS and AI tracking, expanding the scope of compliance

Reducing waste isn’t just about cost savings—it’s one of the most effective ways to reduce audit risk

Waste and compliance are two sides of the same issue: lack of control. SaaS waste continues to increase year over year, while cloud waste (IaaS/PaaS) has also increased. Optimising software spend is the top priority for SAM teams, while ITAM responsibility continues to grow, with 75% of teams managing cloud licenses and 64% managing SaaS.

Where’s the connection between waste and audit exposure?

  • Unused licenses and decentralised ownership create audit exposure
  • Overprovisioned environments create compliance gaps
  • Poor tracking leads to inaccurate entitlement data

Responsibility for optimisation in public cloud is now nearly evenly split between ITAM and FinOps teams, which means audit compliance now requires coordination across ITAM and FinOps.

Governance gaps also increase software audit exposure

As software environments expand, governance frameworks are struggling to keep up.

  • Tracking new environments (SaaS, cloud, AI) is now a top challenge across organisations
  • Complexity of software use rights continues to increase year over year
  • Only 31% of organisations have visibility into AI software
This creates new audit risks:
  • Untracked usage
  • Unclear contract terms
  • Misaligned licensing models

Audit risk today is driven less by intentional non-compliance—and more by governance gaps in rapidly changing environments with shifting ownership.

What effective ITAM audit preparation looks like today

Leading organisations are shifting from reactive to proactive audit management and focus on:

  • Establishing complete visibility: A single, trusted source of truth across SaaS, cloud and AI
  • Maintaining accurate entitlement data: Aligning licenses, contracts and usage data continuously
  • Embedding audit readiness into daily operations: Treating compliance as an ongoing process—not a point-in-time exercise
  • Aligning ITAM, FinOps and security: Ensuring all teams work from the same data and governance model
  • Optimising continuously: Using license reuse, rightsizing and contract management to reduce both cost and risk

Reducing software audit risk in 2026 requires better control over the entire software lifecycle. The organisations that succeed will:

  • Improve visibility across SaaS, cloud and AI
  • Align ITAM, FinOps and security around shared data
  • Reduce waste as a path to reducing risk

Audit compliance is an always-on operating model connecting visibility, alignment between teams and waste reduction.

Software audits aren’t going anywhere

Check out Flexera’s latest State of ITAM report to see the vendors that are responsible for the most audits (and what it’s costing teams).

Read the full report

Source

https://www.flexera.com/blog/it-asset-management/state-of-itam-2026-audits/

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Flexera

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]]> Azul warns unlicensed Oracle Java users face audit risk and hidden costs https://easysam.co.uk/news/azul-warns-unlicensed-oracle-java-users-face-audit-risk-and-hidden-costs/ Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:38:38 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=37548 A new white paper comes with the headline that 73% of organisations report having been audited in the past three years.

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A new white paper comes with the headline that 73% of organisations report having been audited in the past three years.

Published on 1st June 2026

Azul has published a new whitepaper warning organisations that running Oracle Java in production without a paid subscription carries serious financial and compliance risks.

The whitepaper, titled “Oracle Java Uncovered: What Free Java Users Need to Know Now,” comes as 73% of organisations report having been audited in the past three years.

Under Oracle’s Java SE Universal Subscription model, licensing costs are calculated based on total employee count, regardless of actual Java usage across the organisation.

A single unlicensed instance can trigger a demand to license the entire organisation, often accompanied by multi-year back-usage fees charged at list price.

That exposure extends beyond current employees, with audits potentially requiring organisations to license every contractor and part-time worker in addition to full-time staff.

The whitepaper outlines four paths forward for organisations currently running Oracle Java without a paid license, giving decision-makers a structured framework for evaluating their options.

Azul also cautions that switching to unsupported OpenJDK is not a straightforward fix, as it may not protect against back-usage fees tied to historical downloads of Oracle Java.

Unsupported OpenJDK also introduces its own risks, including patch stability concerns and regulatory exposure under compliance frameworks such as PCI-DSS 4.0 and DORA.

For organisations considering migration, Azul notes that OpenJDK is fully interchangeable with Oracle Java and requires no code changes or re-architecture to implement.

Commercially supported OpenJDK providers offer migration methodology, automated tooling, and expertise designed to reduce the time and resources required for transition.

Azul describes itself as the trusted leader in enterprise Java for the AI and cloud-first world, with its platform powering mission-critical systems for 36% of the Fortune 100.

The company also counts 50% of the Forbes Top Ten World’s Most Valuable Brands and the world’s top 10 financial trading companies among its customers.

The full whitepaper is available for download at azul.com/oracle-java-uncovered for organisations seeking to assess their current exposure and evaluate next steps.

Source

https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2026/05/28/azul-warns-unlicensed-oracle-orcl-java-users-face-audit-risk-and-hidden-costs/

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]]> VMware sues Allstate over alleged obstruction of software licensing audit https://easysam.co.uk/news/vmware-sues-allstate-over-alleged-obstruction-of-software-licensing-audit/ Fri, 19 Dec 2025 10:10:15 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=36633 VMware claim Allstate have breached a long‑standing licensing framework with a stonewalled audit request and missed reporting obligations.

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VMware claim Allstate have breached a long‑standing licensing framework with a stonewalled audit request and missed reporting obligations.

Published on 19th December 2025

VMware is taking Allstate to federal court, accusing the insurer of obstructing a software licensing audit and ignoring key reporting and record-keeping duties.

In a filing dated December 15, 2025, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, VMware LLC lays out its side of a dispute with Allstate Insurance Company over how the carrier managed, reported and documented its use of VMware software.

The case centres on what VMware claims are breaches of a long‑standing licensing framework that includes a Master End User License Agreement, an Enterprise License Agreement and an amendment to that ELA.

According to the filing, VMware and Allstate entered into a Master End User License Agreement on December 12, 2008. VMware says Section 3.8 of that agreement, titled “Audit Rights,” requires Allstate to maintain accurate records of its use of VMware software for at least two years from the last day on which support and subscription services expired for the applicable software.

The same provision, VMware says, allows VMware or its designees to inspect Allstate’s records and computing devices to verify that the software was used in line with the contract and that all license and support fees were paid. If an audit shows an underpayment of more than 10% for the audited period, Allstate must repay the audit costs as well as any underpaid fees, according to the filing.

The dispute also involves what VMware calls the “ELA Contracts” — an Enterprise License Agreement executed on September 30, 2019, and Amendment No. 1 to that ELA signed on July 29, 2022. VMware says the ELA granted Allstate a license to use certain VMware software for a three‑year period and made clear that Allstate’s use of VMware software remained subject to the Master Agreement.

The 2022 amendment, VMware says, granted Allstate rights to additional VMware software and extended the ELA period to July 29, 2025. Under these agreements, VMware alleges, Allstate was required to report the total number of licenses it deployed on specified dates, to provide additional information reasonably requested to confirm compliance and to maintain accurate records sufficient to show that it and its affiliates followed the terms.

The relationship reportedly soured in 2025. VMware says that on March 4, 2025, it issued a formal audit notice to Allstate under the Master Agreement’s audit clause, telling Allstate that any changes in its environment during the license review process had to be reported promptly. After an introductory call, VMware emailed Allstate on April 11, 2025, saying that audit workstream teams would reach out to schedule kick‑offs. VMware’s audit partner, Connor Consulting, then contacted Allstate on April 16, 2025, and later held an audit kick‑off call on May 5, 2025, providing a technical questionnaire, a deployment detail workbook and scripts.

From there, VMware describes a pattern of delay. Connor Consulting followed up in May 2025, stressing the need to return the technical questionnaire to keep the audit on track. The filing says Allstate acknowledged receiving the materials but said it could not meet the requested timing.

VMware recounts further follow‑ups in May, June and July, including a July 22, 2025 update in which Allstate allegedly identified August 29, 2025 as its target date to return completed audit materials. When that date arrived, VMware says, Allstate still had not provided the promised information.

In September, things took a sharper turn. On September 12, 2025, according to VMware, Allstate told its consultant that VMware had been “removed from all devices” and that Allstate could not execute the scripts because they depended on “having VMware components running in the environment.” Allstate also said it had “no access to data” and was unable to populate the technical questionnaire, VMware says. Allstate did send a technical questionnaire for a “NatGen VMware ELA” environment, but VMware characterises it as “woefully incomplete.” A follow‑up email from VMware’s consultant on September 15, 2025, with additional questions, reportedly went unanswered.

On October 1, 2025, Allstate informed VMware that “all VMware instances have been terminated and removed from Allstate’s VMware ELA environment” and declared the audit “complete and satisfied, in compliance with the contractual entitlements, with no further action or obligation from Allstate,” the filing states. Allstate also redirected future correspondence to counsel.

VMware contends that terminating VMware instances and unilaterally declaring the audit complete does not relieve Allstate of its obligations to maintain accurate records, provide required deployment reports and permit an audit for the ELA period.

The company says Allstate’s conduct has impaired its ability to verify whether Allstate underpaid fees for the audited period or otherwise failed to comply with the agreements, and notes that if an audit reveals an underpayment of more than 10%, Allstate would be required to cover VMware’s audit costs in addition to any unpaid amounts.

VMware is asking the court for damages in an amount to be determined at trial, an order requiring Allstate to provide complete access to records, data, systems, computing devices and other materials necessary to verify compliance, and an injunction barring Allstate from destroying, altering or concealing relevant records. It is also seeking a declaratory judgement that the Master Agreement and ELA Contracts should be interpreted in line with VMware’s view and that Allstate’s contrary position is without merit.

Source

https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/legal-insights/vmware-sues-allstate-over-alleged-obstruction-of-software-licensing-audit-560605.aspx

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]]> Audit costs, licensing chaos and FinOps: 3 critical calls to action for IT leaders in 2025 https://easysam.co.uk/knowledge-base/audit-costs-licensing-chaos-and-finops-3-critical-calls-to-action-for-it-leaders-in-2025/ Tue, 29 Jul 2025 12:38:20 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=35632 Turn audit anxiety into a strategic advantage with some of the latest trends and actionable insights - protecting your budget and unlocking IT value.

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Turn audit anxiety into a strategic advantage with some of the latest trends and actionable insights - protecting your budget and unlocking IT value.

Published on 29th July 2025

If you’re an IT leader at a large enterprise, you probably know the feeling: A vendor audit letter lands on your desk, and suddenly your team is scrambling to prove compliance, justify spend and decode the fine print of complex software agreements. The Flexera 2025 State of ITAM Report makes it clear these scenarios aren’t the exception, but the rule. Nearly half of organisations have paid over $1 million in audit fines in the past three years, and the risks are only growing as cloud and SaaS adoption surge.

But there’s good news: Leaders who act now can turn audit anxiety into a strategic advantage. Let’s take a look at some of the latest trends, hidden risks and actionable insights that’ll help you protect your budget and unlock IT value in the year ahead.

Audit fines are draining millions from IT budgets every year

The cost of audits remains high on the priority list for today’s tech leaders. In fact, over the last three years, 45% of companies have paid more than $1 million in audit fines—and Microsoft, IBM and SAP are the companies most often auditing. Audits can reveal significant gaps in understanding how licenses are applied and used. The complexity of software use rights, combined with the rapid shift to cloud services, make it increasingly difficult for IT teams to defend against audits. It’s not just about the financial penalties; it also underscores the need for more robust and integrated IT asset management practices.

The growing complexity of software licensing is yet another struggle—and in just a few years, it’s jumped from sixth place to the top significant challenge plaguing organisations today. The primary culprit? It appears to be an impact from the ongoing migration to cloud environments, which introduces a new layer of intricacy in managing and optimising software assets. Combine this with the limited resources available to software asset management (SAM) teams and you get an environment that makes it hard for good SAM strategies to be put into place. This resource constraint is a double-edged sword because it not only affects how we can manage our current assets but also limits how we can adapt to new and changing cloud technologies.

On a more positive note, there has been a significant increase in collaboration between ITAM and FinOps teams. This collaboration has grown by 6 percentage points year over year worldwide, and even more impressively, by 14 percentage points in Europe. This collaboration is key for managing software in the cloud—and with the focus on cloud license management becoming widespread, it’s a collaboration that will only need to grow. Furthermore, the tracking of SaaS use and the rightsizing of cloud contracts have both seen big increases. Over the past two years, they have improved by 7-8 percentage points. This is good news because it shows that organisations are taking steps to better manage their cloud resources—and it’s important in a time when cloud services are becoming business critical.

Cross-functional collaboration is reshaping ITAM success stories

Collaboration is key, keep it up: Audit defence, licensing management and cost optimisation all require strong partnerships across ITAM, FinOps, security and vendor management teams. Practical steps to promote these efforts include:

  • Establish regular joint reviews between ITAM and FinOps teams to align cloud and SaaS spend. Regular communication helps identify and address issues before they escalate
  • Encourage cross-training and shared KPIs between ITAM and FinOps teams. Shared KPIs align goals and encourage a unified approach to managing software assets and financial resources efficiently
  • Foster strong relationships with vendors to clarify ambiguous licensing terms. Vendors are more likely to provide support and flexibility if you engage in open and regular dialogue about licensing and cost optimisation
  • Collaborate with security teams to maintain compliance and protect assets. Joint efforts can help prevent breaches that lead to costly penalties and audits

Why visibility is your strongest defence

Insight into your entire technology landscape is essential, and this year’s findings show that despite high visibility into on-premises hardware and software, organisations are still struggling with SaaS and cloud visibility especially concerning bring your own licenses (BYOLs). That’s a big red flag considering the surging spend in these areas. Seventy-six percent of respondents in this year’s report reported visibility into on-premises hardware, 75% into software and 63% into cloud instances, but only half feel confident in SaaS visibility and a mere 27% are comfortable with their BYOL positions.

The overall confidence of respondents in their IT visibility also dropped from 47% to 43%, which underscores the increasing complexity and the urgent need for enhanced tools and processes. It’s imperative to bridge this gap to ensure compliance and cost optimisation.

Given these challenges, what steps can you take to stay ahead? These tips are a great place to start:

  • Invest in tools that provide real-time tracking of license usage, application of product use rights and compliance. Detailed usage data and product use rights analysis can make huge differences in how you view license compliance and determine how much you need to renew
  • Define roles and responsibilities for managing new technology domains such as SaaS applications and cloud licenses and AI spend. As organisations invest more in these technologies, leaders will want to understand their return on investment and if these new technologies are secure and used efficiently
  • Maintain up-to-date documentation. You need to ensure teams have a clear understanding of what they’re managing. Keeping up-to-date documentation on policies, roles and responsibilities helps teams make informed decisions—and avoid costly mistakes
  • Integrate ITAM and FinOps processes to achieve end-to-end visibility and control. This ensures that financial and operational data are aligned, enabling better decision-making

Automation is unlocking new levels of efficiency and savings

Manual processes aren’t sufficient to manage the rapid growth of cloud and SaaS environments—and without automation, you risk falling behind and facing compliance issues. Consider these tips as you work toward improving or automating processes within your organisation:

  • Leverage automation to manage and optimise license entitlements, usage and compliance in real time, ensuring that you’re always in control. This reduces the risk of over-provisioning and underutilisation, leading to cost savings
  • Regular internal audits are essential to maintaining compliance. By swiftly identifying discrepancies and areas of non-compliance, you can take immediate action, reducing the risk of penalties and ensuring that your assets are managed effectively
  • Share data and insights across teams to identify savings and reduce shadow IT. This helps in making informed decisions, optimising resources and ensuring that all departments are aligned with your organisation’s financial goals
  • Refine your process along the way. Process improvement and automation aren’t one-time tasks but continuous efforts. This ensures that your teams remain effective and efficient in managing software assets, even as the landscape evolves

The blueprint for resilience in 2025 and beyond

Collaboration, the fundamental need for enhanced visibility into IT assets, the power of automation and real-time tracking tools help address the challenges that IT leaders face. But this is a continuous journey, and IT leaders must commit to ongoing improvement to protect budgets and drive IT value in 2025 and beyond, as the future of IT management depends on it.

Source

https://www.flexera.com/blog/it-asset-management/audit-costs-licensing-chaos-and-finops-3-critical-calls-to-action-for-it-leaders-in-2025/

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]]> Software licensing audits – five ways to get ahead of the game https://easysam.co.uk/knowledge-base/software-licensing-audits-five-ways-to-get-ahead-of-the-game/ Wed, 09 Jul 2025 05:41:49 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=35442 With news of audits from some of the big vendors becoming more and more prevalent, here are some steps to take should one come knocking.

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With news of audits from some of the big vendors becoming more and more prevalent, here are some steps to take should one come knocking.

Published on 9th July 2025

Software is life. That is a big statement, but for many organisations software is critical. Without it, business stops or at the very least there are some very unhappy customers and staff. With this in mind, organisations need to ensure that they have a robust licensing posture and are equipped to deal with supplier audits.

Know what software you need

It always pays to be prepared. Before an organisation gets moving with any new contractual arrangements or renewed licences, it needs to have some level of confidence of its present and future software needs. That way, the organisation can enter these discussions with a view to what it requires and ideally purchase licences that support this. In planning for the future, if the pathway forward is clear (e.g. future migration to different software) it may be preferable to set this out in the terms, otherwise it could be useful to incorporate a level of flexibility to manage future changes.

Understand the detail of your licensing

Software licensing can be complex. Technical, commercial and legal teams need to work together to decipher sometimes quite complicated licensing structures, categories, applications and limitations. Any uncertainties should be appropriately dealt with, and where necessary amendments made to the legal terms to document this. We have found this to be particularly important with core terms like “use”, “access”, “direct and indirect” and “user”.

Another trip hazard can be the way the contractual suite is constructed, with software licensing and associated terms peppered throughout documents at various levels. It can also be helpful to specify fixed or capped costs for additional licences.

Tracking and managing your software use

A software asset management (SAM) tool will assist in managing compliance with licensing volumes. A SAM tool can be used to maintain a catalogue of licensed software and installed software, tracking compliance issues (or alternatively, underutilised licences) and generating reporting on software inventory, usage and compliance. Reporting from a SAM tool can be used to demonstrate compliance (and potentially avoid an audit) and, sometimes, software vendors will require an organisation to use a SAM tool under their licensing terms.

Where you can, limit supplier audit

Terms should be carefully examined to confirm whether audit rights are specified and to ensure that these do not stretch too far. While often unavoidable, make efforts to craft reasonable terms with appropriate limitations. Be wary of pervasive audit rights and automated monitoring tools, and where possible require audits to be conducted by an independent third party.

Dispute mechanisms

Often, a licence agreement will specify the consequences of an over-deployment or other instance where licence rights have been exceeded. This can include requirements to cover the costs of the software vendor’s audit and to acquire additional licences, which may be at rack rates, not discounted rates, and cover both historical usage periods and a future period that is co-termed with other licences. If specified, these outcomes can be negotiated before the licence agreement is entered into.

In the absence of this, we are endlessly hopeful that cool heads will prevail. A sensible dispute notification and resolution process is a must. Ideally software licensing concerns should be raised commercially first, with legal recourse taking a back seat. To ensure business continuity, organisations should also avoid any draconian supplier right to suspend software use and access.

Source

https://www.claytonutz.com/insights/2025/may/software-licensing-audits-five-ways-to-get-ahead-of-the-game

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Papan Saenkutrueang via Vecteezy

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]]> VMware perpetual license holder receives audit letter from Broadcom https://easysam.co.uk/news/vmware-perpetual-license-holder-receives-audit-letter-from-broadcom/ Tue, 01 Jul 2025 09:00:00 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=35424 The move appears to have followed threats of such audits in cease-and-desist letters sent to organisations whose VMware support contracts had expired.

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The move appears to have followed threats of such audits in cease-and-desist letters sent to organisations whose VMware support contracts had expired.

Published on 1st July 2025

After sending cease-and-desist letters to VMware users whose support contracts had expired and who subsequently declined to subscribe to one of Broadcom’s VMware bundles, Broadcom has started the process of conducting audits on former VMware customers.

Broadcom stopped selling VMware perpetual licenses in November 2023 in favour of pushing a small number of VMware SKUs that feature multiple VMware offerings. Since Broadcom is forcefully bundling VMware products, the costs associated with running VMware have skyrocketed, with customers frequently citing 300 percent price hikes and some firms claiming even larger increases. As a result, some VMware users have opted to keep using VMware perpetual licenses, even though Broadcom refuses to renew most of those clients’ support services.

This year, Broadcom started sending such VMware users cease-and-desist letters, telling organisations to stop using any maintenance releases/updates, minor releases, major releases/upgrades extensions, enhancements, patches, bug fixes, or security patches (except for zero-day security patches) that VMware issued since the user’s support contract ended.

The letters also warned of potential audits, which appear to be underway now.

Broadcom starts auditing

We reviewed a letter that a software provider and VMware user in the Netherlands received that is dated June 20 and informs the firm that it “has been selected for a formal audit of its use of VMware software and support services”. The security professional who provided the letter asked to keep their name and their employers’ name anonymous out of privacy concerns.

The anonymous employee said that their company had been a VMware customer for “about” a decade before deciding not to sign up for a new contract with Broadcom’s VMware a year ago. The company had been using VMware Cloud Foundation and vSphere.

“Our CEO decided to not extend the support contract because of the costs,” the employee said. “This already impacts us security-wise because we can no longer get updates (unless the CVSS score is critical).”

The letter notes that an auditing firm, Connor Consulting, which is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices around the globe, will perform a review of the company’s “VMware deployment and entitlements, which may include fieldwork or remote testing and meetings with members of your accounting, licensing, and management information systems functions.” The letter informs its recipient that someone from Connor will reach out and that the VMware user should respond within three business days.

The letter, signed by Aiden Fitzgerald, director of global sales operations at Broadcom, claims that Broadcom will use its time “as efficiently and productively as possible to minimise disruption.”

Still, the security worker is concerned about the implications of the audit and said they “expect a big financial impact” for their employer. They added:

Because we are focusing on saving costs and are on a pretty tight financial budget, this will likely have impact on the salary negotiations or even lay-offs of employees. Currently, we have some very stressed IT managers [and] legal department [employees] …

The employee noted that they are unsure if their employer exceeded its license limits. If the firm did, it could face “big” financial repercussions, the worker noted.

Users deny wrongdoing

As Broadcom works to ensure that people aren’t using VMware outside its terms, some suggest that the semiconductor giant is wasting some time by investigating organisations that aren’t violating agreements.

After Broadcom started sending cease-and-desist letters, at least one firm claimed that it got a letter from Broadcom despite no longer using VMware at all.

Additionally, various companies claimed that they received a cease-and-desist from Broadcom despite not implementing any updates after their VMware support contract expired.

The employee at the Dutch firm that received an audit notice this month claimed that the only update that their employer has issued to the VMware offerings it uses since support ended was a “critical security patch.”

That employee also claimed that their company didn’t receive a cease-and-desist letter from Broadcom before being informed of an audit.

“When we saw the news that they were going to send cease-and-desist letters and audits, our management thought it was a bluff and that they would never do that,” the anonymous security worker said.

Broadcom’s litigious techniques to ensure VMware agreements are followed have soured its image among some current and former customers. Broadcom’s $69 billion VMware acquisition has proven lucrative, but as Broadcom approaches two years of VMware ownership, there are still calls for regulation of its practices, which some customers and partners believe are “legally and ethically flawed.”

Source

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/06/vmware-perpetual-license-holder-receives-audit-letter-from-broadcom/

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Thanakorn Lappattaranan via Vecteezy

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]]> IT teams are losing visibility, as tech cost pressures mount https://easysam.co.uk/news/it-teams-are-losing-visibility-as-tech-cost-pressures-mount/ Thu, 19 Jun 2025 11:57:08 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=35358 That's according to Flexera's 2025 State of ITAM Report - which highlights growing SaaS waste, persisting audit costs and evolving priorities

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That's according to Flexera's 2025 State of ITAM Report - which highlights growing SaaS waste, persisting audit costs and evolving priorities

Published on 19th June 2025

Flexera have released their 2025 State of ITAM Report, which reveals a concerning decline in complete visibility across the technology stack – down to 43% from 47% year-over-year. Yet, as pressure mounts to optimise costs, the collaboration of IT asset management (ITAM) with cloud (44%) and FinOps (38%) teams is on the rise, suggesting that ITAM teams are increasingly working across organisational silos to address comprehensive visibility challenges, increase financial accountability and drive operational efficiency.

Flexera’s annual report surveys global IT professionals to explore how the evolution of ITAM, FinOps, security, software asset management (SAM) and hardware asset management (HAM) teams influences the value they deliver. It also examines IT investment trends across public, hybrid, and SaaS technologies.

“Complete visibility across IT assets is foundational to every good technology decision,” said Becky Trevino, Chief Product Officer at Flexera. “The fact that it’s slipping at a time when organisations are under intense pressure to rationalise costs is a real concern. You can’t optimise what you can’t see and without clear insight into the entire technology stack, it’s nearly impossible to eliminate waste, ensure compliance, or make cost-effective investment decisions. This year’s report showcases why the collaboration between ITAM and FinOps is no longer optional—it’s a strategic imperative.”

Highlights from the report include:

  • Minimising SaaS sprawl is an increasing imperative: Thirty-five percent of respondents say SaaS waste has increased over the past year, suggesting that the financial impact of underutilised SaaS subscriptions is taking a toll on budgets. In addition, SAM professionals are doubling down on SaaS oversight, with 59% actively tracking usage and 56% rightsizing contracts and subscriptions to eliminate unnecessary spend.
  • Software use rights take the spotlight: The report also highlights a dramatic rise in the challenge of managing software use rights—now ranked as the number one concern for SAM teams, up from sixth place just a year ago. This surge is largely attributed to the growing complexity of cloud-based licensing models and the rapid migration of enterprise resources to cloud environments.
  • Audits still plague organisations (and their bottom line): Nearly half (45%) of surveyed organisations report spending over $1 million on software audits over the past three years, a figure one percentage point less than 2024. Twenty-three percent of organisations spent more than $5 million on audits in 2025, a slight increase from 2024. The findings suggest that the intricacies of software use rights and the continued shift to the cloud are keeping audit defence high on the agenda of IT teams.
  • Microsoft continues audit streak: Half of respondents said Microsoft audited their organisation in the past three years. The tech giant has remained at the top of this list for the past several reports , followed closely by IBM (37%). There was a slight increase in audits reported from SAP (32%) and ServiceNow (21%) compared to last year’s findings. Adobe (24%) remained unchanged, but Oracle decreased from 31% to 24% and Salesforce dropped from 25% to 20% year over year.

This year’s findings underscore the urgent need for smarter, more agile SAM strategies as organisations strive to balance innovation with fiscal responsibility.

“The role of ITAM is shifting from operational to transformational,” said Phil Perfetti, senior product marketing manager at Flexera. “While visibility into cloud licenses is gradually improving, the complexity of managing hybrid IT environments is also increasing, and any serious blind spots are a problem that modern organisations can no longer afford.”

The full survey results are available here – which explores the thinking of 506 global IT professionals across industries and context areas.

Source

https://www.flexera.com/about-us/press-center/it-teams-losing-visibility-according-to-flexera-2025-state-of-itam-report

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Flexera

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