As organisations scale across SaaS, public cloud and AI, ITAM teams are being asked to do more than track assets: They’re expected to restore visibility, prove value and govern environments that are growing faster than policy can keep up.

Based on a global survey of 512 professionals, Flexera’s 2026 State of ITAM Report shows clear progress. But complexity continues to outpace control.

Flexera’s newly-released 2026 State of ITAM Report reveals a growing disconnect: Organisations are investing heavily in AI tools, yet many lack the visibility and governance needed to manage them effectively. This tension creates a new challenge, and IT leaders are asking themselves:

How do we govern AI usage without slowing innovation and limiting ROI?

Below, is a breakdown of the key AI-specific findings shaping enterprise ITAM strategies today.

After 5+ years of Flexera’s State of ITAM report, one thing’s clear: there’s no shortage of daily challenges faced by ITAM teams. Business units now buy applications directly. Teams experiment with unsanctioned AI tools. Free trials turn into paid subscriptions. All while overlapping apps stack up across departments. All of this rolls up under SaaS sprawl.

SaaS sprawl isn’t about having too many tools. It’s about losing control over:

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.

Flexera has published research showing that every organisation surveyed uses generative AI public cloud services. It also found that 85% now see managing cloud costs as their main cloud challenge.

The findings point to growing pressure on technology budgets as companies juggle hybrid cloud estates, AI spending and limited visibility over usage. Some 17% of organisations exceeded their public cloud budgets in the past year, while estimated wasted cloud spend rose to 29%, reversing a five-year decline.

Hybrid cloud has become the dominant operating model in the survey. Flexera found that 69% of organisations now use a hybrid cloud approach, rising to 78% among those with more than 5,000 employees.

Spending patterns also point to larger, more complex estates. Among organisations spending more than USD $500,000 a month on cloud, 79% operate hybrid environments.

The report suggests AI is adding a new source of cost volatility. While all respondents said they use generative AI public cloud services in some form, 45% described that use as extensive and 30% said cost unpredictability was one of the biggest challenges in scaling AI workloads.

Chris Andersen, Chief Financial Officer at Flexera, linked those pressures to broader changes in how finance teams track technology spending.

“The conversation around cloud costs has shifted significantly. It has moved from spending more on technology to solve problems to managing increasingly complex environments that have often evolved organically over time.

“Many organisations have not intentionally designed hybrid or multi-cloud strategies. Instead, these environments emerge through acquisitions, new business requirements or teams independently adopting different platforms. As a result, finance leaders are being asked to manage technology estates that are much harder to monitor and optimise.

“The challenge is that complexity itself creates inefficiencies. The more environments organisations operate across, the harder it becomes to maintain visibility into what resources are being used, whether they are delivering value and where opportunities exist to reduce unnecessary spend,” Andersen said.

The survey also points to a more formal approach to cloud oversight. Flexera found that 71% of organisations now have a Cloud Centre of Excellence, while 63% have established dedicated FinOps teams.