For years, IT Asset Management has been the quiet hero of IT organizations. Keeping software costs under control. Preparing for audits. Tracking devices and licenses. Ensuring compliance while enabling productivity. But in 2025, the ground beneath ITAM is shifting faster than ever before. Cloud and SaaS continue to expand unchecked. AI is redefining processes we thought were untouchable. Budgets are tightening, even as the number of assets and services to manage grows exponentially.
It leaves ITAM leaders facing an uncomfortable but unavoidable truth: the way we’vealways done ITAM may not be the way forward.
The push and pull of tradition vs. transformation
On one hand, the traditional responsibilities of ITAM remain as critical as ever:
- Defending against costly audits.
- Avoiding unnecessary license spend.
- Keeping the CMDB clean and reliable.
On the other hand, new pressures are redefining expectations:
- Finance wants more than cost avoidance, they want accountability and predictive insights.
- Security demands better governance across SaaS and hybrid cloud.
- Users expect seamless access to technology, not bottlenecks and bureaucracy.
The tension is clear: ITAM must both protect the past and enable the future.
Questions that demand attention
As organizations race to keep up with change, it’s worth pausing to ask:
- Which ITAM practices still deliver real value, and which ones are just “muscle memory”?
- Are we spending more time reporting on assets than actually influencing outcomes?
- What’s the next evolution of ITAM’s role in the business?
These aren’t easy questions. But they’re the ones that matter.
Looking ahead to SAMs Europe
This October, at SAMs Europe, ITAM solutions will join the conversation about the future of IT Asset Management. Together with industry peers, we’ll dig deeper into the challenges, assumptions, and opportunities that are shaping the next chapter of ITAM.
Without giving too much away, here’s what we can say: it’s time to rethink some fundamentals.
Closing thought
ITAM has always been about control, visibility, and cost savings. Those principles aren’t going anywhere. But how we achieve them, and what the business expects from us, is changing.
The crossroads is here.
The question is: which path will ITAM take?
