Flexera (an ITAM Forum Patron) recently released the findings of its second annual Flexera State of ITAM Report. More than 500 IT executives from around the world – who manage and participate in ITAM, SAM and HAM processes in organizations of 1,000+ employees – participated in this survey. 59% came from the U.S.A. and 17% (the highest figure) from the Financial Services industry.
Eye-catching findings
This report contains many great stats and findings. The following are just a few that caught our eye:
- 43% of ITAM teams report directly to the CIO/CTO. This is almost double last year’s figure of 22%.
- 83% answered “yes” to the question: Does a member of your ITAM/SAM team participate in, or contribute to, your organisation’s Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE)/cloud central team?
- 50% of SAM teams significantly interact with their organization’s Security team, up from 35% last year.
- 36% said the ‘ability to provide data to support other teams’ is a metric used to measure the success of SAM initiatives, up from 28% last year.
- 29% said the ‘amount of hardware recycled/donated’ is a metric used to measure the success of HAM initiatives.
- 25% said the ‘reduction of carbon footprint’ is a metric used to measure the success of HAM initiatives.
These findings are great news! As a global ITAM trade body, we’re working to help the ITAM profession grow and develop and identify and contribute to strategic business initiatives, including cloud migration/digital transformation and sustainability.
The future of ITAM is now
There’s a huge opportunity for ITAM to go in different directions and expand into other areas of business, moving beyond cost reduction and license compliance – ITAM’s historical and traditional ‘bread and butter’.
As our Trustee Rachel Ryan nicely said in a recent Change Makers podcast episode:
“Don’t get stuck in the old traditions of ITAM. We don’t just do license compliance. We don’t just manage and track assets. There’s so much more we can do, such as FinOps, SaaS management, Shadow IT, sustainability, end-of-life management, business critical systems, operational resilience. It’s really about thinking outside the box. When you move beyond asset tracking and license compliance, that’s when the good stuff happens, and you can really show ITAM’s strategic value to the business. That’s what ITAM has lost sight of. ITAM is so fundamental to so many parts of the business. You just need to get out there and see what more ITAM can do and help with.”
Well, it looks like ITAM is starting to do just that!