The Next Frontier in ITAM: AI-Powered Innovations from Onyx, Samplify, and ServiceNow

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The Next Frontier in ITAM: AI-Powered Innovations from Onyx, Samplify, and ServiceNow

This article explores three companies innovating in the ITAM market using AI. Before we look at AI for ITAM, let’s recap recent developments on how ITAM can help with AI.

ITAM for AI

I’ve been exploring how IT Asset Management (ITAM) can play a crucial role in AI adoption. My premise is simple: by managing AI like an asset—whether it’s cloud-based, on-premise, or delivered via SaaS—you can proactively control costs and mitigate risks and also unlock new innovation opportunities.

I dive deeper into this approach in my video series published late last year: Managing AI Like an Asset to Unlock Innovation

What’s Next?

The ITAM Forum will soon release research and a white paper on AI’s impact in ITAM. Additionally, throughout 2025, training courses on this topic will be available via the LISA platform.

AI integration will also be a key discussion point at Wisdom Unplugged in New York this March. This event will cover practical ways to ensure ITAM remains timely, relevant, and aligned with business priorities.

Join us in New York! Register here.

AI Innovation in ITAM

While ITAM plays a critical role in integrating AI, I’m equally interested in how AI can support ITAM itself. In this article, I highlight three recent innovations—Onyx, Samplify, and ServiceNow AI Agents—that are shaping the future of ITAM.

Onyx – AI supported Microsoft Licensing Expertise

“World class licensing consultancy coupled with proprietary AI technology to deliver guaranteed licensing advice and commercial benchmarking.”

Onyx provides an AI driven platform to help organisations with their queries around Microsoft Licensing and benchmark contracts. After a decade of watching independent sources of licensing advice disappear, it’s great to see a resurgence!

Research into AI usage suggests 8/10 ITAM Review readers are already using ChatGPT or something similar to help with personal productivity. However, you wouldn’t necessarily want to use a generative AI for supporting significant contract negotiations. Ask it five times, and you’re likely to get five different answers.

What Onyx is doing, which I think is very smart, is underwriting the answers from its platform using human quality control. This means you can bank on the results. If the answer is too complex or requires clarification, it can refer to a human expert. Not only is this a quick and trustworthy way of getting your basic Microsoft licensing questions answered, it’s independent and guaranteed.

Cool technology – but also great timing. Microsoft recently made changes to its partner model and significantly reduced partner fees. Many partners potentially can’t afford the infrastructure to support a team of Microsoft licensing experts answering questions. This provides a solid alternative. No more long waits for Microsoft account managers to respond or incoherent answers.

Learn more at https://www.getonyx.ai/ and connect with founders Neil Lomax and Chris Brown .

Samplify – AI driven Application Portfolio Optimisation

“Samplify.ai’s AI-driven Software Intelligence tool evaluates your software landscape, helping you identify what to retain, consolidate, or add.”

During an ITAM assignment years ago, I remember being tasked with building a picture of what applications the organisation had in use. They called it the ‘application landscape’, and it took me months to understand a fraction of what was in use and why.

Samplfy provides an AI driven approach to assessing not only what tools are in place but why they are being used. Uniquely, it does this via an email conversation, similar to a generative AI conversation, to understand your estate and make rationalisation or consolidation decisions. Many ITAM tools will tell you what you have, who makes it, whether it is being used, and perhaps which category of tool it belongs to. Samplify takes things to the next level by understanding why they might be using it.

Learn more here: https://www.samplify.ai/ and connect with founder James Layfield .

ServiceNow – AI Agents for ITAM?

“ServiceNow AI Agents: Unlock 24/7 productivity with AI agents that take action and autonomously solve problems.”

Let’s shift gears away from the two start-ups I mentioned above and look at the juggernaut that is ServiceNow. Their CEO, Bill McDermott, is really keen to highlight that their recent AI announcement isn’t “just another chatbot.” ServiceNow is pushing something called “Agentic AI.”

[Quick Explainer: So, what’s an “AI Agent”? Basically, it’s an algorithm that actually does stuff for you. “Agentic” means it has agency—meaning it’s designed to take actions and get things done. Different from a regular chatbot that’s mostly there to chat and guide, an Agentic AI is more of a doer than a talker. A chatbot might point you towards a knowledge base article based on your query. An AI agent will try and fix the actual query. If it is truly ‘agentic’, it might take several different approaches to get it done rather than following a predetermined routine.]

ServiceNow is positioning its platform as a “Control Tower” to oversee AI orchestration. It’s careful to position its AI with “human oversight”.

This all looks very cool, and I think there is plenty of scope for AI agents doing some of the heavy lifting of ITAM tasks (The demo in their launch video includes license assignment). With Agentic ITAM, the future of governance might be AI prompt engineering, ensuring the robots are saving money and meeting policies whilst they go about their work.

Considerations:

• Governance & Trust: ServiceNow’s clients include some of the largest enterprises in the world, and especially in Europe and regulated markets, they’re going to want serious proof that this AI is governed well and meets compliance standards. So, ServiceNow will need to offer a lot of education and reassurance on that front.
• ROI: Every AI based “Assist” from ServiceNow’s platform might rack up costs. Yes, AI service is cool, but what’s the clear return on investment here? Specifically, for ITAM tasks, do we free up staff for higher-level, strategic work that justifies the cost? This stuff needs careful thought.

Learn more:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VMWwWSC3d4
• https://www.servicenow.com/uk/products/ai-agents.html

If you’re using AI to enhance your ITAM practice or have an innovative AI-based solution, I’d love to hear from you. Connect on LinkedIn or contact us.

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