The Forrester Wave SAM Solutions Report (Q1 2025)

ITAM News & Analysis

The Forrester Wave SAM Solutions Report (Q1 2025)

Forrester, the US based research firm, recently released its latest SAM Solutions Wave report for Q1 2025. The report reflects its research and analysis of nine SAM providers it considers to matter the most, and scores them in accordance with set criteria.

Its evaluation considers the strength of a SAM provider’s offering, the strength of their strategy, and their customer feedback. Each provider is scored 1-5 against the listed criteria (with a weighting system applied) to ultimately rank them as Contenders, Strong Performers or Leaders.

Here, we examine the report findings and deep dive into the top three ‘Leaders’.

(Only vendors that meet the inclusion criteria have been assessed in the Forrester Wave SAM Solutions Report (Q1 2025). The inclusion criteria are based on many factors such as SAM product revenue, headcount, and SAM functionality. Additionally, Forrester must have received a minimum of five enquiries in relation to a specific vendor for it to be included.)

The Leaders, Strong Performers, and Contenders

Leaders:

• ServiceNow (ServiceNow Software Asset Management – Pro/Enterprise)
• USU (USU Software Asset Management)
• Flexera (Flexera One including Snow Atlas)

Strong Performers:

• OpenText (OpenText Asset Management)
• Matrix42 (Matrix 42 SAM)

Contenders:

• Certero (Certero Unified ITAM and SAM platform)
• Lansweeper (Lansweeper + Licenseware)
• Ivanti (Ivanti Neurons for Discovery and ITAM)
• Open iT (LicenseAnalyzer)

Other Notable Vendors (not evaluated):

• Eracent
• License Dashboard
• Oomniza

(These were not included as they did not meet the inclusion threshold.)

Report Highlights

The report suggests that tighter spending and license management has fuelled SAM adoption and lists the below areas as critical pain points:

• The high cost of software licensing compliance
• Expenses tied to true-ups
• Audit discrepancies

Additionally, the report recommends SAM customers prioritise the below areas of interest when considering which provider to engage:

• AI/ML in contract & license management
• SAAS Management & FinOps Capabilities
• End-to-end software lifecycle Management

Flexera

Flexera, determined to be a leader in this report, scored 5 points in the following categories:

• Software Inventory Management
• Entitlements & License Management
• Usage monitoring, reporting and analytics
• Spending and Financial Management
• Audit trail, compliance and risk management
• SAAS Management
• Vision
• Innovation

The report highlights Flexera’s acquisition of Snow Software as an added strength. It describes Flexera as having strong software inventory, entitlement, license, and compliance management capabilities.

From a strategic perspective, Flexera is described as having superior vision and innovation, particularly around SAAS management and AI. As for capabilities, the report highlights SAAS discovery, integrations and Technopedia as positives; however, slow updates to license models can result in compliance risks. Slow Power BI report generation and support delays were also raised as negatives by customers.

Our Perspective: It is very clear that Flexera’s acquisition of Snow has had a hugely positive effect on its own strategy, allowing Flexera to showcase SaaS management capabilities whilst addressing gaps in the traditional Flexera functionality (particularly those associated with hybrid cloud environments). Flexera with Snow is undoubtably a very effective SAM tool with a great vision; however, addressing issues around slow Power BI reporting and slow support resolution is vital to ensuring customer satisfaction.

ServiceNow

Listed as a Leader, ServiceNow scored five points in the below categories:

• Entitlements and License Management
• Software Lifecycle Management
• Usage monitoring, reporting and analytics
• Spending and Financial Management
• Audit trail, compliance and risk management
• Vision
• Innovation
• Roadmap
• Support services and other offerings

ServiceNow is described as one of the most complete IT Service Management (ITSM) SAM offerings with a vision and roadmap to bring together all the processes needed for complete asset management.

From a strategic perspective, the report highlights the use of AI/ML for software normalisation, spending detection and contract analysis, with an intention to further utilise AI/ML in FinOps. ServiceNow’s one-architecture vision has the potential to automate asset management operations in the future.

ServiceNow’s capabilities (as part of a broader technology asset management platform) cover hardware, operating technology, and cloud. While it is capable of automating compliance and optimising renewals, its ability to integrate with specialised systems and to manage dynamic cloud environments is lacking.

Our Perspective: There is no doubt  ServiceNow is a Leader in this space, particularly for large enterprises;  however it faces a number of challenges. Implementation complexity and training requirements could limit its suitability for smaller organisations and may impact the time needed to see value. Large organisation, particularly those  already using other ServiceNow products, are likely to gain good value from SAM Pro/Ent once fully implemented.

USU

Listed as a Leader, USU scored five points in the below categories:

• Entitlements and License Management
• Usage monitoring, reporting and analytics
• Spending and Financial Management
• Audit trail, compliance and risk management
• Vision
• Innovation
• Partner ecosystem
• Pricing flexibility and transparency
• Support services and other offerings

USU is described as an ITAM solution that offers visibility across HAM, SAM and SaaS with a strong focus on innovation as well as engineering and product management.

From a strategy perspective, USU is focused on expanding into full SaaS management and FinOps coverage. It is utilising AI to improve user-facing functions and knowledge tools with functions such as chatbots and SaaS license recognition.

USU uses both agent and agentless discovery whilst directly retrieving data from sources such as Microsoft 365. The product tracks both on-premises and cloud assets whilst also offering financial management features. Overall, customer feedback is positive with pricing and support ranking highly.

Our Perspective: USU scored the highest against strategy and third against current offering. This paints a picture of keen innovation, which when combined with its ambitious goals around AI, highlights its willingness to focus heavily on future goals. Customers highlighted the need for improved Oracle support and easier customisation; however, USU ranked highly for customer feedback overall.

Conclusion

The results of the Forrester Wave SAM Solution Report (Q1 2025) are not particularly surprising. As the ITAM/SAM industry has matured, so have many of the products we see in the market – many of which have somewhat solidified their rankings within the industry.

However, as the ITAM world continues to evolve, largely as a result of new Cloud and AI-based technologies, it’s important for the platforms and tools that service the industry, evolve alongside it. The challenge often faced is that mature organisations cannot usually quickly adapt to these changes, and although we can see the clear intention for innovation, some of the higher-ranking platforms still have the challenge of translating strategic plans into actual capabilities.

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