How can AI and Automation help with ITAM related workloads?
The AI innovation watchlist below is a snapshot of tools and platforms that are applying AI to ITAM workloads (and surrounding disciplines SAM, Licensing, FinOps, IT Procurement). It’s a list of vendors I’ll be watching closely as AI permeates the market.
It is sometimes difficult to determine which is genuine innovation using AI, and what is rebranding of old technology and calling it AI. For example you could argue that ITAM tools have been doing a form of “machine learning” for decades by updating their recognition / SKU catalogues, an easy category to rename as “AI-driven”. Do you have an opinion on this? Leave a comment or give me a shout. I look forward to digging in further.
I expect this list to grow significantly over the next few years, please let me know if any are missing from the list or if I should add any interesting categories.
1. Licensing Copilots & Expert Advisory
AI that behaves like a licensing subject matter expert, answering questions, modelling scenarios, and guiding optimisation/compliance decisions.
- Licenseware — NEO (multi-vendor AI licensing assistant / Q&A / compliance posture)
- Onyx — AI-supported Microsoft Licensing Expertise (MS licensing coach / commercial advisory)
2. SaaS & Shadow AI Discovery / Governance
AI to find all your SaaS and AI tools (including shadow IT/AI), understand who’s using them, and govern risk/cost.
- Zluri — GenAI Discovery & Governance
- Grip Security — AI Security / Shadow AI Governance
- CerteroX for AI (AI & Shadow AI visibility and governance)
- Xensam — Xupervisor & Xam AI (AI-powered SAM + SaaS discovery/normalisation)
- Zylo — Platform + Zylo Discover (AI/ML SaaS discovery and categorisation)
- Productiv — SaaS Intelligence & Sidekick (AI assistant over SaaS usage/spend, plus AI-feature detection)
- BetterCloud — SaaS Management Platform (AI-driven SaaS security/ops automation)
3. Contract, Entitlement & Renewal Intelligence
AI that reads contracts, pulls out the important terms, ties them to apps/entitlements, and supports renewals/negotiation.
- Torii — AI Contract Ingestion (line-item parsing of SaaS contracts into renewal data)
- ServiceNow — Now Assist in Contract Management (gen-AI clause analysis and metadata extraction)
- HCL BigFix — AI document scanning in SaaS Management (contract → entitlement mapping for SaaS)
- USU — ITAM / SAM (AI-assisted licence & contract management in a traditional SAM suite)
- CloudEagle.ai (AI contract metadata extraction + renewal and negotiation support)
- Flexera One (incl. Snow) – using AI/ML to recommend optimal licensing and cloud configurations, plus gen-AI Q&A over ITAM/SaaS data
4. Data Quality, Asset Intelligence & Catalogue Normalisation
AI to make the raw ITAM data trustworthy – clean, normalised, enriched and complete.
- Oomnitza — Anomaly Detection & Data Integrity (continuous asset data quality and anomalies)
- AWS — Vision “photo-the-label” blueprint (computer vision to capture hardware attributes into CMDB/inventory)
- Lansweeper — Technology Asset Intelligence (discovery + AI/predictive intelligence on assets, often feeding other tools)
5. Cloud Commitment & FinOps Optimisation
Autopilots for cloud discounts: RIs, Savings Plans, commitments.
- ProsperOps — Autonomous Discount Management (autonomous management of AWS commitments)
- Zesty — Commitment Manager (ML engine that automatically buys/adjusts AWS Savings Plans)
6. AI Supply-Chain, Code & IP Governance
Making sure the AI you use/build is licence-clean: models, datasets, OSS components, and AI-generated code.
- OpenChain Project — AI-SBOM Guidance (standard/guidance for AI component SBOMs and compliance)
- FOSSA — Snippet Scanning for AI-generated code (detects AI-generated/copied snippets and licence risk)
7. Portfolio Rationalisation & Strategic Planning
Big-picture optimisation of the application estate – what to keep, consolidate, retire or replace.
- Samplify — AI-driven Application Portfolio Optimisation
8. ITAM Automation & AI Agents
AI agents that actually do things in your ITAM/HAM processes: order, route, approve, update, etc.
- ServiceNow — AI Agents for ITAM (agents for hardware/asset workflows and ITAM task automation)
I expect this list to grow significantly over the next few years, please let me know if any are missing from the list or if I should add any interesting categories.
