Six of the largest enterprise software vendors on the planet lost between 20% and 40% of their market value in the opening months of 2026. Oracle reportedly cut up to 30,000 jobs in a week. These are not isolated events. They are the same event, and it has a direct consequence for your licensing position.
The Signals – what is happening right now
Several things are occurring simultaneously in enterprise technology that, taken together, signal a meaningful shift in the vendor landscape.
- Microsoft is down approximately 23% year to date, despite posting record revenue, as markets question whether AI infrastructure spending will generate adequate returns
- Oracle is down approximately 25% year to date, more than any of its megacap peers, while simultaneously raising $50 billion in debt to fund AI data centre expansion
- Oracle cut up to 30,000 roles globally in early April, explicitly linked to AI infrastructure restructuring
- Adobe is down approximately 31% year to date, facing investor concern that generative AI competitors are eroding its core creative tools market
- Salesforce is down approximately 24% year to date as growth in cloud CRM matures and investors demand faster AI monetisation
- SAP fell 15% in a single day in January following a cloud revenue forecast that disappointed markets, and has continued to decline
- ServiceNow is down approximately 40% year to date despite strong operational performance, as investors reprice high-multiple SaaS stocks amid AI disruption concerns
- The hyperscalers committed a combined $350 billion-plus in AI infrastructure capex in 2025, funded significantly through debt
- Investor sentiment has shifted from backing AI ambition to demanding AI returns, and most enterprise software vendors cannot yet demonstrate them
- Broadcom completed its transformation of VMware’s licensing model to subscription-only, with some customers reporting cost increases exceeding 1,000%
What this aggregates to
These are not isolated events. They describe a cohesive pressure pattern: the largest enterprise software vendors in the world are simultaneously carrying heavy capital commitments, facing investor scepticism about AI monetisation, and in several cases reporting disappointing revenue growth against elevated expectations.
When that combination hits a vendor, history is consistent about what follows. Revenue recovery moves from the front of the sales funnel to the existing customer base. The mechanism is compliance enforcement.
This is not a new playbook. Vendors have reached for it before during periods of financial pressure, and the logic is straightforward: audits are high-margin, require no new customer acquisition, and are contractually sanctioned. For a vendor under pressure, they are the fastest route to incremental revenue from a known base.
The likely knock-on effects
ITAM professionals should expect the following in the 12 to 24 months ahead.
- Audit activity will increase, and it will be broader than traditional on-premise compliance. Oracle’s Java enforcement programme was already well established before the current stock pressure; that pressure will accelerate it. SAP’s audit teams are actively targeting indirect access and HANA sizing as customers navigate migration. Broadcom’s VMware posture is already the most aggressive in the market.
- The compliance surface has fundamentally expanded. The licensing estate your organisation is defending now includes SaaS user counts, consumption-based cloud commitments, token-based AI agreements and hybrid access rights. Vendors have real-time telemetry into all of it. Many ITAM functions do not.
- Vendor conversations will become more transactional. Health checks, roadmap briefings and executive relationships are valuable – but under revenue pressure, account teams are incentivised differently. It is worth remembering that audits also function as vendor intelligence-gathering exercises. What you share across multiple touchpoints; support calls, renewal conversations, account reviews, can inform the position a vendor takes long before a formal notification arrives.
- Microsoft is the nuanced exception. Its audit posture has historically shifted toward incentive-based compliance, using the prospect of a licensing review to accelerate Azure migration rather than pursue punitive settlements. That is still commercial pressure, but it plays out differently at the negotiating table.
What to do about it
The fundamentals of audit defence have not changed. What has changed is the size and complexity of the estate those fundamentals need to cover. Most ITAM functions are still applying 2019 thinking to a 2026 problem.
The principles below are drawn from the LISA Audit Defence fundamentals course I updated in late 2025, applied to the specific risks identified above.
- Map your full vendor risk landscape, not just traditional on-premise publishers. Oracle, SAP and Broadcom remain the highest formal audit risk, but SaaS user counts, cloud consumption commitments and token-based AI agreements now sit within scope of vendor-side telemetry whether or not a formal audit clause is ever invoked
- Establish a single point of contact for all vendor audit and compliance activity. This is basic discipline, but it matters more now because vendors gather intelligence across multiple touchpoints before a formal notification ever arrives
- Understand your audit triggers. Audits are rarely out of the blue. Migration towards a competitor, M&A activity, a long gap since the last audit, and signals of poor SAM practice are all documented triggers, several of which are directly elevated in a market where organisations are reviewing vendor relationships under cost pressure
- Keep commercial and technical conversations in separate lanes. What you share in a roadmap briefing or account review can inform the commercial position a vendor takes at renewal or audit
- Make yourself an unprofitable audit target. Mature, well-documented SAM practices, clean entitlement records and demonstrated competence raise the cost and effort of pursuing your organisation. Vendors in revenue-recovery mode will prioritise easier targets
- Apply the audit-ready standard to your full estate. Being audit ready means having policies, processes and records in place so that if a publisher initiated an audit tomorrow, your organisation could respond quickly, confidently and with minimal disruption. In 2026 that definition must extend to SaaS licence counts, cloud consumption agreements and AI token usage, not just installed software
The vendors you work with are under genuine financial pressure. That does not make them adversaries, but it does mean their interests and yours are less aligned than they were two years ago. The ITAM function exists precisely for moments like this.
Photo by Somruthai Keawjan on Unsplash
