For large organisations, Software Asset Management is no longer simply about knowing what software you own or preparing for the next vendor audit.
Software estates have become bigger, more complex and more dynamic. Organisations are managing traditional licences alongside SaaS, cloud consumption, AI, decentralised purchasing and an increasingly complex network of software contracts.
The question is no longer simply:
"Are we compliant?"
It is:
"Are we getting the best possible return from our software investments?"
That is why at Livingstone, we believe the industry needs to move from Software Asset Management (SAM) to Software Investment Management (SIM).
Traditional SAM has delivered substantial value to organisations, particularly through the improvement of licence visibility, managing compliance and reducing audit risk.
But the world has changed.
A traditional SAM programme can become focused on point-in-time Effective Licence Positions (ELP), licence reconciliation and reporting. Meanwhile, significant software expenditure can sit outside the traditional SAM perimeter, spanning SaaS, cloud services, renewals, tail spend and decentralised purchasing.
Livingstone's view is that SAM needs to evolve.
Software Investment Management (SIM) takes the valuable data and expertise of SAM and applies it to the broader question of business value.
That means looking across the entire software estate to understand:
• What does the organisation own and use?
• What is it contractually entitled to use?
• Where is its risk?
• Where is software being under-used?
• Where is spend leaking through renewals and tail spend?
• What needs to be purchased in the future?
Ultimately, are technology investments delivering the expected return?
Livingstone describes this as moving from assets that are tracked to investments that deliver returns and from point-in-time compliance to continuous adoption, optimisation and value realisation.
There are many capable organisations in the SAM market, from global technology providers and consultancies to specialist SAM organisations.
Livingstone's differentiation is its specialist focus and its belief that SAM should become a commercially driven business capability.
Rather than simply producing reports for an organisation to interpret, Livingstone's Software Investment Managed Service combines data, technology and human expertise to identify opportunities and help drive the actions required to realise them.
This includes strategic publishers such as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and SAP, SaaS-first platforms such as ServiceNow and Adobe, and the often-overlooked world of renewal and tail spend.
One estate. One view. Better decisions.
At the centre of Livingstone's approach is Acuity, its AI-enabled data Software Investment Management platform.
Acuity brings together data from software inventory, cloud, contracts, procurement, finance and other sources to create a more complete view of the organisation's software estate. Livingstone then combines that data with specialist, publisher-specific expertise to determine where action is required.
This is important because technology alone doesn't solve the problem.
A SAM tool can tell you what it sees.
People with the right commercial and licensing expertise need to determine what that information means and what the organisation should do next.
It is tempting to read the AI Act as a problem for the model providers. Look closer, and a great deal of it lands on the organisations deploying AI.
If your customer service runs on a chatbot, the disclosure duty is yours. If your marketing team generates images or video, the labelling duty is yours. And if a tool is quietly processing customer data somewhere in your estate that nobody has recorded, you have exposure you cannot describe, let alone defend.
The scale of that is worth sitting with. Zscaler’s ThreatLabz team measured 18,033 terabytes of enterprise data sent to AI applications last year, up 93% year on year, and 410 million data-loss policy violations tied to ChatGPT alone. Under GDPR, that was a risk you could not see. Under an enforced AI Act, it is also a compliance posture you cannot evidence.
There is a procurement dimension too. Your vendors’ compliance is now part of your due diligence. When the next renewal arrives with an AI assistant bundled into it, the questions are no longer only commercial: is the provider meeting its transparency obligations, is generated content marked, has the vendor signed the Code of Practice, and what does the contract actually say about who carries the regulatory risk?
The move from SAM to SIM is ultimately about changing the conversation.
Instead of asking:
"How many licences do we have?"
SIM asks:
"What are we spending, what are we using, what do we need, what risks do we face, and what value are we getting?"
That brings SAM much closer to the priorities of Procurement, Finance, IT, Security and senior business leaders.
Livingstone's model is designed to continuously prioritise opportunities across strategic vendors, subscriptions and cloud, renewals and tail spend, with the focus able to change as the organisation's priorities change.
The result is a more agile approach to software investment, one that aims to identify savings and risk reduction, but also to ensure that the organisation actually realises those opportunities.
(Interesting read … Gartner report - AI FinOps: Why Cloud Cost Optimisation Recommendations Don’t Get Implemented, and How AI Agents Can Fix It)
This isn't simply a change in terminology.
Livingstone has been recognised as a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Software Asset Management Managed Services for five consecutive years, with its 2025 position highest for Ability to Execute.
More importantly, Livingstone is applying the SIM approach in real enterprise environments.
In one case study, a global medical technology client moved from a traditional SAM model to Livingstone's Software Investment Managed Service, identifying $23 million of risk within six months, with $13 million mitigated and $450,000 in realised savings, alongside an improvement in SAM maturity.
That illustrates the difference between identifying information and turning information into action.
The future of SAM is SIM
The evolution from SAM to SIM isn't about abandoning the fundamentals of Software Asset Management.
Compliance still matters.
Licence optimisation still matters.
Publisher expertise still matters.
But they are no longer the end goal.
They are the foundations on which organisations can build a broader capability for managing software investment.
For organisations with increasingly complex software estates, Livingstone believes the future is about moving:
from tracking assets to managing investments
from point-in-time reporting to continuous insight
from compliance to commercial value
from isolated SAM teams to collaboration across IT, Procurement and Finance
from identifying savings to realising them
That is the Livingstone proposition.
SAM was about understanding the assets.
SIM is about making the investments work harder.
And for organisations looking to take control of increasingly complex software, cloud and AI expenditure, that is a significant shift in what Software Asset Management can deliver.