IT Asset Management

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 8 minutes to read
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    Summary of IT Asset Management

    The ServiceNow IT Asset Management suite helps organizations gain comprehensive control and visibility over their software, hardware, and cloud assets. It addresses common challenges like multiple software audits, lack of consolidated asset data, and difficulty associating cloud costs with business value. The suite includes Software Asset Management (SAM), Hardware Asset Management (HAM), and Cloud Cost Management applications, enabling streamlined workflows, lifecycle management, and cost optimization.

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    Key Features

    • Software Asset Management:
      • Automatically normalizes software asset data using weekly content updates and machine learning to maintain accuracy.
      • Manages software rights by tracking entitlements, allocations, and costs, supporting bulk imports.
      • Utilizes publisher packs to handle diverse licensing models and improve license tracking and optimization.
      • Integrates with SaaS and SSO providers to track subscription usage, compliance, and optimize licensing for SaaS applications.
      • Provides centralized views of license compliance and remediation options through Software Asset Workspace and License Workbench.
      • Tracks software spending with financial transaction data to identify redundant software and enforce purchasing policies.
      • Offers preconfigured analytics dashboards for business process improvements and visibility into compliance, usage, and cost savings.
    • Hardware Asset Management:
      • Normalizes hardware asset data with weekly updates for manufacturer and model details.
      • Automates asset lifecycle management from procurement to disposal using low-code, prescriptive workflows and asset tasks.
      • Enables proactive tracking and replacement planning for aging hardware to reduce costs and vulnerability risks.
      • Supports scheduled and ad-hoc audits of asset inventory using mobile scanning and AI-powered data validation.
      • Manages expiring maintenance and lease contracts with task-based workflows and centralized dashboards to avoid penalties.
      • Enhances asset manager productivity via a purpose-built Hardware Asset Workspace offering a consolidated, actionable view.
    • Cloud Cost Management:
      • Provides full visibility into cloud asset usage and associated costs.
      • Enables cost optimization by identifying underused, over-provisioned, and stranded cloud resources.
      • Supports automated or semi-automated rightsizing and shutdown of cloud resources during non-working hours.
      • Includes a self-service cloud resource portal with policy guardrails to accelerate cloud strategy implementation.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Gain a consolidated platform to manage software, hardware, and cloud assets, improving control and reducing audit risk.
    • Optimize software and cloud spend through detailed usage tracking, compliance management, and financial insights.
    • Automate asset lifecycle processes to reduce manual effort, improve data accuracy, and accelerate service delivery.
    • Proactively manage hardware lifecycle to minimize downtime, reduce replacement costs, and maintain security.
    • Improve visibility and decision-making with centralized dashboards and workspaces tailored for asset managers.
    • Accelerate cloud adoption with cost management tools and policy enforcement that align resources to business needs.

    Getting Started

    ServiceNow customers can streamline Software Asset Management setup by working with implementation specialists and accessing training programs such as Software Asset Management fundamentals and getting started courses. The Cloud Cost Management and Device as a Service applications are available for installation via the ServiceNow Store.

    Manage software licenses, hardware assets, and cloud assets with intuitive work flows and life cycle visibility.

    Figure 1. IT Asset Management
    IT Asset Management showing the complete IT asset life cycle.

    Take command of your software, hardware, and cloud assets

    Gartner, Inc. states that organizations often face three or more software audits a year. The number of audits and lack of a consolidated asset management platform can create challenges for an organization to control and optimize software spend. Use the ServiceNow® Software Asset Management application to take command of your software assets.

    Businesses need to know what assets they own, where those assets are located, who is using those assets, how often those assets are used, when those assets are being configured, how much those assets cost, and what value those assets deliver. Use the ServiceNow® Hardware Asset Management application to provide increased visibility into your asset estate and to automate the IT life cycle from procurement to disposal.

    As businesses move to the cloud, they can encounter challenges when associating costs with delivered business value due to the lack of visibility into their cloud spend and usage. Use the ServiceNow® Cloud Cost Management application to gain complete visibility into the usage and costs that are associated with your cloud assets so that you can optimize operations and reduce your cloud spend.

    View and download the full Software Asset Management or Hardware Asset Management infocard for a highlight of features.

    Image for normalizing software assets Normalize software assets

    Automatically normalize your software assets with updates from the Software Asset Management content service.
    Image for managing software rights Manage software rights

    Track and manage rights for your software products by creating or importing software entitlements.
    Image for leveraging publisher packs Leverage publisher packs

    Use license metric data for specific software publishers to accurately track your software usage.
    Image for tracking SaaS subscriptions Track SaaS subscription usage

    Integrate with SaaS applications and SSO providers to track your SaaS subscription usage. Use this data to manage compliance and optimize licensing for your subscriptions.
    Image for viewing your license position View and take action on your license position

    Use the License usage view (Software Asset Workspace) or License Workbench (Software Asset Management classic application) to view your license compliance position and easily remediate any license compliance issues.
    Image for tracking software spend Track software spend

    Track and manage financial transaction data for your software products so that you can optimize your software spend.
    Image for analyzing business processes using software asset analytics and reporting solutions Analyze and improve your business processes using software asset analytics dashboards

    Analyze business processes and identify areas of improvement using consolidated dashboards with actionable data visualizations.
    Image for normalizing hardware assets Normalize hardware assets

    Leverage the extensive hardware Content Library to normalize manufacturer and model data for your assets and to populate important life cycle dates for improved visibility into your asset estate.
    Image for automating your asset life cycle Automate your asset life cycle

    Reduce manual effort and improve service delivery using low-code prescriptive workflows based on the industry best practices that are available at each stage of the asset life cycle. Use asset tasks to automate workflows for bulk stock orders; disposal orders; and the deployment, swapping, and retirement of assets. With asset tasks, you can eliminate the risk of data inaccuracy caused by manual entry.
    Image for refreshing hardware assets Refresh aging hardware assets

    Proactively track and plan for aging assets that are nearing the end of their life cycles so that you can reduce replacement costs and the risk of hardware vulnerabilities.
    Image for auditing your asset inventory Audit your asset inventory

    Conduct scheduled or ad-hoc audits of your asset stockrooms and other asset locations, such as offices and data centers.
    Image for managing expiring maintenance and lease contracts Manage expiring maintenance and lease contracts

    Take action on your expiring maintenance and lease contracts using task-based workflows within the simplified contract renewal process.
    Image for driving asset manager productivity using the Hardware Asset Workspace Drive asset manager productivity using a purpose-built workspace

    Use the Hardware Asset Workspace for a centralized, single pane view of your hardware asset estate. Gain visibility into the critical action items that drive Hardware Asset Management outcomes at every stage of the asset life cycle. In addition, dive into your Important Actions to take the guess work out of your asset life cycle processes.
    Image for accelerating cloud strategy Accelerate your cloud strategy and reduce costs

    Accelerate cloud implementation with a streamlined, responsive, and intuitive self-service cloud resource portal and non-intrusive policy guardrails. Reduce costs by rightsizing your cloud resources to match your organization's usage and by automatically turning off cloud resources during non-working hours.

    Normalize software assets

    After you enable a discovery source, the Software Asset Management application normalizes software installation data from your organization. Weekly content updates for publisher names, product names, software life cycle dates, and more are made available to normalize your discovered data so that you can keep it accurate and up to date. You can also improve your normalization rates by predicting the normalized values of your discovered data through machine learning. In addition, you can opt in to the Software Asset Management Content Service to securely and anonymously send your unnormalized content to ServiceNow for research, validation, and updates.

    Manage software rights

    Track and manage rights for your purchased software using software entitlements. Determine how many rights your organization has purchased, how much those rights cost, who those rights are allocated to, and more. You can create and update software entitlements individually or you can import bulk software entitlements in one go.

    Use Publisher Packs

    Software publishers use different licensing models to define how software licenses must be consumed, which can make license compliance difficult to track across all software publishers. In addition to the thousands of software publishers that are available through the Content Library, the Software Asset Management application offers publisher packs that extend functionality between the ServiceNow AI Platform and top third-party software publishers. With publisher packs, you can access additional capabilities to help you track and optimize licensing for the specified software publishers.

    Track SaaS subscription usage

    The Software Asset Management SaaS License Management application enables you to integrate your ServiceNow instance with third-party SaaS applications and SSO providers. With these integrations, you can pull subscription usage data from your SaaS and connected SSO applications to track usage, manage compliance, and optimize licensing for your subscriptions.

    View and take action on your license position

    The License usage view (Software Asset Workspace) and License Workbench (Software Asset Management classic application) offer you the ability to view the license compliance positions of all your software products from a centralized location. If any of your licenses are out of compliance, you can drill down into the specified product to review suggested remediation options. Select an option to efficiently bring your license back into compliance.

    Track software spend

    Use the Software Spend Detection application to track and optimize software spending based on imported financial transaction data. You can use this data to identify and take action on redundant software, reinforce or update company software purchasing policies, and begin managing unmanaged software products.

    Analyze and improve your business processes using software asset analytics dashboards

    The Software Asset Management application provides preconfigured dashboards with actionable data visualizations to help you track performance and improve your business processes. Use these dashboards to gain visibility into your license compliance, SaaS and SSO subscriptions, engineering applications, recommended licensing optimizations, potential cost savings, normalization trends, and more.

    Normalize hardware assets

    The Hardware Asset Management application normalizes the asset data in your hardware and consumable models. Weekly content updates for manufacturers, device types, and more are made available to normalize your data so that you can keep it accurate and up to date. You can also opt in to the Hardware Asset Management Content Service to securely and anonymously send your unnormalized content to ServiceNow for research, validation, and updates.

    Automate your asset life cycle

    Use the Hardware Asset Management application to control the entire life cycle of your hardware assets from procurement to disposal. The Hardware Asset Management application automates each stage of the asset life cycle by tracking the financial, contractual, and inventory details of your hardware assets. Asset tasks are provided to deploy, replace or swap, or retire your assets. Asset managers can assign asset tasks to Incident, Change, and Work orders, thereby reducing efforts on ticket resolution and delivering faster services. Asset tasks automatically update CIs and asset records to help eliminate the risk of data inaccuracy caused by manual entry.

    Refresh aging hardware assets

    As hardware assets near the end of their life cycles, associated maintenance costs and failure risks increase, while performance decreases. You can keep your hardware assets up to date by replacing aged hardware assets with new hardware assets of either the same or different hardware models.

    Audit your asset inventory

    The Hardware Asset Management application enables you to capture asset inventory in specific stockrooms or locations using the ServiceNow Mobile Agent and mobile scanning capabilities. You can compare your scanned results with data that is stored on the ServiceNow AI Platform so that you can drive improved data quality and inventory process compliance.

    Manage expiring maintenance and lease contracts

    Avoid penalty charges on expiring maintenance and lease contracts by getting notified and taking action on those contracts before they expire. Use the Hardware Asset Dashboard to view the consolidated list of expiring contracts from a centralized location.

    Drive asset manager productivity using a purpose-built workspace

    Use the Hardware Asset Workspace for an intuitive and centralized view of your hardware asset estate. Gain visibility into the models and assets that are reaching the end of their life cycles, the health and status of your assets, the normalization status of your hardware and consumable models, purchase orders, stock orders, and more. The Hardware Asset Workspace also includes Important Actions to help you take the guess work out of your asset life cycle processes.

    Accelerate your cloud strategy and reduce costs

    The Cloud Cost Management application enables you to analyze the full range of costs that are associated with your cloud assets. You can identify and correct cost optimization targets, such as underused, over-provisioned, and stranded cloud assets, with the choice of automated or semi-automated operations.

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