November 2025: The Software Asset Management Sector Is Broken — And It’s Time to Stop Letting Resellers Run It. For more than a decade, CIOs and procurement teams have relied on IT resellers to deliver Software Asset Management (SAM) services. On the surface, it made sense: they sell the software, so surely, they can report on usage, compliance, and cost. In 2025, it’s commercial lunacy. 

You are asking the same reseller—whose core business model is maximising software and services revenue—to objectively report on the assets they sell, including the very items that carry copyright, compliance, and financial risk. No other industry would tolerate this level of conflict. The Big Four, for example, cannot provide both audit and consulting to the same client for obvious reasons. Yet in SAM, this conflict is baked into the system.

What should have been a maturing, independent discipline has been quietly captured by the reseller ecosystem. Since around 2010, SAM has grown from a “nice-to-have” to near BAU for most organisations — but without meaningful innovation, improvement, or independence. Why? Because the sector has been shaped to serve reseller interests, not end-user outcomes.

• Resellers use SAM to retain control of the client, gain visibility into future projects, and keep competitors out.
• SAM technology providers depend on reseller-led distribution channels, so they optimise for reseller-friendly outputs rather than end-user value.
• Industry bodies rely on sponsorship from the same technology vendors/resellers, weakening their independence.
• Professionals inside the ecosystem stay quiet because being vocal risks careers and commercial relationships.
• Even “independent” SAM providers often feel forced to partner with resellers to survive — limiting their ability to challenge the status quo.

The result is a sector that has barely evolved for 10–15 years while software complexity, cloud volume, and business dependency have exploded. Poor Data, Weak Reporting, Never-Ending Audits. Look at the real-world outcomes:

• SAM technologies still struggle to produce accurate, automated reporting across estates.
• CIOs remain disappointed by inconsistent data and weak insights.
• Publisher audits continue to land massive mid-year compliance bills.
• Renewals still cause surprise cost spikes.
• “Single source of truth” reporting is still an urban myth for most organisations.

And we can’t blame publishers or resellers alone. We built this system — and tolerated it. So what does control really look like. Here’s the uncomfortable truth about the SAM ecosystem:

1. Software publishers control the resellers through rebates, sales targets, and commercial programs.
2. Resellers control the SAM tool vendors because they are the primary sales channel.
3. SAM tool vendors influence the “independent” bodies through sponsorship and funding.
4. Everyone else in the chain depends on these players to keep their jobs or grow.

So, it’s incredibly hard for anyone to speak up. Everyone has been forced to play along. The client loses. Even the top independents from 2013 – 2015 that were working with Microsoft globally and had an element of scale and real expertise have ultimately been absorbed by resellers:

• Infraware → sold to SoftwareOne (a global reseller)
• Livingstone → sold to Trustmarque (a large UK reseller)
• Anglepoint → sold significant equity to Crayon (a global reseller)

Not a single independent has been able to scale globally without reseller backing — because the reseller undercuts the value of SAM to win the software business. On paper, the client gets a “great deal”. In reality, the reseller holds every card: rebates, pricing, publisher relationships, estate data, project visibility, compliance activity and cross-sell opportunities. And the SAM service is designed to benefit them, not the end user.

My Experience: 900+ Audits Confirm the Problem. I’ve lived inside this system.

• I built my first business inside a major reseller.
• I partnered with Microsoft globally on compliance reviews across both cloud and on-premise estates.
• Between 2012 and 2018, Infraware audited more than 900 organisations worldwide.

Across this dataset, around 90% of end users managed by resellers had material reporting issues or inconsistencies. After the first few months, we stopped being surprised. Poor data was the norm. So, what Needs to Change.

Software is no longer a side function. It is the business in many organisations. Nike has already dissolved roles like CIO and CTO into core business functions. Complexity and cost are rising relentlessly. Cloud and FinOps are following the same flawed trajectory — with even greater risks, because engineers can spin up cost without constraints.

The current SAM model cannot support the next era of software-driven businesses. We need to rebuild the sector around independence and expertise.

This means:

• Creating a real air gap between software sales and software reporting.
• Using resellers for what they do best: supply and procurement — nothing more.
• Partnering directly with independent SAM service organisations, not reseller-packaged solutions.
• Supporting genuine independent providers so they can scale and innovate rather than being forced into reseller arms.
• Challenging the advisory bias that favours global resellers simply because they can afford premium analyst program fees.

Until organisations break away from the comfortable but conflicted reseller-led model, nothing will improve — data won’t get better, compliance risk won’t drop, and costs won’t stabilise.

Conclusion

The SAM sector is broken from the inside out. Not because the work isn’t important — but because the wrong players have been allowed to dominate it. 

To manage software effectively in a world where software is the business, organisations need independence, expertise, and transparency. That starts by moving SAM out of the reseller ecosystem, and putting it back into the hands of specialists whose only priority is the end user.