Topic starter
11/06/2026 10:37 pm
TL;DR: Redundant SaaS apps create licensing waste, shadow IT, and fragmented control surfaces by letting teams adopt overlapping tools outside central visibility, according to Zluri. The bigger issue is that software sprawl also becomes identity sprawl, where access, renewals, and offboarding drift faster than governance can keep up.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Zluri: “Redundant SaaS Apps: A Guide for 2026”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when redundant SaaS apps are not in central governance?
A: Redundant SaaS apps break ownership, access review, and offboarding because each tool can carry its own accounts, renewals, and integrations.
Q: Why do overlapping SaaS apps create more risk than simple budget waste?
A: Because each extra application adds its own identity boundary, permission model, and offboarding path.
Q: How should teams decide which redundant SaaS apps to remove first?
A: Start with apps that are low-usage, poorly owned, and already outside central governance.
Practitioner guidance
- Discover the full SaaS estate Build an application inventory from departmental usage, not just procurement records, and identify every overlapping tool by function, owner, and business purpose.
- Tie renewals to access evidence Require usage data, ownership confirmation, and access review before any auto-renewal is approved so redundant subscriptions cannot persist by default.
- Rationalise overlapping tools by function Compare tools that serve the same workflow, then consolidate on the smallest approved set that still meets business requirements and governance needs.
Bottom line: Redundant SaaS apps are a governance issue because they multiply identities, renewals, and ownership paths across the software estate.
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This topic was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
12/06/2026 6:51 am
Redundant SaaS apps are an identity governance problem before they are a cost problem: once overlapping tools proliferate, the organisation has multiple entitlement models, renewal states, and ownership records to govern. That fragmentation makes joiner, mover, leaver processes harder to complete consistently, especially where departments buy software independently. The practitioner conclusion is simple: app consolidation is an identity control decision, not only a budgeting exercise.
A few things that frame the scale:
- The average enterprise SaaS platform connects to 42 or more third-party applications through OAuth tokens, API keys, webhooks and automation platforms.
A question worth separating out:
Q: When should organisations treat a SaaS platform as an identity governance issue?
A: Whenever the platform mediates communication, recovery, delegated access, or machine-to-machine activity across many users or tenants. At that point, the platform is no longer just an application. It is part of the identity fabric, and its support paths, tokens, and trust relationships need lifecycle governance.
👉 Read our full editorial: Redundant SaaS apps expose the identity governance gap in 2026
This post was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group