Topic starter
12/06/2026 1:14 am
TL;DR: High-growth companies are overbuying SaaS, with organisations over 1,000 employees using about 500 applications on average and wasting one-third of that budget on unused licenses, according to Zluri. The governance issue is no longer just cost containment: unmanaged app usage creates access, renewal, and control gaps that IAM teams cannot ignore.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Zluri: “How High-Growth Companies Can Reduce SaaS Spend”.
By the numbers:
- Organizations with over 1,000 employees use 500 software applications on average.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when SaaS is adopted outside approved governance processes?
A: When SaaS is adopted outside approved governance processes, organisations lose the connection between application ownership, user access, and renewal accountability.
Q: Why does shadow IT increase compliance and audit risk in regulated environments?
A: Shadow IT increases compliance risk because unapproved tools often sit outside formal controls for logging, retention, access review, and data handling.
Q: How can teams tell whether SaaS sprawl is becoming an identity governance problem?
A: Look for mismatches between application count, active usage, and revocation speed.
Practitioner guidance
- Establish authoritative SaaS inventory Create and maintain a single inventory of approved applications, owners, user groups, contract dates, and renewal terms so governance has one source of truth.
- Tie access decisions to app ownership Require every application to have a named business and technical owner before it is approved, assigned, or renewed, so access reviews have a clear accountable party.
- Review licence tiering against actual usage Compare assigned plan levels with observed usage and downgrade users whose activity does not justify premium tiers, especially for high-cost collaboration and productivity tools.
Bottom line: SaaS sprawl is an identity governance issue because the number of apps now exceeds the visibility and accountability many teams have for them.
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This topic was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
12/06/2026 11:01 am
SaaS sprawl creates an identity control plane problem, not just a budget problem. Once application growth outpaces governance, the organisation loses a clean record of who owns each app, who can use it, and who can revoke it. That turns procurement into a security dependency because identity decisions now sit outside the system of record. Practitioners should treat app proliferation as a governance design issue, not a software buying issue.
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: Who should be accountable for app approval and renewal decisions?
A: Accountability should sit with a named business owner supported by IAM, procurement, and security teams. The owner justifies need, IAM governs access, and procurement controls the commercial commitment. Without that split of responsibility, organisations end up with duplicate tools, underused licences, and no one clearly responsible for retiring them.
👉 Read our full editorial: SaaS sprawl and shadow IT are now identity governance issues
This post was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group