2025 State of SaaS trends

Introducing the 2025 State of SaaS report!

Since 2012, we’ve been surveying IT professionals to see how organizations manage their SaaS environments. Every year we explore IT’s biggest challenges and concerns, trends in SaaS management, and what the future holds – making this the industry’s largest and longest running research of its kind.

This year’s survey of about 600 IT professionals reveals the latest challenges of managing SaaS at scale, particularly as AI causes a ripple effect as we step into SaaS 2.0. It also sheds new light on SaaS security, the state of IT automation, SaaS cost cutting, and more.

Here’s an excerpt from the report.

Key takeaways

• IT-to-employee ratio climbed to 1 IT person for every 108 employees, making the IT’s workload more difficult
• Almost 60% of IT still worries somewhat or a lot about Shadow IT
• More than half say budget pressure, along with too many underused apps and licenses are driving SaaS consolidation or spending cuts
• Companies have an average of 106 SaaS apps, down from 112 in 2023, showing a slowing rate of SaaS consolidation that dropped from 14% to 5% year over year.
• More than half (51%) find point solutions for managing SaaS more difficult than an all-in-one, feature-rich SMP and 70% prefer a unified platform to optimize SaaS spending, and to automate, discover, manage, and secure the SaaS stack  
• 95% of companies already made investments in AI use cases

Top concern for organizations is securing the SaaS stack

Security is this year’s top concern, the same as last year. This isn’t surprising as security concerns are mounting, especially insider threats and sensitive data shared publicly. This demands immediate attention.

Effective solutions include deploying stringent access controls, implementing data loss prevention tools, leveraging file governance technology, and investing in comprehensive employee training to enhance compliance and reduce vulnerabilities.

60% of IT teams have too much manual work

Auto-renewals play a role in ineffective buying and renewing process

A concerning 40% of organizations still track renewals manually, indicating a reliance on spreadsheets, calendars, and human memory. This approach is inherently prone to errors, missed deadlines, and a lack of real-time visibility into upcoming renewals. Furthermore, 34% rely solely on automated alerts for key cancellation dates, which, while an improvement over manual tracking, offers limited strategic value. These alerts often trigger only at the eleventh hour, leaving insufficient time for thorough evaluation, negotiation, or alternative sourcing.

The absence of robust renewal management strategies becomes problematic when negotiating with vendors. Industry benchmarks play a crucial role in these negotiations. Without access to accurate data on typical pricing, usage patterns, and contract terms within their sector, organizations are at a distinct disadvantage.

SaaS sprawl is shifting to centralized IT control

SaaS sprawl isn’t a new concept and luckily the wild ride is winding down. The majority (78%) have some apps IT-sanctioned.

We’re seeing a growing trend of greater IT control of IT resources. 

• 33% consolidated redundant apps/accounts
• 41% made more SaaS apps IT-managed

The days of employees doing their own thing are fading and IT is stepping up to bring some order to the chaos.

Download the full report to learn:

• The top AI use case
• Biggest SaaS security concerns
• What file sharing policies are trending
• When IT expects ROI for AI investments
• What processes IT has automated in their SaaS environment

Wondering how BetterCloud can help manage the entire SaaS lifecycle? Book a demo now.