236 SaaS statistics for 2026

The days of simply trusting business department heads to buy and manage their own software are over. Today, managing this sprawl is a critical mandate for both IT and finance, and it’s no longer a question of “if” but “how.” To make sense of this new laThe days of simply trusting business department heads to buy and manage their own software are over. Today, managing this sprawl is a critical mandate for both IT and finance, and it’s no longer a question of “if” but “how.” To make sense of this new landscape, the changing SaaS market, evolving SaaS management processes, and emerging AI-powered apps, we researched industry analysts, leading global systems integrators, and major technology vendors. And of course, we also dug into the extensive BetterCloud research library to round up the most essential SaaS statistics for 2026.

This isn’t just a list of numbers; it’s a strategic playbook for anyone looking to gain control, cut costs, and secure their company’s future. And as companies around the world rush to gain control over their SaaS apps, users, licenses, vendors, contracts, files, budgets, and AI governance, the need for robust SaaS management with an all-in-one platform has never been clearer.

Read on to learn key 2026 SaaS statistics around: 

• SaaS markets
• Where AI stands today and where it’s poised to go
• Shadow IT and the ongoing SaaS sprawl challenges
• SaaS spend and license management issues
• Managing SaaS with manual work and with automation
• Securing SaaS 
• Future of managing SaaS in 2026 and beyond

2026 SaaS market statistics: Size and Growth 

Overall revenue and forecasts

1. $488.5 billion is Statista’s forecast for worldwide SaaS revenue in 2026, with 21.9% year-over-year growth (Source)
2. 11.9% CAGR is Statista’s forecast for the SaaS market from 2026 through 2031, reaching $855.6 billion by 2031 (Source)
3. $254.9 billion of 2026 SaaS revenue is expected from the United States (Source)
4. $465 billion is the size of the SaaS market in 2026, up from $408.21 billion in 2025, for 14.1% year-over-year growth (Source)

SaaS share of cloud spending and on-prem residual

5. 50%+ of global public-cloud spending is on SaaS in 2026 (Source)
6. About 75% of apps are now SaaS, leaving around 25% on-prem in 2025 (Source)
7. 60.1% of worldwide enterprise software revenue came from cloud subscriptions in 2024 (Source) 
8. 36% of cloud spending is attributed to SaaS in 2026 (Source)

Number of SaaS apps per company

9. 118 is the average number of SaaS apps per company in 2026, up from 106 last year.
10. 11% year-over-year growth rate in the number of SaaS apps reversing two years of consolidation (5% year-over-year decline in 2025 and 14% year-over-year decline in 2024). (Source)
11. 41% growth in the number of SaaS apps used by mid-sized firms (1,500–4,999 employees) in 2026, increasing from 116 to 164 applications in one year (Source)

Statistics on AI in SaaS apps: propelling a new wave of SaaS growth

 AI adoption across organizations

12. 97% of companies have invested in at least one AI-driven use cases (Source)
13. 88% of organizations report regular AI use in at least one business function, compared with 78% a year ago (Source)
14. 53% added a new IT-sanctioned AI-powered SaaS app last year (Source)

Share of SaaS apps that are AI-powered

15. 62% of organizations are experimenting with AI agents (Source)
16. 22% of total SaaS apps are AI-powered in 2026, up from 7% last year (Source)
17. 3x growth in the number of AI-powered SaaS apps from 2025 (Source)
18. 27 AI-powered SaaS applications are deployed by organizations on average (Source)
19. 76% of AI use cases are purchased as SaaS or software rather than built internally (Source)
20. 53% of organizations use AI features embedded within enterprise software, including CRM, ERP, HRIS, cybersecurity platforms, and ticketing systems (Source)

AI use by business function

21. 40% use AI in customer service/support automation SaaS apps (Source)
22. 77% use AI in IT service management SaaS apps, making IT the leading business function to adopt AI-powered apps (Source)
23. 63% use AI tools built into pre-existing productivity suites, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and Google Gemini for Workspace systems (Source)

AI SaaS market size and CAGR forecasts

24. 23% of organizations are scaling an agentic AI system and an additional 39% are experimenting with AI agents (Source)
25. Global AI SaaS market is expected to grow at a 38.6% CAGR, from $131.73 billion in 2025 to $673 billion by 2030 (Source) 
26. AI-created SaaS market is expected to grow at a 39.6% CAGR from 2026 to 2033 (Source)
27. Artificial Intelligence SaaS market is expected to grow at a 38.4% CAGR from 2024 to 2034 (Source) 
28. Worldwide spending on AI is forecast to total $2.59 trillion in 2026, a 47% increase year-over-year (Source)

Shadow IT, Shadow AI, and SaaS sprawl statistics

Prevalence of unsanctioned apps

29. 55% of employees are adopting SaaS applications without security’s involvement (Source) 
30. 44% of apps are not IT-sanctioned, while 56% are (Source)
31. 21% of organizations found unauthorized SaaS app added or expensed by user in 2026 (Source)
32. 72.4% of organizations report that employees frequently or occasionally use unauthorized SaaS, collaboration, or remote-access tools outside IT’s control (Source)
33. 39% of employees use apps that are not managed by company IT on work devices (Source)
34. 27% of employees in small businesses use unsanctioned tools (Source)
35. 33% report frequent unauthorized-tool use, while another 40% report occasional use. In the U.S., the frequent-use figure rises to 42% (Source)

Visibility gaps and non-human identities

36. 46% of organizations struggle to monitor non-human identities (Source)  
37. 52% of IT teams remain concerned about Shadow AI and Shadow IT in 2026 (Source)
38. 70% of technology leaders say teams across the business are deploying technology faster than IT can track (Source)
39. 24% of total IT budgets is composed of Shadow IT (Source)
40. 37% of corporate apps are not behind single sign-on tools (Source)

Free trials and Shadow spend

41. 27% of all AI application spend comes from free trials from individual users — nearly 4x the rate in traditional SaaS software, which is 7% (Source)
42. 40% of application AI spend is estimated to be from free trials (Source)

Employee adoption of AI tools without IT approval

43. 44% of apps are Shadow IT or Shadow AI 2025 (Source)
44. 80% of American office workers use AI in their roles, yet only 22% rely exclusively on employer-provided tools (Source)
45. 90% of companies have employees who say they use chatbots, but most of them hide it from IT (Source)
46. 93% of executives use AI tools their organization has not approved (Source)
47. 53% of knowledge workers say they use their own AI tools because they prefer the independence, and 33% say IT doesn’t offer what they need (Source)
48. 67% of AI access occurred through non-corporate or personal accounts (Source)
49. 45% of employees regularly used AI on corporate devices, up from 15% last year (Source)
50. 59% of employees used unapproved AI apps and 75% of those shared potentially sensitive data (Source)

Agentic AI and the Rise of Shadow agents

Enterprise plans and current deployment of agentic AI

51. 75% of companies plan to deploy agentic AI within two years, yet 21% of those companies report having a mature model for agent governance (Source)
52. 40% of enterprise apps will embed task-specific AI agents by 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025 (Source)
53. 89% of workplace AI use is via approved platforms organizations already deployed and trusted (Source)
54. 84% of organizations are actively piloting or deploying agentic AI (Source)

Growth in active AI agents

55. 15x growth in active AI agents year over year found in Microsoft 365 (Source)
56. 10x is the expected increase of AI agents among the global 2000 by 2027 making agent vetting and orchestration essential IT responsibilities (Source)
57. 1000x is the expected token/call loads increase among the global 2000 by 2027 making optimization an essential IT responsibility (Source)

Where Shadow agents are found

58. 82% have unknown AI agents running in the IT infrastructure (Source)
59. 51% find Shadow agents in internal automation or scripting environments (Source)
60. 54% of organizations report between 1 and 100 unsanctioned AI agents (Source)
61. 47% report Shadow agents in LLM platforms, including custom tools, assistants, and plugins (Source)
62. 40% say they have Shadow agents in SaaS tools with built-in automation (Source)
63. 40% report Shadow agents in developer-created workflows (Source)

Governance maturity and risk incidents

64. 65% have experienced AI agent-related incidents in the past 12 months (Source)
65. 43% of organizations report that more than half of employees use AI agents regularly (Source)
66. 47% of IT leaders identified security and governance as their biggest SaaS management challenge compared to 28% one year earlier, meaning the concern increased by 19 percentage points (Source)
67. 30% of global IT services will be delivered as modular, platform-enabled products by 2029, driven by demand for speed, transparency, GenAI, and Agentic AI-enabled autonomous service orchestration (Source)

SaaS license management and spending statistics

Consolidation and optimization efforts 

68. 26% of orgs consolidated redundant apps, down from 33% in 2025 (Source) 
69. 18% reduced SaaS spending, down from 21% in 2025 (Source)
70. 6% say optimizing SaaS spend is their top concern, down from 17% in 2025 (Source)
71. 63% say too many unused and/or underutilized SaaS apps and license or budget pressure drive SaaS app consolidation (Source)
72. 25% is the amount of overspending Gartner expects from organizations without centralized visibility into their SaaS portfolio through 2028 (Source)

SaaS purchasing and renewal processes

73. 69% of organizations say IT works with departments, as well as finance, operations and/or procurement to buy or renew SaaS, while 17% task only IT (Source)
74. 80% claim to have an effective SaaS purchasing and renewal process in place, significantly increased from only 30% in 2025 (Source)
75. 40% of organizations track renewal dates manually on calendar or spreadsheet (Source)

Purchasing and renewal processes

76. 90% of FinOps teams now manage SaaS spend (up sharply) and 64% manage software licensing (Source)
77. 98% of FinOps teams now actively manage AI costs, up from 63% in 2025 and just 31% in 2024 (Source)

Shift toward usage-based and hybrid pricing

78. 36% of AI-powered applications are billed using usage-based or token-consumption models rather than traditional per-seat or hybrid pricing (Source)
79. 52% shifted more to IT-managed, but budget pressures limit broader automation (Source)
80. 48% of SaaS apps use a hybrid pricing model and this is the second year in a row where this level is the same (Source)
81. 39% of SaaS apps price using subscription + usage and 13% charge by usage only (Source)
82. 82% of senior IT leaders expect traditional per-seat SaaS pricing to become less relevant in their industry over the next five years (Source)

2026 SaaS statistics on why SMPs are critical

Preference for all-in-one platforms

83. 70% of IT teams prefer all-in-one SMPs to optimize SaaS spending, and to automate, discover, manage, and secure the SaaS stack (Source)
84. 74% of IT pros find managing SaaS with point solutions more difficult than using a comprehensive SMP for automation, up from 51% in 2025 (Source)
85. 70%+ of organizations will centralize SaaS application management using an SMP by 2028, an increase from less than 30% (Source)
86. 36% either use or are building an enterprise marketplace or catalog of IT-sanctioned SaaS apps (Source)
87. 70%+ agree that BetterCloud SaaS management platform improves job satisfaction, IT productivity, and ability to scale (Source)
88. 70% of organizations prefer SaaS management platform that enable completely custom automation (Source)

Time-to-value and measured benefits

89. 89% get their BetterCloud SaaS management platform operational in less than 6 weeks 2025 (Source)
90. 53% start seeing value from the BetterCloud SaaS management platform within one month (Source)
91. 93% of organizations using the BetterCloud SaaS management platform find the primary business benefit is increased organizational productivity (Source)

Statistics on manual, time-consuming SaaS management work and why automation is urgent

IT workload and staffing ratios

92. 32% say they support more users than last year (Source)
93. 31% increase year-over-year in the IT-to-employee ratio, which now stands at 1:108, indicating that IT teams are stretched thinner than ever (Source)
94. 62% of IT teams report excessive manual tasks (e.g., patching, troubleshooting) blocking strategic automation like AI adoption (Source)
95. 60% of IT teams report that excessive manual tasks prevent them from focusing on strategic initiatives like AI adoption (Source) 

Current automation maturity

96. 54% of IT teams worry that forgetting offboarding steps could make them vulnerable (Source)
97. 6% say the organization primarily runs without human intervention. AI systems manage and adapt business processes, make decisions and take actions independently without human involvement right now
98. 27% expect the organization primarily runs without human intervention. AI systems manage and adapt business processes, make decisions and take actions independently without human involvement 3 years from now
99. 56% of organizations plan to either add and 22% plan to replace an IT automation platform in the near term (Source)
100. 93% operate a centralized, yet relatively small, automation team to create and manage automations (Source)
101. 21% of organizations currently run AI workflows at enterprise scale (Source)
102. 3.8% of tasks can be resolved end-to-end by AI agents in August 2026, meaning that although AI agents can start a task, they aren’t yet capable of replacing SaaS workflows at scale. (Source)
103. 90% of organizations lack true cross-app orchestration (Source)

Automating SaaS management processes

What is being automated today

104. 41% of routine tasks are automated today in the average organization (Source)
105. 51% of organizations say they automated more processes last year (Source)

Specific process automation rates

106. 29% of organizations automate mid-lifecycle user changes (Source)
107. 55% of organizations automate SaaS password and MFA resets (Source)
108. 36% of organizations automate file security monitoring and access revocation (Source)
109. 35% of organizations automate access management for groups and calendars (Source)
110. 53% of organizations automate access management for apps (Source)
111. 25% of organizations automate hardware provisioning (Source)

Measured efficiency and productivity gains

112. Organizations attribute a 31% reduction in IT costs to intelligent automation (Source)
113. 25% of organization say that Increased accuracy and consistency is the biggest benefit for automating SaaS management (Source)
114. 41% of organizations say that the greatest advantage of a no-code SMP to your IT team is it’s so easy for anyone in IT to use (Source)
115. 29% employee time savings resulting from automated helpdesk ticket resolutions when automating with a SaaS management platform (Source)
116. 37% reduction in time spent for compliance requirements when automating with a SaaS management platform (Source)
117. 40% increase in visibility and manageability of SaaS when automating with a SaaS management platform (Source)
118. 49% increase in overall IT productivity when automating with a SaaS management platform (Source)

Automating user lifecycle management

Current automation rates for onboarding and offboarding

119. 54% of organizations lack automation for lifecycle management (Source) 
120. 37% of organizations automate onboarding users (Source)
121. 27% of organizations automate offboarding users (Source)
122. 54% have already automated specific tasks, processes, or workflows (e.g, HR automatically scans) resumes, but automation is limited to individual areas or tasks (Source)
123. 54% worry about missing offboarding steps will make them vulnerable (Source)

Risks of delayed of incomplete offboarding

124. 33% of organizations have had ex-employee not offboarded within 24 hours of departure (Source)
125. 18% of organizations experienced a data breach caused by an offboarded user who still had access (Source)
126. 40% of organizations say it took more than one day to get new employee access to necessary SaaS apps (Source)

Statistics on automating user lifecycle management: big risk reduction and time savings, but too many organizations still don’t use it

127. 78% reduction in onboarding time when automating with a SaaS management platform (Source)
128. 88% reduction in offboarding time when automating with a SaaS management platform (Source)
129. 48% increase in day one readiness for new employees when automating with a SaaS management platform (Source)

Statistics on securing the SaaS stack: A top priority in 2026

Rising priority and budget allocation

130. 86% of organizations say SaaS security is now a high priority (Source) 
131. 76% of organizations are increasing budgets for activities like threat detection and SaaS security posture management (Source)

Responsibility for SaaS data protection

132. 78% of IT teams are responsible for protecting sensitive data within SaaS apps (Source)
133. 76% of IT professionals are responsible for safeguarding sensitive data in SaaS apps (Source)
134. 45% of IT professionals report struggling to secure user activity within those applications (Source)

Governance foundations for AI

135. 13% of organizations have the governance foundations to scale AI (Source)
136. 66% of IT professionals said AI-related data loss represents a greater organizational risk than slow AI adoption (Source)
137. 76% of organizations do not fully govern or monitor non-human identities (Source)
138. 75% of sensitive data exposures begin with compromised identities or misconfigured permissions, and 76% of organizations can’t immediately revoke standing access when it is no longer needed (Source)
139. 74% of organizations lack a unified view of sensitive data and the identities that can access it. (Source)
140. 11% have operationalized AI governance through continuous enforcement and monitoring (Source)
141. 19% fully govern non-human identities (Source)
142. 20% fully monitor employee use of shadow AI (Source)
143. Only 26% of organizations say their highest level of AI governance is continuous proactive monitoring and data-driven plan optimization for integrated governance (Source)
144. Only 12% of organizations are protected against next-gen data leaks with proactive threat detection, auto-remediation, and adaptive protection based on risk factors (Source)

Statistics on common SaaS security risks and breaches

Frequency of SaaS security incidents

145. 75% of organizations experienced a SaaS security incident in the last 12 months, with a significant number of these incidents tied to unauthorized applications. (Source)
146. 99% of Organizations had a SaaS or AI ecosystem security incident in 2025 (Source)

Leading attack vectors and initial access methods

147. 13% of breaches started with stolen credentials (Source)
148. 48% of attacks involve the browser (Source)
149. 31% of breaches started with exploitation of vulnerabilities credentials (Source)
150. 3.8x in the growth of attacks that involve third-party SaaS applications since 2022 (Source)
151. 23% of all attacks involve third-party SaaS apps, including OAuth token and API key abuse for lateral movement within SaaS ecosystem (Source)
152. 90% of data breaches are linked to misconfigurations or security gaps, with complexity, poor visibility and excessive trust acting as systemic attack enablers (Source)
153. 83% of the incidents involving major cloud and SaaS-hosted environments occurred because threat actors exploited identity issues to gain initial access (Source)
154. 21% of security incidents involved actors leveraging stolen human and non-human identities for initial access (Source)

Third-party and identity-related risks

155. 48% of breaches involved a third party (Source)
156. 60% growth occurred year over year in third-party involvement (Source)
157. 50%+ of events logged in the most widely-adopted SaaS applications were generated by non-human identities, not humans (Source)
158. 30% experienced a supply chain attack involving a SaaS vendor or integration partner in 2025 (Source)

Cost and impact of breaches (including AI-related)

159. 20% of organizations studied experienced a data breach involving shadow AI, adding an average $670,000 to breach costs (Source) 
160. $4.99 million is the global average cost of a data breach over the last 12 months, for a 12% increase from $4.44 million (Source) 
161. $11.5 million is the average cost of a data breach in the United States (Source) 
162. $6 million is the average cost of an AI-enabled malicious breach, which was approximately $1 million higher than the global average (Source)
163. 43% of security incidents involved Shadow AI, more than doubling from 20% the previous year. (Source)
164. $5.39 million was the average breach cost associated with Shadow AI (Source) 
165. 20% of Shadow AI-related breaches resulted in a regulatory fine (Source) 
166. Nearly $2 million was the average reduction in breach costs for organizations using AI and automation extensively in security operations (Source)

Visibility, access control, and non-human identities

Gaps in monitoring and enforcement

167. 58% of organizations struggle to enforce access privileges (Source) 
168. 63% of organizations report external data oversharing (Source)
169. 56% of organizations say employees upload sensitive data to unauthorized SaaS apps, often without sufficient visibility or enforcement (Source) 
170. 49% of organizations say they lack visibility and insight to automate (Source)
171. 56% report concerns about overprivileged API access (Source)

Guest accounts, MFA, and privilege issues

172. 37% of file-sharing activity involved external users (Source)
173. 55% of accounts monitored were guest user accounts rather than licensed users (Source)
174. 60%+ of end-user accounts had Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) either disabled or inactive. (Source)

Risks of unmanaged SaaS-hosted AI tools

175. 11% of organizations experienced a data breach from ex-employee (Source)
176. 50%+ higher expenses are likely for organizations that do not centrally monitor and manage SaaS-hosted AI tools through 2029 (Source)
177. 5x higher likelihood of a cyber incident exists without centrally monitoring and managing SaaS-hosted AI tools through 2029 (Source)
178. 269 is the average number of shadow AI tools per 1,000 employees (Source)
179. 13% of organizations reported breaches of AI models or applications. Of those, 97% lacked proper access controls (Source)

Data protection and file sharing governance statistics

External sharing and oversharing prevalence

180. 45% of all files in Microsoft 365 are shared externally (Source)  
181. 26% of all Google files are shared externally (Source)
182. 70% more files are stored on Shared drives than MyDrives at the average company publicly (Source)
183. 50% of files have 1 or no sharing permissions at the average company using Google Workspace publicly (Source)
184. 25% of files have between 5 and an unwieldy 35 sharing permissions at the average company using Google Workspace publicly (Source)
185. 48% of organizations experienced a user who forwarded work email to personal email (Source)
186. 58% of organizations say careless employees or third-party contractors are the cause to their most significant data loss events (Source)
187. 27% say the biggest SaaS security and governance concern is sensitive files shared publicly (Source)

Difficulty of manual monitoring

189. 31% of organizations worry most about sensitive files shared publicly (Source)
190. 59% of organizations find SaaS file security impossible to monitor manually (Source)

Policy enforcement and data leak discoveries

191. 68% use software to enforce policies to control external file sharing (Source)
192. 65% of organizations say their SaaS management platform is critical to SaaS file and data security (Source)
193. 20% of organizations discovered sensitive corporate data being publicly shared during the previous 12 months (Source)
194. 18% of organizations discovered data leaks originating directly from AI tools or chatbots (Source)
195. 42% of security-first organizations find automated file sharing policy management

Statistics on insider threats in the SaaS and AI era

Negligent vs. malicious insiders

195. 74% of organizations now rank negligent insiders as their top concern. (Source)
196. 73% of incidents result from non-malicious insiders, down from 75% in 2025 (Source)
197. 53% of incidents are caused by negligent insiders (down slightly from 55% in 2025) (Source)
198. 75% of internal threat actors are regular users, 19% system administrators (Source), 4.1% developers (Source)
199. 32% of organizations say malicious insiders are the cause of their most significant data loss events (Source)
200. 24% say the biggest SaaS security and governance concern is excessive user app permissions or OAuth sprawl (Source)

Frequency, cost, and detection times

201. Malicious insider attacks cost an average of $5.13 million per incident, up from $4.92 million per incident in 2025 (Source) 
202. 67 days is the average number of days it took to detect and contain an insider threat Incidents, down from 81 in 2023 (Source) 
203. 17% is the year-over-year increase of the annual cost per insider threat incident, which now stands at $747,107 (Source)
204. 36% of organizations worry most about Insider threats, either malicious or negligent (Source)
205. 90% of organizations experienced at least one insider incident in the past 12 months (Source)
206. 129% growth of the average number of insider threats incidents since 2018, growing from 3,269 to 7,490 in 2025 (Source)
207. 50% of insider threat incidents cost half a million dollars or more to remediate (Source)

AI’s impact on insider risk exposure

208. 94% of organizations say AI adoption is increasing their insider risk exposure (Source)
209. 54% have had confirmed or suspected AI-related insider incidents (Source)
210. 88% are concerned about autonomous AI agents operating as non-human insiders with privileged access (Source)
211. 53% of organizations say insider attacks are harder to detect than external cyber threats (Source)
212. 74% of organizations rank negligent insiders as their top concern, surpassing compromised accounts (65%) and malicious insiders (59%), signaling a shift from intent-based threats to systemic risk exposure (Source)

The future of SaaS and AI management in 2026 and beyond

Future of SaaS 

213. 64% of SaaS companies embed AI as a supporting feature, 36% say AI is core to their product, and 92% have launched or plan to launch AI features (Source)
214. 37% of SaaS vendors are adding AI capabilities to existing SaaS products, 31% are building new standalone AI products, and 32% remain traditional SaaS in 2025 (Source)

Agentic AI scale and spending

215. Agentic AI spending is expected to exceed 26% of worldwide IT Spending over the next 5 years to hit $1.3 Trillion in 2029, (Source)
216. Organizations with at least 1000 full-time employees identified an average of 88 use cases for agentic AI, with 32% already in production. (Source)
217. 33% of organizations with at least 1000 full-time employees have already deployed agentic AI by late 2025 and another 48% expect to within 12 months, and another 17% within 24 months. Only 2% have no plans. (Source)
218. 42% of organizations with at least 1000 full-time employees report scaling agentic AI across multiple business functions. (Source)
219. 10% of organizations with at least 1000 full-time employees use fully autonomous workflows in production, while 60% expect AI agents to completely own key workflows within the next 2 years. (Source)
220. 35% of point-product SaaS tools will be replaced by AI agents or absorbed within larger agent ecosystems of major SaaS providers by 2030 (Source)
221. 45% of IT product and services interactions will use agents as the primary interface for ongoing operations by 2028 (Source)
222. 53% of organizations are deploying AI agents, while the share orchestrating multiple agents across workflows has doubled from 9% to 18% (Source)

Shifts in IT priorities and budgets

223. 68% of CEOs plan to increase Al spending in 2026. (Source)
224. 69% of organizations with at least 1000 full-time employees say they are experimenting with proof-of-concepts as well as piloting AI-powered workflows in limited environments. (Source)
225. 29% of IT leaders identified automating more IT and SaaS operations as their top priority for the next 12–18 months (Source)
226. 19% of IT leaders identified improving SaaS security as their top priority for the next 12–18 months (Source)
227. 4% of IT leaders identified adding or refining AI governance as their top priority for the next 12–18 months (Source)
228. 59% of organizations say that their top priorities are to make IT work burden more manageable and automate more IT operations (Source)
229. 80% say agentic AI will increase IT’s strategic influence to a great or very great extent (Source) 

Agentic AI automation future priorities

230. 39% of organizations say the highest priority for agentic AI automation in the next 12 months is automating access reviews and permissions management governance (Source)
231. 39% of organizations say the highest priority for agentic AI automation in the next 12 months is automating access reviews and permissions management governance (Source)

Projected adoption of SMPs and automation

232. 50% of organizations will adopt SaaS Management Platforms (SMPs) with AI governance features by 2027 (Source)
233. 73% of routine SaaS management will be automated in by 2028 (Source)
234. 29% say the biggest IT priority of the next yar is automating more and IT and SaaS operations governance (Source)
235. 80% of enterprises will prioritize backup of SaaS applications as a critical requirement by 2029 (Source)
236. 86% of IT leaders said SaaS management platforms are crucial to effective AI governance (Source)

Prepare for AI-powered SaaS with an orchestration layer from an SMP now

This collection of SaaS statistics highlights a critical need: take charge of your SaaS environment now and don’t delay.

The BetterCloud all-in-one SaaS management platform enables businesses to optimize their SaaS ecosystem with tools for efficient subscription management, secure interactions and files, improved user automation, and enhanced cost-effectiveness. These essential tools help organizations achieve three key objectives simultaneously:  

• Enable visibility and collaboration with key stakeholders to streamline SaaS purchasing and renewals 
• Tackle pressing IT operational challenges and improve efficiency
• Improve governance
• Limit security risk and strengthen SaaS security

Unlike many point solutions designed for specific uses and specific users—like SAMs tailored for finance and accounting leaders or iPaaS focused on saving developers time rather than automating user lifecycle management—only 2026 Gartner^® Magic Quadrant™ Leader BetterCloud provides a comprehensive approach.

From efficiency to security, the powerful, fully featured BetterCloud SMP is a single platform that provides multiple, far-reaching benefits for IT and the entire organization. 

To learn more about how BetterCloud can help you discover, manage, automate and secure your SaaS apps, users, files and spending, read our latest research reports on Unlocking a Safer SaaS Stack or 2026 State of SaaS, or request a demo.