The 2026 State of SaaS report

We’re excited to announce the release of the 2026 State of SaaS report!

Since 2012, BetterCloud has been surveying IT and security professionals to track what the shift to SaaS (and now AI) means for IT teams, their organizations, and the broader enterprise. 

This year marks a new chapter in that research: for the first time, we’re introducing the SaaS and AI Operational Readiness Index, a framework designed to measure not just whether organizations are adopting AI, but whether they have the infrastructure to govern it.

This year’s survey of 525 IT and security professionals across SaaS-first organizations reveals the state of the modern tech stack, how IT is managing the rise of shadow AI, where automation is falling short, and what it actually takes to govern AI at scale.

Here’s an excerpt from the report, featuring key insights and 2026 SaaS data from organizations navigating the rapid rise of AI.

The stack is growing again

After two years of deliberate SaaS consolidation, the average number of apps per organization is back on the rise: up 11% year-over-year. The culprit? AI.

Organizations now deploy an average of 27 AI-powered SaaS applications, accounting for roughly 22% of the total portfolio. That growth isn’t distributed evenly: mid-market organizations saw the most dramatic surge, with the average number of apps jumping 41% in a single year, from 116 to 164.

The consolidation era is over. The question now isn’t how to manage fewer tools. It’s how to govern a stack that’s actively expanding.

Shadow AI is the new shadow IT

Not all of that growth is sanctioned. Only 56% of total apps in use today carry IT approval, which means nearly half of the software employees are using exists outside of IT’s line of sight.

This matters for reasons beyond governance optics. Over the past 12 months:

• 21% of organizations discovered new, unsanctioned SaaS and AI tools in use
• 20% caught sensitive corporate data being publicly shared
• 18% experienced a data breach caused by an offboarded user who still had access
• 18% found data leaks originating directly from AI tools and chatbots

And those are only the incidents organizations actually caught. The real exposure is almost certainly higher.

Shadow IT has always been a challenge. Shadow AI is shadow IT on accelerant.

IT is stretched, and manual work is the core problem

The stack is expanding. End-user demands are increasing with nearly 60% of SaaS-mature IT teams reporting growing pressure from users. And 62% of IT leaders say manual work is actively preventing them from doing strategic projects.

That’s the fundamental tension at the center of IT right now: more to govern, less bandwidth to govern it with.

97% of organizations are investing in at least one AI use case, and 84% are actively piloting or deploying agentic AI. But 90% of organizations still lack true cross-app orchestration, meaning most of that “automation” amounts to basic identity deprovisioning, not the kind of end-to-end workflow orchestration that actually eliminates manual work.

Disabling a single sign-on credential doesn’t scrub OAuth tokens, clean up data permissions, or reclaim licenses. That’s the gap most organizations are living in.

Fear of data loss outweighs fear of falling behind

Two-thirds of IT professionals say AI data loss is a bigger organizational risk than slow adoption. That lopsided concern isn’t timidity, it reflects a hard-won understanding that moving fast without visibility doesn’t move you forward. It exposes you.

Security and governance are now the number one concern for IT leaders, with 47% citing it as their biggest SaaS management challenge, up from 28% just one year ago. That’s not a gradual shift. That’s an alarm going off.

What comes next: governance baked into operations

IT leaders aren’t waiting for governance frameworks to trickle down from leadership. They’re embedding it directly into how operations run.

When asked about their top priority for the next 12 to 18 months, 29% of IT leaders cited automating more IT and SaaS operations, edging out improving SaaS security (19%). Only 4% listed “adding or refining AI governance” as their top priority. Not because they’re ignoring the risk, but because they’ve concluded that automation is governance.

86% of IT leaders now say SaaS management platforms are crucial to good AI governance. Not helpful, crucial. The expectation is that an SMP provides not just visibility, but an operational control layer: continuous monitoring of apps, identities, data, and agent actions, with enforcement that doesn’t depend on a human catching something first.

That’s the direction IT is moving. And the organizations that build that foundation now will be the ones that can move fast in the AI era without flying blind.

Download the full report to learn:

• Where organizations land on the new SaaS and AI Operational Readiness Index
• How organizations are building trust in agentic AI
• Why only 1 in 4 organizations automates offboarding, and what that means for insider threat exposure
• The list of automation priorities for the next 12 months

Need a SaaS management platform to govern your entire SaaS environment? Book a demo.