SAM reinvented: How Raynet’s SAM AI transforms Enterprise License Management
Date: February 12, 2026
- Defensible ELP today requires continuous correlation across contracts and purchases, vendor use-rights, normalized software identification, and real usage from SaaS, cloud, and endpoints.
- Enterprise License Management & SAM AI in Raynet One reduces the manual burden by structuring contract data with OCR and extraction, then connecting it to inventory and licensing logic inside one workspace.
- The embedded vendor licensing knowledge base adds vendor-specific licensing intelligence at scale with terms and metric definitions for 100+ vendors/products, helping keep compliance calculations consistent and explainable.
- SAM becomes proactive, not reactive through automated ELP and risk detection, optimization recommendations, and renewal lifecycle tracking with alerts that support better decisions before deadlines hit.
The problem: SAM has become a correlation challenge at enterprise scale
Most SAM teams start their week already behind. The core goal of Software Asset Management, maintaining a defensible Effective License Position (ELP), has become a moving target. In simple terms, your ELP is the definitive proof of what software you’ve bought versus what is actually installed. While the concept is straightforward, the execution has become a nightmare of manual data hunting.
The “everyday life” of a SAM manager is often a cycle of administrative friction. Contracts pile up in inconsistent formats, usage signals are scattered across global endpoints, and vendor rules change without warning.
This forces teams into a familiar, painful pattern:
- The “Data Hunt”: Endless hours spent manually extracting data from PDFs just to build a basic purchase history.
- Spreadsheet Fatigue: Trying to reconcile entitlements against “actual usage” in static documents that are obsolete the moment they are saved.
- Audit Anxiety: Reporting cycles that feel like a race against time, leaving you with more questions than answers when stakeholders ask for a status update.
- The Renewal Trap: Scrambling to validate licenses 48 hours before a deadline instead of having a planned optimization strategy.
The pain isn’t a lack of expertise; it’s that too much of your day is spent assembling the truth instead of acting on it.
The shift: AI makes SAM work faster, so SAM managers can focus on what matters
The most practical role for AI in SAM is to remove friction in the steps that slow teams down. Historically, SAM has been a document-heavy discipline where experts spend more time finding and typing data than analyzing it. The shift we are seeing is a move toward an intelligent-data model that handles the manual entry so managers can focus on the results.
Instead of acting as human “translators” for dense contracts and vendor rules, AI allows teams to automate the grunt work of data structuring and rule interpretation. This moves the needle from point-in-time snapshots to continuous correlation.
That’s the idea behind Enterprise License Management & SAM AI in Raynet One: an AI-powered License Management workspace designed around how SAM teams actually operate, so complexity is handled by the system while experts stay in control of decisions.
The solution: Enterprise License Management & SAM AI in Raynet One
SAM AI is the intelligent, AI-powered engine within Raynet One that helps enterprises manage software licenses by connecting asset inventory data with contractual agreements and usage signals, then turning that into automated, actionable guidance through a simple, conversational interface.
Raynet One is built as a central platform for modern IT Asset Management with Conversational and Generative AI. It is designed to deliver transparency across licenses, usage, compliance risk, and IT portfolio optimizations that are intelligently processed and presented in an understandable way. The goal is simple: license management should deliver more than raw data; it should support decisions.
To make those decisions defensible at scale, SAM AI includes a core component, the embedded vendor licensing knowledge base. It applies vendor licensing logic directly within calculations and covers complex topics such as license chains, downgrade rights, bundling and suite scope, and metric-specific requirements. This knowledge base benefits from collaboration with Deloitte, bringing additional SAM services expertise to the project. The result is licensing logic that stays consistent and explainable as your estate and vendor rules evolve.
How SAM AI solves everyday SAM bottlenecks
1. Discover & Connect: get trustworthy visibility across your environment
You can’t manage what you can’t see—or understand. SAM AI leverages Raynet One’s discovery foundation to collect accurate hardware and software data across the estate, including environments ranging from physical infrastructure to virtual machines and SaaS applications.
What this changes: You move from partial snapshots to a reliable baseline for compliance and optimization, so decisions start from trusted coverage, not assumptions.
2. Enrich & Interpret: turn documents into entitlements (not spreadsheets)
Instead of manually keying purchase data, you can ingest key contract documents such as POs, master agreements, and amendments. SAM AI cross-references what it finds in those documents with your discovered estate and your licensing knowledge base to build a complete picture of entitlements.
What this changes: Contract intake stops being a manual bottleneck. Purchase data becomes structured faster, with fewer errors and less spreadsheet dependency.
3. Embedded vendor licensing knowledge base: vendor licensing knowledge applied into your calculations
Even with clean purchase inputs, ELP work slows down on the hardest part: vendor-specific licensing rules. Metrics, downgrade rights, bundling, suite scope, and license chains can’t be solved reliably with generic automation or “best-guess” interpretation.
That’s why SAM AI includes an embedded vendor licensing knowledge base, a comprehensive, AI-enriched licensing knowledge base for 100+ vendors/products, used to keep entitlement and compliance calculations grounded in verified licensing logic.
What this changes: You reduce interpretation drift and increase defensibility so reporting is more consistent and audit readiness improves.
4. Analyze & Advise: automated ELP, risk signals, and optimization guidance
Once discovery, contracts, and licensing logic are connected, SAM AI can automatically calculate your Effective License Position (ELP), highlight over- or under-licensing, detect Shadow IT patterns, generate proactive alerts for non-compliance, and suggest optimization strategies. These insights are all accessible via chat or detailed reports.
What this changes: ELP becomes faster and more continuous. Teams spend less time reconciling and more time prioritizing actions by risk and value.
5. Simplified complexity: ask questions in plain language and get explainable answers
SAM AI supports natural-language questions like “Am I compliant?” or “What’s my license position for Windows Server?” and can include the underlying license logic applied (e.g., downgrade rights, bundling rules, license chains) to support explainability.
What this changes: Stakeholders get answers faster, and SAM teams can defend positions more easily without turning every request into a manual analysis effort.
6. Intelligent optimization & cost savings: beyond reclamation to portfolio decisions
Optimization isn’t only reclaiming unused licenses. It’s also portfolio rationalization: identifying overlapping tools and redundant functionality before renewals lock in more spend. SAM AI helps identify underutilized licenses, generate recommendations for better utilization, and support smarter license model decisions.
What this changes: Optimization shifts from one-off cleanup to an ongoing, evidence-based practice that supports both savings and tool rationalization.
7. Proactive renewal management: renewals on your timeline, not the vendor’s
Renewals move from reactive to proactive with lifecycle visibility, reminders, and planning support. This helps prevent unintended lapses and avoid unwanted auto-renewals.
What this changes: Renewals become planned decisions with better timing, so you can validate need, optimize early, and negotiate from a position of clarity.
8. From contract intake to renewal-ready ELP
Raynet One structures contract inputs with OCR and extraction, links them to discovery and inventory, and applies embedded vendor licensing knowledge base logic to keep calculations consistent. SAM AI then surfaces ELP, flags risks, and highlights optimization opportunities early, so teams can validate positions and plan actions before renewals or audits.
What this changes: You spend less time assembling inputs and more time making decisions, with a clearer position when stakeholders ask for answers.
What this looks like in practice: a calmer, repeatable rhythm
What this looks like in practice: a calmer, repeatable rhythm
With Enterprise License Management & SAM AI, the “day in the life” shifts from fire drills to a workflow you can repeat:
- Discover and connect asset and usage data across the estate
- Ingest contracts (POs, agreements, amendments) to structure entitlements faster
- Apply embedded vendor licensing knowledge base logic to keep calculations consistent
- Calculate ELP, surface risks, and receive optimization guidance
- Use chat + reports to answer stakeholders quickly and consistently
- Act earlier: reallocate, rationalize, remediate risk, and plan renewals with confidence
The point isn’t to automate judgment. It’s to remove the bottlenecks that prevent judgment from being applied where it matters.
Key takeaways
- Use Raynet One to operationalize continuous ELP. Enterprise License Management & SAM AI connects contracts, inventory, and usage so ELP becomes something you maintain, not rebuild for audits.
- Start with the biggest time sink: intake. Raynet One structures contract and purchase data with OCR and extraction, reducing manual effort and improving entitlement quality from day one.
- Standardize vendor rules with embedded vendor licensing knowledge base. Vendor intelligence (100+ vendors/products) helps keep licensing logic consistent and explainable, so positions hold up across stakeholders and audits.
- Shift from reporting to action inside one workflow. Raynet One supports automated ELP, early risk signals, optimization recommendations, and renewal lifecycle tracking so teams can act before deadlines.
- Keep experts in control while AI removes friction. SAM AI accelerates analysis and access to answers, while SAM managers focus on exceptions, governance, negotiation strategy, and vendor outcomes.
Author:
Andreas Gieseke
Chief Technology & Product OfficerContent
- The problem: SAM has become a correlation challenge at enterprice scale
- The Shift: AI makes SAM work faster, so SAM managers can focus on what matters
- The solution: Enterprise License Management & SAM AI in Raynet One
- How SAM AI solves everyday SAM bottlenecks
- What this looks like in practice: a calmer, repeatable rhythm
- Key takeaways
- FAQ
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Frequently asked questions about SAM AI
Is SAM AI part of Raynet One, or is it a separate tool?
SAM AI is built into Raynet One as part of the Enterprise License Management workspace. It’s designed to work on top of Raynet One’s discovery, inventory, and normalization foundation, so you can move from data collection to licensing insight without stitching together separate tools.
What documents can Enterprise License Management & SAM AI process?
It’s designed to ingest common commercial and licensing documents such as purchase orders, contracts, master agreements, amendments, and invoices. Using OCR and data extraction, it helps turn these inputs into structured license information that can be linked to your technical estate and licensing logic.
What is the embedded vendor licensing knowledge base, and how does it improve compliance calculations?
t’s an embedded licensing knowledge base that provides vendor-specific terms and metric definitions for 100+ vendors/products. It helps standardize licensing logic and reduce interpretation drift, making compliance positions more consistent and easier to explain when stakeholders or auditors ask how results were derived.