All press releases

The report surveyed 834 global IT decision-makers, finding 94% of IT leaders are looking for ways to integrate AI into their technology stack; however, only 19% said that demonstrating AI usage and effectiveness is a top priority for next year. The findings show that reporting the ROI of AI initiatives remains elusive and challenging as leaders plan for the upcoming year. Additional key trends include the shifting of IT priorities, the persistent focus on cost reduction as well as innovation and the emerging importance of sustainable IT strategies.

The technology landscape is becoming increasingly complex, driven by the rapid evolution of AI and other emerging technologies. To help address these challenges, organizations can now leverage the partnership between SHI’s extensive expertise in managed services with Flexera’s industry-leading Flexera One platform, to achieve new insights across their cloud, AI and hybrid environments previously not possible with siloed products and teams.

“In our view, being named a Leader again for cloud financial management is a testament to the strength of our vision and the progress of Flexera’s FinOps portfolio,” said Jay Litkey, senior vice president of FinOps at Flexera. “As FinOps has expanded well beyond cloud cost optimization to include SaaS, licensing, containers, private cloud, sustainability, and AI spend, we’ve invested heavily to ensure Flexera One FinOps provides the most comprehensive capabilities in the market.

It is also the latest recognition from Gartner, as Flexera is the only vendor recognized in both the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SaaS Management Platforms and the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Financial Management Tools. It’s our view this continued recognition highlights Flexera's advanced capabilities to help organizations control SaaS costs, manage shadow AI risks and reduce SaaS sprawl, while driving FinOps maturity through its integrated Flexera One platform.

Organizations are increasingly navigating complex SaaS environments, often relying solely on financial discovery methods to manage their assets. However, this singular approach is insufficient for gaining a mature and complete view of their ecosystem. The latest challenge in SaaS is the rise in shadow AI, where many free AI applications go undetected and undiscovered.

“Our customers continue to redefine what’s possible and drive innovation across ITAM, FinOps and SaaS Management,” said Roy Ritthaler, Executive Vice President of Customer Value at Flexera. “The Technology Intelligence Awards celebrate these remarkable achievements, recognizing their relentless focus on optimizing technology spend, reducing risk, and making smarter, data-driven decisions. This year’s winners demonstrate a shift toward a holistic approach, integrating cloud and SaaS solutions, treating them as interconnected parts of an optimization strategy.”

Andersen brings over 25 years of financial leadership experience in enterprise software, with a proven track record of driving operational scale, executing strategic capital plans and leading transformative initiatives in high-growth environments. Most recently, he served as CFO of Acquia, where he guided the company to sustained profitability, oversaw multiple successful acquisitions and supported Vista Equity Partners’ majority acquisition in 2019.

Flexera’s annual report surveys global IT professionals to explore how the evolution of ITAM, FinOps, security, software asset management (SAM) and hardware asset management (HAM) teams influences the value they deliver. It also examines IT investment trends across public, hybrid, and SaaS technologies.

“These additions to Flexera One FinOps will boost the business impact of FinOps teams, especially with managing commitments, optimizing containerized workloads, and cloud sustainability initiatives,” said Jay Litkey, Senior Vice President, Cloud and FinOps at Flexera. “The data from Eco and Ocean provides FinOps teams with actionable insights to maximize savings and reduce waste, beyond just visibility and recommendations. Greenpixie’s data will provide essential cloud sustainability data to FinOps teams needing to prioritize or report on GreenOps progress.”

Jerich brings over 25 years of experience in the enterprise technology sector, with a proven track record of driving operational excellence, scaling global teams, and ensuring customer retention. Most recently, he served as Chief Executive Officer at HungerRush, where he was instrumental in helping hone their strategic framework as a leading provider of restaurant technology solutions. Jerich also previously held senior leadership positions at ServiceMax (now PTC), FinancialForce, IPC Systems, IntelePeer and Level 3 Communications.

“For the past three years, cloud spend has been the top ranked cloud challenge for organizations, ahead of security, according to the State of the Cloud report,” said Becky Trevino, Chief Product Officer at Flexera. “With cloud software easy to provision and highly distributed, organizations need visibility to answer the simple question: how do we optimize software spend in the cloud? Flexera Cloud License Management provides organizations with confidence to forecast and manage cloud software spend, while ensuring they aren’t paying for things they already own.”

“Our partner community plays an essential role in helping customers achieve their business objectives despite the ever increasing amount of complexity and risk in the hybrid IT landscape,” said Brian Hibner, Senior Vice President of Alliances and Services at Flexera. “Flexera is committed to continuously investing and improving our channel so partners and Managed Service Providers can deliver high-quality services to customers powered by Flexera technology.

As organizations continue to invest in artificial intelligence (AI), nearly one-third (33%) of organizations are spending more than $12 million annually on the public cloud alone. With cloud budgets already exceeding limits by 17%, organizations are increasingly turning to managed service providers (60%) and expanding use of their FinOps teams to regain control over spending (59%). In fact, the number of respondents that use, or plan to use, a FinOps team increased by eight percentage points year over year.

With this acquisition, Flexera expands its leading Cloud Financial Management offering into a suite of AI-powered FinOps technologies and enhances the value of these offerings by expanding its partner ecosystem. This newly bolstered FinOps portfolio from Flexera allows organizations and managed service providers (MSPs) to manage cloud financial commitments, automate billing and invoicing, reduce workload costs and optimize containers.

“Our partners are essential to helping organizations navigate the complexities of their technology investments and maximize their value,” said Brian Hibner, Senior Vice President of Alliances and Services at Flexera. “This year’s award winners exemplify excellence in delivering superior business outcomes to clients and driving industry innovation.

“Flexera’s commitment to FinOps goes beyond technology–we’re building a culture of excellence by equipping our teams with the tools and expertise to inform, optimize, and operate–paralleling the three phases of the FinOps framework,” said Jay Litkey, Senior Vice President of FinOps at Flexera and Governing Board Member at the FinOps Foundation. “By investing in FinOps training across the company, the Flexera staff can lead, guide, and empower our customers to adopt these industry best practices to drive meaningful business outcomes.

The transaction will enhance Flexera’s ability to better serve customers and partners seeking to manage growing multi-cloud cost and FinOps needs across a broader range of services from hybrid cloud, SaaS applications and containers.

As a part of its investment, Flexera has streamlined and refreshed its existing partner program, bringing together Flexera and Snow Software benefits to ensure the best of both worlds are available to its ecosystem. The investment also expands the focus on MSPs with additional capabilities offered in the growing FinOps arena, enhanced ITAM features and plans to expand into SaaS Management.

The Flexera 2025 IT Priorities Report surveyed 800 IT leaders from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Australia to determine how IT decision makers’ priorities have evolved over the past 12 months and outline their focus for next year.

"There’s incredible opportunity for organizations and MSPs to more efficiently manage cloud spend to fuel business growth and transformation,” said Jay Litkey, Senior Vice President of Cloud Management at Flexera. “Powering the latest AI innovations, cloud services play an even bigger role in the future of many organizations, and there’s a real sense of urgency to get a handle on those costs now.