SAM Study Guide 2026
Everything you need to pass the SAM exam in one place: the exam format, every topic to study, real practice questions with explanations, flashcards, and full-length practice tests. Free, no sign-up needed.
📚 SAM Topics to Study (31)
✍️ Sample SAM Questions & Answers
1. A SAM manager is asked to evaluate a vendor's true cost of ownership for a new ITSM platform. Which cost category is MOST commonly overlooked?
Implementation, data migration, and integration costs frequently exceed license fees but are underestimated during initial procurement evaluation.
2. Which of the following is considered a 'soft' audit trigger that may prompt a vendor to initiate a license review?
Contracts approaching renewal with flat or declining spend often trigger vendor audits as a tactic to identify upsell opportunities or compliance gaps.
3. An organization uses a CMDB to track IT assets. Which ITAM practice ensures the CMDB remains accurate over time?
Automated, recurring imports from discovery tools keep the CMDB synchronized with the actual environment, reducing data drift.
4. What does 'license harvesting' mean in the context of SAM?
License harvesting recovers unused or underused licenses from inactive accounts and reassigns them, reducing the need to purchase additional licenses.
5. What is the MAIN risk of accepting a software vendor's standard terms without legal review?
Vendor-standard agreements are drafted to protect the vendor; legal review identifies clauses that expose the organization to unacceptable risk before signing.
6. A software vendor's license agreement prohibits 'benchmarking' without written consent. In a SAM context, this clause most likely prevents:
Anti-benchmarking clauses restrict publishing competitive performance comparisons, not internal usage monitoring or discovery activities.