ISO/IEC 19770-1:2012 establishes a baseline for an integrated set of processes for Software Asset Management (SAM), divided into tiers to allow for incremental implementation, assessment and recognition.

ISO/IEC 19770-1:2012 applies to SAM processes and can be implemented by organizations to achieve immediate benefits. It can be applied to all software and related assets, regardless of the nature of the software, where related assets are all other assets with characteristics which are necessary to use or manage software. For example, it can be applied to executable software (such as application programs, operating systems and utility programs) and to non-executable software (such as fonts, graphics, audio and video recordings, templates, dictionaries, documents and data). It can be applied to all technological environments and computing platforms (e.g. virtualized software applications, on-premises or software-as-a-service; it is equally relevant in cloud computing as it is in older computing environments).