The rapid growth of software supply chain attacks has attracted considerable attention to software bill of materials (SBOM). SBOM is a crucial building block to ensure the transparency of software supply chains that helps improve software supply chain security. Although there are significant efforts from academia and industry to facilitate SBOM development, it is still unclear how practitioners perceive SBOMs and what are the challenges of adopting SBOMs in practice. To bridge this gap, we performed the first empirical study to interview and survey SBOM practitioners. We applied a mixed qualitative and quantitative method for gathering data from 17 interviewees and 65 survey respondents from 15 countries across five continents to understand how practitioners perceive the SBOM field. We summarized 26 statements and grouped them into three topics on SBOM’s states of practice. Based on the study results, we derived a goal model and highlighted future directions where practitioners can put in their effort.