How to Save on your Microsoft licensing Enterprise Agreement Case Study

A large aerospace company was facing ever increasing cost with their Microsoft licensing Enterprise Agreement (EA). Each year they had no idea how much software they were using, and Procurement would essentially ask Microsoft for how much additional they needed to purchase/true up. The company did not have the expertise to measure or track consumption, nor do they have the resources to accurately measure entitlements compared to deployments. Anglepoint was brought in because of our licensing and technical expertise.

Anglepoint was hired to manage the Microsoft estate and analyze the cost overrun each year. We immediately asked for an MLS from Microsoft which helped us baseline what our actual entitlement was. Furthermore, we engaged each product area and worked for 8 months to gather accurate deployment numbers that would indicate how much of the software was being utilized. Then each license was used in the most advantageous way possible to the company. (downgrade rights, multiple versions, 90 day transfer rules, non-prod benefits, Hybrid benefit, etc.)

Anglepoint provided the company with accurate and complete consumption data, we educated the user base on how to utilize Microsoft licenses smarter, and created an active and aggressive harvesting schedule to take back unused software to prevent additional purchases. As a result of our work we saved the company approximately $10 million in cost avoidance each year, by not buying unnecessary licenses. We also saved several million by harvesting software not in use. Also we successfully avoided a Microsoft license audit because of our expertise.