Blog
March 6, 2025
Microsoft Licensing & Cost Assessment
Almost every organization we look at is buying licenses nobody uses, paying for tools their existing SKUs already include, or running Azure at list price. We'll show you exactly where—at no charge, in about two weeks.
No Charge, No Obligation | Optimize Your Spend | Works With Any Customer and Licensing Levels
It happens because licensing changes constantly, renewals arrive on autopilot, and nobody owns the job of checking whether what you bought three years ago still fits.
Headcount shifts but licenses don’t get reclaimed. A security tool gets purchased to solve something E5 already covers. Azure resources get stood up for a project and never turned off. Each decision was reasonable on its own—the cost is what they add up to. An assessment puts the whole picture in one place: what you own, what you use, what you’re billed for, and where those three don’t line up.
This isn't about downgrading your users. Most of the savings we find come from licenses nobody is using, tools you're buying twice, and Azure running at list price—none of which anyone will miss.
Different industries, different tenants — the findings cluster in the same predictable places. Here’s where we start looking.
Many Microsoft licenses include capabilities companies also purchase from third-party vendors. Below are some of the most common areas of overlap we uncover during an assessment.
What’s included varies by license and agreement, and overlap doesn’t necessarily mean you should switch. We identify where you may be paying twice so you can decide which solution makes the most sense for your business.
Five workstreams, one report. Everything is evidence-based—pulled from your tenant and your invoices, not from assumptions about how organizations your size usually run.
Every license you own, every license assigned, and every license actually being used—reconciled against what you’re billed for. We surface unassigned seats, dormant accounts, departed users still consuming licenses, and duplicate SKUs stacked on the same person.
We profile how different groups actually work — frontline, knowledge workers, developers, executives — and match each to the license that fits. Then we map your full entitlement set against your third-party tooling to find the capability you’re paying for twice.
Consumption analyzed by subscription, resource group, and workload. We identify commitment opportunities, unclaimed Hybrid Benefit on Windows Server and SQL Server, oversized and idle resources, orphaned storage, and dev/test workloads eligible for reduced rates.
Two questions with the same root: which security features are you licensed for but not using, and is your data estate ready for AI? Copilot inherits every permission you’ve already granted — so oversharing in SharePoint and OneDrive becomes an AI problem the day you turn it on. We assess both.
A working session with the engineers who did the analysis. Every finding is ranked by recoverable spend and effort, with a savings model you can take straight into a budget conversation — and a clear split between what to fix before renewal and what can wait.
Your team’s total commitment is usually under four hours across the whole engagement. We do the rest, on our clock.
The deliverables are yours regardless of whether you engage us for the remediation work—or buy anything from us at all.
One figure, backed by a line-by-line breakdown showing where each dollar comes from and how confident we are in it.
Named seats you can deprovision immediately, with the monthly value of each—usually the fastest win in the whole report.
Everything your current SKUs include, matched against your third-party tools, so renewal decisions get made with the full picture.
What to act on before your next true-up or anniversary, and what can safely wait—sequenced against your actual dates.
You don’t need to move your agreement, change resellers, or commit to anything to get the findings.
The assessment is delivered at no charge
From scope call to findings briefing
Nothing in your tenant is changed
The report is yours whether you engage us or not
Most customers start with licensing because the savings fund everything else. These are the assessments that usually follow.
The assessment works the same whether you buy direct from Microsoft, through an Enterprise Agreement, or through another partner. We'll tell you what we find either way.
The standard assessment is delivered at no charge. Larger or multi-tenant environments and formal audit support are quoted up front before any work starts.
Read-only access to your Microsoft 365 admin center and Azure Cost Management, or exported usage and billing reports if your security team prefers that route.
Most savings come from unused licenses, duplicate tooling, and Azure pricing structure—changes nobody notices day to day.
60-90 days before your renewal or true-up gives you room to act on the findings. That said, unassigned licenses can be reclaimed any month of the year.
Collected data is used only for the assessment, handled under a mutual NDA, and disposed of on request once the briefing is complete.
Start with a 30-minute scope call. If we don’t find savings worth acting on, we’ll tell you that—and you’ll still have the report.
