18% reduction in Software Assurance costs
27% reduction in ESU costs
A saving of £5.6m from previous vs. the new agreement
Introduction
The client had both an Enterprise Agreement and ESU Agreement coming up for renewal. They had historically used Windows Datacenter licensing prior to Microsoft, allowing individual virtual machines to be licensed.
Their challenge
Upon assessment of the environment, we discovered that the client had:
- VMware clusters hosting multiple operating systems not entirely dedicated to Windows Server
- Windows Server eligible ESU candidates mixed with Red Hat and later editions of Windows Server
- Enormous costs due to the Windows environment consuming both Datacenter edition and ESU Datacenter subscriptions
Our solution
bedigital set about designing relocation strategies for the Windows 2012 Server environments. This meant, in many cases, moving single environments that were candidates for ESU, to a dedicated VMware cluster. This relocation strategy significantly reduced the ESU costs for the candidate. Furthermore, bedigital guided the client to request a license conversion of Windows Server Datacenter licenses to Windows Server Standard edition licenses. This conversion was at 1:10 — 1 Datacenter Core to 10 Standard Cores — and helped to further reduce the ESU costs, as ESU licensing is based on the underlying Windows Server licensing method.
Microsoft were pushing their Azure ARC solution for ESU management with heavy discounts as an incentive. However, following closer evaluation, it was clear that the solution created a security risk to the customer, as it required them to open in/outbound internet traffic to the servers. Although it did allow ESU licensing at the individual virtual machine, this was ultimately a financial incentive to use Azure ARC.
Outcomes
The client resisted Azure ARC and pushed Microsoft for their own preferred deal, converting license types. The outcome was a 18% reduction in Software Assurance costs and 27% reduction in ESU costs. This represented a saving of £5.6m from the previous vs the new agreement.