CASE 82 · MERCER · 2023
BYOL licences tracked back to the agreements that bought them.
An engineering consulting firm ran a mix of BYOL Windows workloads, SQL Server instances, and Oracle databases. They were under-utilising their Microsoft enterprise agreement and over-buying spot Windows on AWS. We rolled out License Manager with managed entitlements and tied every BYOL workload back to a tracked agreement.
Engineering consulting
LANDING ZONE
2023
RESULTS
What changed, by the numbers.
BYOL UTILISATION
+58%
OVER-PURCHASE
−$144K/yr
AUDIT POSITION
CLEAN
WORKLOADS TRACKED
212
HOW IT WENT
The Microsoft true-up letter was the trigger. The firm had no defensible audit position because nobody had a complete inventory of where their licences were running. They’d been paying for the right number plus a comfort margin.
License Manager built the inventory from Systems Manager data; we mapped each workload to an entitlement record. CloudWatch metrics tracked utilisation per agreement so we could shift workloads onto under-used entitlements before buying new ones.
BYOL utilisation went up 58% as workloads moved onto pre-paid entitlements; over-purchase of fresh licences dropped $144k/year. The Microsoft audit, when it landed, was a calm conversation rather than a defensive one.
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