U.S. auto insurer leverages core grants to save over $350K

SHI utilizes new Microsoft licensing model, ensuring proper processes while minimizing future costs.

Challenge:

A U.S. auto insurance company was up for renewal on their Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA), which covered 3,000 employees and 4,900 of their assets. In the middle of their current agreement, Microsoft changed its licensing model from being processor/socket-based to the new physical core-based Microsoft Windows Server 2016. This model now operated through two main editions – Standard and Datacenter.

The customer wanted to ensure their current licenses were properly allocated in accordance with the new licensing standard. They also needed to optimize their investment by obtaining the maximum core grants they were entitled to as part of their upcoming Microsoft EA renewal within a four-week deadline.

Solution:

IT Asset Management by SHI leveraged JDisc, a zero-footprint network discovery and inventory collection tool, to help the customer properly identify and understand the status of each license within their 2-processor-based, 200-server environment. Installing and running JDisc helped SHI identify the exact number of Microsoft licenses on the customer’s current agreement and compare that to the actual Microsoft core license grants for which they were eligible.

SHI discovered a total of 1,902 Core Infrastructure Server (CIS) Suite Datacenter 2-core license grants, which was 398 more grants than what the customer’s hardware infrastructure had as part of their current licensing agreement.

Outcome:

SHI mitigated potential audit risks ahead of the customer’s tight, four-week renewal deadline.

Identifying these extra license grants saved the customer over $350K by reclaiming unused or underutilized licenses and optimizing use of their initial purchases:

• Saved $142K in future licensing costs, ensuring they were properly licensed in the event of an audit.
• Saved $212K in renewal costs for the next three years by uncovering 221 CIS Suite Standard per processor licenses that the customer was not utilizing.

SHI has since helped the insurance company transition to Microsoft Azure after the support for their SQL 2008 and Windows Server 2008 came to an end.