How We Work
Redress Compliance operates exclusively on the buyer's side. We do not accept referral fees from software vendors. We do not represent vendors in commercial discussions. We do not publish vendor-sponsored research. Every recommendation we make is based solely on what is in our client's interest — which is why enterprise technology leaders trust us to support their most consequential vendor negotiations.
An initial consultation is the starting point for most of our advisory relationships. It is a confidential conversation — typically 45 to 60 minutes — in which we listen to your situation, ask the questions that clarify the commercial and compliance dimensions of your challenge, and give you an honest, independent assessment of where you stand and what your realistic options are.
Many clients come to us with a specific, time-bounded problem: an audit notification arrived this morning, a renewal is due in 90 days and you have not started preparing, or you have received a contract from your vendor that contains terms you do not understand and your legal team does not have the licensing context to evaluate properly. Others come to us at the beginning of a longer journey — building a vendor management capability, rationalising a complex software estate, or planning a major platform migration — and want an independent advisor to help them avoid the mistakes that are predictable in hindsight but costly when you encounter them unprepared.
What to Expect in Your Consultation
Every initial consultation follows a structured approach that maximises the value of the time available and ensures we understand your situation with enough depth to give you meaningful guidance rather than generic advice.
Situation Assessment
We begin by understanding your current vendor relationship: which products you are licensed for, how your estate has evolved since the last renewal, whether there have been any changes in your infrastructure that could affect licence compliance (virtualisation changes, cloud migrations, acquisitions, divestitures), and what your vendor is currently proposing or requesting.
This situational mapping is essential because the right advice depends entirely on the specifics of your position. A company facing an IBM audit with ILMT correctly deployed and comprehensive documentation has a fundamentally different set of options from one that has allowed ILMT to fall out of compliance. A Microsoft EA renewal where the client has deployed 80 percent of licensed features is approached differently from one where shelfware has accumulated over three years.
Risk and Opportunity Identification
Once we understand your situation, we identify the specific risks and opportunities in your position. On the risk side, this means flagging the compliance exposures, contractual traps, or commercial terms that require immediate attention. On the opportunity side, it means identifying the negotiation levers, competitive alternatives, and contractual positions that give you more commercial power than you may realise.
Most organisations that contact us discover they have more options than they believed when they first reached out. The perception that a vendor audit demand must be settled on the vendor's terms, or that a renewal price increase is inevitable, or that a contract clause is non-negotiable — these are often vendor-created assumptions that dissolve when examined by an advisor who has seen the same situation play out from the buyer's side many times before.
Options and Next Steps
Every consultation ends with a clear summary of your options and recommended next steps. Where immediate action is required — an audit response deadline, a renewal notice period, a contract signing timeline — we prioritise the time-sensitive elements. Where the situation allows for a more deliberate approach, we outline the preparation work that will strengthen your commercial position before the critical negotiation or compliance decision arrives.
Some clients proceed to a formal advisory engagement after the initial consultation. Others take the assessment, execute independently, and return when their next significant vendor challenge requires external support. Both outcomes are completely fine — our goal is to leave every consultation with you better positioned than when you arrived, regardless of what you decide to do next.
Ready to book your consultation?
Contact us directly — we typically confirm scheduling within one business day.Situations We Help With
The breadth of our vendor practice coverage means we provide meaningful advisory across the full spectrum of enterprise software challenges. The most common situations that bring clients to an initial consultation include the following.
Vendor Audit Notifications
IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft are the most frequent audit initiators in the enterprise market. A vendor audit notification creates immediate time pressure, legal complexity, and the risk of a settlement that does not reflect your actual compliance position — particularly if you engage without understanding what the vendor is actually entitled to claim. We provide independent audit preparation, compliance position assessment, and audit response strategy that ensures any settlement reflects an accurate, defensible reading of your licence position rather than the vendor's maximum demand.
Enterprise Licence Agreement Renewals
IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, and ServiceNow all use enterprise agreement structures that are renewed on multi-year cycles. The renewal moment is the single best commercial opportunity in any vendor relationship — the one point where the buyer has maximum leverage because the vendor needs to retain the revenue and the client can credibly evaluate alternatives. Clients who engage external advisory support for major renewals consistently achieve better commercial outcomes than those who negotiate directly with the vendor's account team.
Broadcom VMware Transition
Broadcom's 2024 conversion of all VMware perpetual licences to subscription-based VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation) is one of the most disruptive software commercial events in the enterprise market. Support cost increases of three to five times are typical for organisations that accept Broadcom's standard transition terms. Nutanix and Azure VMware Solution are the two most commercially credible alternatives that provide genuine negotiation leverage. We help organisations understand their true transition cost, evaluate the alternatives rigorously, and negotiate the best available terms whether they stay with Broadcom or migrate away.
IBM Compliance and ILMT
IBM's sub-capacity licensing model — available for products priced on PVU or VPC metrics — is only valid when the IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) is correctly deployed and collecting data from every virtualised host running IBM software. The transition from PVU to VPC licensing created compliance gaps at many organisations, and IBM Cloud Pak bundles include Red Hat OpenShift which introduces additional licence boundary complexity. We provide ILMT compliance assessments, sub-capacity position analysis, and audit defence preparation for the full IBM portfolio. IBM's fiscal year ends December 31, a critical planning point for negotiations.
GenAI Vendor Agreements
Enterprise agreements with OpenAI contain lock-in provisions that are not immediately obvious on first reading. Azure OpenAI and direct OpenAI carry different pricing models and different data residency and compliance implications. Consumption-based billing for AI models creates budget unpredictability that traditional enterprise software budgeting frameworks are not equipped to manage. We provide independent analysis of GenAI vendor agreements for organisations committing to significant AI platform spend.
Our Advisory Team
Redress Compliance was founded by Fredrik Filipsson and Morten Andersen, both of whom bring more than 20 years of enterprise software licensing advisory experience to every client engagement. Both co-founders have worked exclusively on the buyer's side throughout their careers — advising enterprise clients, not software vendors — and the firm has maintained that independence throughout its history.
The advisory team includes practitioners with deep specialism across every vendor practice we cover: IBM sub-capacity and mainframe licensing, Oracle virtualisation and cloud compliance, Microsoft EA and cloud governance, SAP S/4HANA and RISE migration, Salesforce contract optimisation, Broadcom VMware transition strategy, AWS and Google Cloud cost governance, and GenAI vendor commercial terms. Client engagements are staffed with advisors who have direct, current expertise in the relevant vendor area — not generalists reading from a framework.
Redress Compliance is Gartner recognised across multiple vendor advisory categories and has been engaged by enterprise clients in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, telecommunications, retail, and public sector across the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. We operate with full confidentiality across all client engagements and never share client-specific information without explicit consent.
Contact and Scheduling
To book a consultation, contact us through the form on our contact page or reach us directly by phone or email. We typically confirm scheduling within one business day. Initial consultations are available via video conference or telephone, with in-person meetings available at our offices in Fort Lauderdale, Florida or at client offices by arrangement.
If your situation is time-sensitive — an audit deadline, a renewal notice period, or a signing request with an imminent deadline — indicate this when you reach out and we will prioritise your scheduling accordingly. We understand that the most important conversations often arrive with the least advance notice.
Our IBM licensing advisory specialists and IBM audit defence team are available for time-sensitive situations. For broader licensing questions, see our IBM Knowledge Hub.