Case Studies: Real Results from Enterprise Software Licensing Engagements

What These Case Studies Represent

Every case study in this library is drawn from a real client engagement. The organisations involved range from mid-market companies with 1,000 to 5,000 employees to global enterprises running the largest enterprise software portfolios in the world. What they share is a common problem: they were paying more than they should, facing an audit they had not anticipated, or approaching a renewal without the information or leverage needed to negotiate effectively.

Our role in each engagement was to provide the independent analysis, licensing expertise, and negotiation support that internal teams either lacked the time or specialised knowledge to deliver. The results documented here are actual outcomes — not projections or estimates — and are presented to give prospective clients a clear picture of what working with Redress Compliance produces.

IBM Licensing and Audit Defence

IBM licensing cases account for the largest share of our documented engagements. IBM's licensing complexity — spanning Processor Value Units, Virtual Processor Cores, Sub-Capacity licensing, and the ILMT dependency for valid sub-capacity claims — creates a structural environment where compliance gaps accumulate over years without any visible warning.

IBM Software Audit: Global Financial Institution

A European financial institution received an IBM software audit notice covering 78 IBM products across 12 jurisdictions. IBM's initial claim, based on full-capacity licensing across all virtualised environments, was $14.3 million. Our engagement assessed every deployment against IBM's PVU and VPC licensing rules, identified the ILMT configuration status across each server farm, and challenged IBM's methodology on 23 product claims where the deployment evidence did not support full-capacity charges. The settled claim was $1.8 million — an 87 percent reduction.

The critical technical issue in this engagement was IBM's requirement that ILMT be correctly installed, configured, and running continuous scans for sub-capacity licensing to be valid. The client had ILMT deployed but had not maintained the required scan schedule across all virtualised hosts. Our analysis identified which hosts had compliant ILMT configurations and challenged IBM's assertion that all hosts defaulted to full capacity.

IBM Cloud Pak True-Up: Avoiding Double-Licensing

A North American manufacturing enterprise was approaching a Cloud Pak renewal and had received an IBM true-up demand covering three Cloud Pak for Data deployments. IBM's account team asserted that the Red Hat OpenShift nodes underpinning the Cloud Pak deployments required separate OCP entitlements in addition to the Cloud Pak subscription. This is a common IBM position in Cloud Pak negotiations: IBM Cloud Pak bundles include OpenShift entitlements at the stated deployment scope, and asserting additional OCP licensing on top of bundled entitlements is double-licensing. Our analysis confirmed the client's Cloud Pak entitlements covered the OpenShift nodes in question, reducing the true-up demand from $2.1 million to $0.

PVU to VPC Transition Gap: Manufacturing Conglomerate

IBM's transition from Processor Value Unit licensing to Virtual Processor Core licensing created compliance gaps across a broad range of IBM products. A manufacturing conglomerate with 14 IBM product lines discovered, during our engagement, that several products had migrated to VPC metric without the corresponding inventory update, creating a phantom compliance gap that IBM quantified at $3.4 million in the event of audit. Our remediation plan — updating the ILMT configuration, rightsizing the deployment architecture, and negotiating a forward-looking VPC entitlement structure — resolved the gap at a true-up cost of $430,000 rather than the audit exposure.

Oracle and SAP Licence Optimisation

Oracle and SAP engagements typically involve one of three scenarios: an audit claim or risk assessment, a renewal negotiation where the client is seeking better commercial terms, or a cloud migration where existing on-premises entitlements need to translate to cloud equivalents without triggering additional licence costs.

Oracle Database Audit Defence: Retail Group

A global retail group received an Oracle LMS audit notice following a VMware migration. Oracle's Partitioning Policy — which restricts sub-capacity licensing on VMware virtual machines to certified hard partitioning configurations — was the central issue. Oracle's initial claim, based on full physical socket licensing across the entire VMware estate, was $22 million. Our engagement reviewed every Oracle Database deployment, identified which hosts were running within Oracle-approved hard partitioned configurations, and produced a counter-analysis that reduced the licensable socket count materially. The settlement was $4.1 million — an 81 percent reduction from Oracle's initial demand.

SAP Renewal Negotiation: Insurance Group

A European insurance group with a SAP S/4HANA estate was approaching its first major renewal post-migration. SAP's account team had proposed a 28 percent increase citing indirect access, digital access user categories, and the phased end of legacy licence types. Our engagement benchmarked the renewal against comparable SAP transactions, identified that the digital access claims were not supported by the client's integration architecture, and negotiated a 12 percent reduction from the prior-year baseline with a four-year price cap of 3 percent per annum. The net position improvement over the initial SAP proposal was $6.8 million over the contract term.

Microsoft EA and Security Licensing

Microsoft engagements concentrate around Enterprise Agreement renewals, E5 versus E3 licensing decisions, and the increasingly complex landscape of Copilot, Sentinel, and Defender cost modelling. Microsoft's fiscal year ends June 30, and EA renewal timing relative to this date materially affects negotiating leverage.

Microsoft EA Renewal: Professional Services Firm

A professional services firm with 8,500 seats was approaching its three-year EA renewal. Microsoft's initial proposal included a full migration from E3 to E5 for all users, generating a 43 percent uplift in per-user licensing cost. Our engagement produced an independent assessment of the E5 feature usage across the user population, identifying that fewer than 30 percent of users regularly used features exclusive to E5. We negotiated a split-user approach — E5 for IT, security, and executive users; E3 with targeted security add-ons for remaining users — reducing the per-user blended cost by 26 percent compared to full E5 deployment. Total EA savings over the three-year term: $4.3 million.

Broadcom VMware Transition Cases

Since Broadcom's acquisition of VMware in 2023 and the subsequent shift of all VMware perpetual licences to subscription in 2024, Broadcom VMware engagements have become one of the highest-volume case types in our practice. Support cost increases of 3 to 5 times prior VMware support levels are typical, and many clients are evaluating Nutanix and Azure VMware Solution as migration alternatives.

VMware to Nutanix Migration: Technology Company

A technology company with 1,200 VMware virtual machines received Broadcom's VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation) renewal pricing showing a 4.2x increase over prior VMware support costs. Our engagement produced a full TCO comparison of staying on VCF versus migrating to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, incorporating migration complexity, staff retraining, hardware refresh timing, and the three-year subscription cost difference. The analysis supported a decision to migrate 70 percent of the VMware estate to Nutanix over 18 months, retaining VMware only for workloads with deep VMware integration dependencies. Projected three-year savings versus staying on VCF: $3.1 million.

How to Use This Case Study Library

The case studies in this library are organised by vendor and engagement type. Each entry describes the client context, the problem presented, the approach taken, and the outcome achieved. Client identities are anonymised to protect commercial confidentiality, but the financial figures, technical positions, and engagement methodologies are presented accurately.

If you are facing a situation similar to one of these case studies, the starting point is a conversation with our advisory team. We offer an initial consultation at no charge to assess your situation and determine whether our engagement model is the right fit for your needs.