Case Studies by Category: Find the Engagement Type Closest to Your Situation

Category 1: Audit Defence (48 Cases)

Audit defence engagements are the most time-critical category in our practice. An audit notification from IBM, Oracle, SAP, or Broadcom sets a contractual clock running, and how an organisation responds in the first 30 days determines the trajectory of the entire engagement. The 48 audit defence cases in this category span vendors from IBM LMS to Oracle LMS, from SAP's internal audit function to Broadcom's post-acquisition compliance reviews.

The common factor across every audit defence engagement is that the vendor's opening claim is not the final settlement. In our experience, independently analysed and properly challenged audit claims settle at 15 to 87 percent of the initial vendor demand. The range is wide because every case turns on specific facts — what products are deployed, how virtualisation is configured, whether ILMT is running correctly (for IBM cases), whether Oracle's Partitioning Policy applies, and whether the entitlement scope covers the deployment evidence the vendor has assembled.

IBM Audit Defence Cases (18 Cases)

IBM audit defence cases consistently involve sub-capacity licensing disputes. IBM's licencing rules require ILMT — IBM's License Metric Tool — to be correctly installed and continuously scanning all virtualised environments for sub-capacity pricing to be valid. Where ILMT is absent, misconfigured, or has coverage gaps, IBM asserts full-capacity pricing across the entire virtualised infrastructure, regardless of actual workload density. The PVU to VPC metric transition has created additional compliance gaps across the IBM product estate, as organisations that migrated their deployment records did not always update the corresponding licence entitlements to the VPC metric.

IBM Cloud Pak audits represent a distinct sub-category. IBM Cloud Pak bundles include Red Hat OpenShift entitlements at the licensed deployment scope. IBM account teams and audit teams frequently assert that the OpenShift nodes underpinning Cloud Pak deployments require separate OCP licensing — a position that constitutes double-licensing when the Cloud Pak entitlement covers those specific nodes. Challenging this position requires a precise mapping of the Cloud Pak scope to the OpenShift node configuration.

Oracle Audit Defence Cases (14 Cases)

Oracle audit defence engagements concentrate on three technical disputes: the VMware Partitioning Policy (Oracle's position that vSphere environments require full physical socket licensing), Named User Plus versus Processor metric disputes, and Database Options licensing allegations where Oracle claims installed-but-unused options create licence obligations. Each of these positions is contestable with the right technical evidence and contractual analysis.

SAP and Broadcom Audit Cases (16 Cases)

SAP audit cases typically involve indirect access (digital access) claims, user classification disputes, and legacy licence type end-of-life compliance gaps. Broadcom audit cases, since the 2023 acquisition of VMware and the 2024 perpetual-to-subscription transition, increasingly involve enterprises that have not yet signed the new VCF subscription agreements and are operating under expired or transitional terms.

Category 2: Renewal Negotiation (62 Cases)

Renewal negotiation is the highest-volume category in our practice, representing 62 of 154 documented cases. Enterprise software renewals are the single largest recurring opportunity for cost reduction in a technology budget — and the single largest area where organisations routinely leave money on the table by accepting vendor proposals without independent analysis or structured negotiation.

The leverage available at renewal varies by vendor, contract structure, and timing. Microsoft EA renewals carry the most structured negotiating process, with defined timelines and a layered approval hierarchy that can be used to extend concessions through each approval level. Oracle and SAP renewals hinge on competitive leverage and the credible demonstration that the organisation has evaluated alternatives. IBM renewals are shaped by the ELA (Enterprise Licence Agreement) structure and the organisation's ability to validate current deployment counts against existing entitlements before the renewal conversation begins.

What Organisations Consistently Miss

In the majority of renewal negotiations we have entered as advisors, the client organisation had not benchmarked the vendor's proposed pricing against comparable transactions. Vendor pricing teams maintain detailed records of every transaction in each market segment; procurement teams typically have no equivalent data. This information asymmetry is the primary reason vendor proposals are accepted without meaningful challenge. Our benchmarking database — built from 20 years of enterprise software transactions — closes this gap and provides the factual basis for structured negotiation.

A second consistent gap is timing. Organisations that begin renewal preparation fewer than 90 days before contract expiry have limited leverage. With fewer than 60 days remaining, vendor account teams know the probability of a delayed signature is low, and they have little incentive to offer meaningful concessions. Organisations that begin 12 months before renewal — with a competitive evaluation underway and a clear BATNA — achieve materially better outcomes.

Category 3: Licence Optimisation (29 Cases)

Licence optimisation engagements are initiated proactively — typically when an organisation wants to understand whether its current licence portfolio is sized correctly, whether shelfware is accumulating across major vendor relationships, or whether the licence metric mix can be restructured to reduce cost without reducing capability.

Microsoft licence optimisation typically involves analysing the E3 versus E5 split across user populations to identify whether the organisation is paying for E5 features that are deployed to users who do not use them. In the majority of Microsoft environments we have assessed, between 35 and 65 percent of users are on E5 licences but do not regularly access features that require E5. Restructuring to a split population — E5 for IT, security, and executive users; E3 with targeted add-ons for remaining users — reduces the blended per-user cost by 20 to 35 percent.

IBM licence optimisation requires accurate ILMT data and a current deployment inventory across all IBM products. Where organisations have accumulated IBM products through acquisitions or organic growth, the licence footprint often includes products that have been replaced or decommissioned but are still included in the entitlement baseline, representing ongoing maintenance cost with no corresponding business value.

Category 4: Cloud Migration Advisory (15 Cases)

Cloud migration advisory engagements sit at the intersection of licensing strategy and technology architecture. When an organisation migrates Oracle workloads from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud provider, the licensing rules change materially — Oracle's cloud policy distinguishes between authorised cloud environments (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and others, with different licence portability rules in each. When an organisation migrates IBM workloads to a public cloud platform, ILMT may or may not be deployable in the cloud environment, affecting sub-capacity eligibility. These transitions require licensing analysis before migration decisions are finalised.

Broadcom VMware migration cases have become the fastest-growing sub-category following the 2024 subscription transition. Organisations evaluating Nutanix, Azure VMware Solution, or a return to bare-metal infrastructure need a detailed TCO model comparing the three-year cost of staying on VCF subscription against migration complexity, hardware refresh investment, and the ongoing cost of the alternative platform. Support cost increases of 3 to 5 times the prior VMware support level are typical on VCF, making the migration economics compelling for organisations whose VMware footprint is not deeply integrated with VMware-specific tooling.