Challenge: Lack of Visibility into License Usage

A customer commissioned us to perform an analysis of their Microsoft 365 tenant to evaluate the actual usage of their Microsoft licenses. The objective was to gain a complete overview of license assignments and identify unused or incorrectly assigned licenses.

The key question was:

Are all assigned licenses actually required, or are there opportunities to reduce ongoing licensing costs?

In growing IT environments, it quickly becomes difficult to maintain a clear overview of which users actually require which licenses.

The Solution: Analysis of All License Assignments

As part of our Tenant Analysis, all license assignments were compared with active user accounts and systematically evaluated.

The analysis identified several findings, including:

  • Former employees still had active license assignments
  • Licenses were assigned to users who had been inactive for an extended period
  • Premium license plans had been assigned although their features were no longer being used
  • Some licenses remained permanently unused

The evaluation made these unused license allocations visible and provided a solid foundation for targeted optimization measures.

Immediate Savings Through License Optimization

The analysis showed that numerous licenses continued to generate costs without delivering any business value.

This revealed several opportunities for optimization:

  • Reclaiming unnecessary licenses
  • Reassigning existing licenses to new employees
  • Avoiding unnecessary new license purchases
  • Reducing ongoing licensing costs

Particularly in larger organizations, unused license assignments can quickly become a significant cost factor.

Additional Optimization of Dynamics 365 Licensing

In addition to Microsoft 365, the licensing of the deployed Dynamics 365 applications was also reviewed.

The evaluation revealed that several users had been assigned multiple base licenses. In many cases, the same functionality could have been achieved with a combination of one base license and lower-cost Attach licenses.

By optimizing the licensing structure, the organization was able to reduce costs without affecting users or limiting functionality.

Results of the Tenant Analysis

The analysis provided the customer with complete visibility into their licensing environment and identified several practical optimization opportunities.

  • Complete transparency of actual license usage
  • Identification of unused user accounts
  • Recovery of unused licenses
  • Optimization of Dynamics 365 licensing
  • Avoidance of unnecessary license purchases
  • Sustainable reduction of ongoing licensing costs

Conclusion

Regular Tenant Analyses are an essential part of professional License Management. They provide transparency, uncover unused license resources, and help organizations operate their Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 environments more efficiently.

In this project, significant cost savings were achieved by reclaiming unused user accounts and optimizing Dynamics 365 licensing without impacting end users. Even a small number of identified optimization opportunities can lead to lasting reductions in licensing costs while significantly improving visibility across the entire Microsoft environment.

Request a Consultation