Challenge: Multiple Licensing Agreements After a Hospital Merger

A group of several hospitals with approximately 4,800 users across administration, medical staff, nursing, and other departments faced the challenge of consolidating its Microsoft licensing and IT infrastructure following a merger.

Over the years, multiple licensing agreements, different contract terms, and various procurement channels had been established. At the same time, there was no centralized overview of existing software licenses, installed systems, or actual software usage.

The newly appointed Group IT Director was familiar only with the infrastructure of the hospital he had previously managed. The objective was therefore to gain complete visibility into the existing licensing landscape, identify potential risks, and develop a long-term strategy for a compliant and cost-efficient IT environment.

Solution: Comprehensive Analysis of Licensing and IT Infrastructure

The first step was to analyze the commercial licensing records based on the available contract documentation. As these records were incomplete, a Microsoft License Statement was requested, reviewed, and incorporated into the assessment, allowing a complete licensing history to be established.

At the same time, a technical inventory of the entire IT environment was carried out using both our own analysis tools and systems already deployed by the customer, including GLPI, Baramundi, VMware vSphere, and RVTools.

Based on the collected data, a comprehensive infrastructure workbook and a complete license position were created.

Infrastructure and Licensing Optimization

The assessment identified numerous opportunities for both technical and commercial optimization:

• Consolidation of virtual servers into fewer clusters
• Reduction of SQL Server licensing requirements through infrastructure optimization
• Planning of software upgrades for products that had reached end of support
• Identification and removal of obsolete legacy software
• Detection of technical redundancies within the IT infrastructure

The combination of technical discovery and commercial license analysis provided a comprehensive assessment of the entire IT landscape.

Reduced Compliance Risks and Optimized Licensing

The resulting license position revealed both under-licensing and inefficient license assignments. Together with the customer, appropriate measures were defined to optimize the Microsoft licensing environment over the long term.

These included:

• Identification and elimination of under-licensing and incorrect licensing
• Definition of standardized license profiles for different user groups
• Alignment of license assignments with actual business requirements
• Elimination of unnecessary over-licensing

Introducing role-based licensing profiles ensured that users were assigned only the licenses required for their daily work.

Consolidated Licensing Agreements and Reduced Administrative Effort

In addition to optimizing license assignments, the existing licensing agreements were gradually consolidated. Different contract models and renewal dates were merged into a small number of standardized agreements with optimized commercial conditions.

This significantly simplified the Software License Management process. The customer gained complete visibility into the Microsoft licensing environment and was able to perform administrative tasks such as the annual True-up process much more efficiently.

Conclusion

Effective Software License Management goes far beyond maintaining an inventory of software licenses. Only the combination of commercial license analysis and technical discovery enables the sustainable optimization of the entire IT environment.

In this project, licensing agreements were consolidated, compliance risks were reduced, under- and over-licensing issues were resolved, and significant cost-saving opportunities were identified. At the same time, the customer gained a transparent foundation for future licensing decisions and established a professional, cost-effective License Management strategy.