Client story Insight delivers multi-million-dollar savings for global bank

One of the world’s major banks, with a multinational investment and financial services presence, was looking to negotiate its annual Microsoft license order.

The bank needed support in assessing the true-up requirements for its Microsoft enterprise agreement (EA).

Due to the size and complexity of its IT environment and the structure of the existing licensing contract, the bank decided to call in the licensing experts.

Insight negotiated a new licensing arrangement, saving the bank $6.8 million.

The Challenge

A multinational investment bank and financial services holding company, the client is a household name across Europe, with total assets in the trillions.

Naturally, an organisation of this size and global reach has a complex IT environment and needs to continuously ensure that its technology is up-to-date and compliant.

The time was approaching for the bank to arrange its annual Microsoft licensing order and EA true-up requirements. The client also needed to secure its server and cloud enrolment to enable it to continue its cloud migration in line with business needs.

As the client was running certain legacy Microsoft products past their end of support, it needed to negotiate a price for extended security updates (ESU).

Lacking the skills in-house to navigate the licensing complexities, the client called on Insight Licensing Consulting Services to manage the project.

The Solution

The client needed to true-up its Microsoft EA to ensure it remained fully compliant across its complex IT environment.

Insight had been the client’s licensing solutions partner for ten years and had a depth of understanding of the bank’s IT challenges and business needs. So, the client engaged with the Insight License Consulting Services team to support its annual order.

The first step involved analysis of the IT estate including the client’s 8,300 physical servers, along with its 700 clusters and 4,300+ host servers.

There were also more than 30,000 virtual machines being used across the client’s locations.

Having scoped out the project, Insight recommended changing the license allocation methods required for the bank’s ESU and Windows server datacentre licensing.

Insight also managed to iron out a confusion over the ESU rules, leading to a reduction in back payment of licences of around $2 million.

The Insight licensing consultants clarified the situation and determined that this cost was not payable.

With the completion date approaching, timescales were tight, but Insight was able to complete the analysis from scoping to optimisation in just 20 working days.

Key Benefits

• Savings on license costs of $4.8 million and ESU negotiation savings of $2 million, resulting in a total of $6.8 million saved.
• A fully compliant Microsoft estate including physical and host servers and virtual machines.
• Project delivered according to expected timescales, enabling the client to adhere to its EA contractual requirements.
• Advanced licensing knowledge of the Insight consultants, enabling clarification of the Microsoft licensing terms.
• Strong relationship with Microsoft maintained through careful negotiation from the client’s Procurement team, supported by Insight.
• Clear actions planned in the coming months to further reduce licensing requirements.

The Results Highlights