Background
This leading banking and financial services business operates in 60 countries, has 4,900 host servers and 33,000 virtual machines in play. The scale and complexity of its operations present numerous challenges to manage efficiently.
The expertise from Insight’s Microsoft Optimisation & Governance Centre of Excellence team helped the business transform its licensing model, achieving huge immediate savings and avoiding significant future costs.
Challenge
For many years, the client has utilised Microsoft Windows Server and System Center, running them on a VMware platform.
The business faced a $23 million headwind on the anniversary of its Microsoft Windows Server and System Center enterprise agreements. Factoring in growth, this increased to $35 million. To avoid the headwind, infrastructure analysis had to be completed within eight weeks, which was impossible to achieve using internal resource.
Additionally, Windows Server 2012 comes out of extended support in October 2023. Planned extended security updates were forecast to cost more than $28.2 million annually, over a three-year period.
“As a global business, we needed a trustworthy optimisation partner to support us on this journey. Insight’s expertise allowed us to deliver outstanding results back to the business, whilst ensuring licence compliance.”
IT Cost Manager
“The support we receive from Insight’s Licence Optimisation team is first-class and difficult to find anywhere else in the market today.”
Microsoft Relationship Manager
Solution and Outcome
The total project was completed in six months, with Insight’s consultants delivering an initial infrastructure analysis in just eight weeks – saving the client countless hours of analysis time to create a new licence position.
Taking a consultancy-first approach, Insight initially created a set of strategy breakout sessions. This helped identify the working groups and architecture teams that needed to be engaged during the project.
After conducting an infrastructure analysis and applying different scenarios, Insight provided on-premise server deployment optimisation, online services usage optimisation and licence negotiation to negate the headwind and deliver further cost savings.
Insight helped transform the way the client runs the platform by licensing their Windows environment on a per virtual machine basis. Insight’s strong vendor relationships and deep understanding of Microsoft’s new licensing models delivered immediate savings of $19.9 million.
In addition to the immediate cost savings, the client has also achieved a $84.6 million cost avoidance – over three years – for the upcoming extended security update program for Windows Server 2012.
This is the first industry example of cost-savings that can be achieved by taking advantage of Microsoft’s new licensing models. In total,Insight delivered an incredible return on the $120,000 investment.
Why Insight?
Insight has a long and successful relationship with the global banking giant. The bank’s team completely trust the advice and support provided by Insight, knowing it will benefit them operationally and deliver exceptional ROI.
As a global business, the client’s complex environment means they need access to the strongest optimisation partner to deliver cost savings while maintaining licence compliance. Insight’s Microsoft Optimisation & Governance Centre of Excellence team’s deep understanding of licensing models and awareness of how they will impact a business, enable it to provide impartial consultancy that leads to exceptional savings.
