Skip to main content

Case Studies & Resources

Real environments. Real license savings. Real control. See how organizations like yours eliminated Microsoft licensing waste with measurable, auditable results.

Case Study 1 — Enterprise Retailer

77% License Savings

Annual Savings

$840K/year

!Challenge

500 servers with aggressive over-provisioning across SQL Server and Windows Server. No visibility into actual license usage. EA renewal approaching with inflated baseline.

→Solution

Deployed AWS OLA telemetry across the full fleet. Identified edition overprovisioning, core count inflation, and zombie instances. Executed right-sizing and edition downgrades with zero production impact.

Results

  • 77% Windows Server license reduction
  • $840K/year savings from 2-core consolidation
  • Zero downtime during optimization

"We had no idea we were paying Enterprise pricing on servers that only needed Standard. The telemetry made it undeniable."

— VP of Infrastructure, Enterprise Retailer

Case Study 2 — Financial Services Firm

98% Waste Identified

Annual Savings

$1.14M/year

!Challenge

Blind EA renewal approaching with no usage telemetry. Microsoft rep pushing flat renewal at $1.14M/year. No data to challenge the proposal or negotiate from strength.

→Solution

Deployed live telemetry across 200+ SQL Server instances. Built evidence-backed negotiation position. Identified that 98% of licenses were over-provisioned with Enterprise editions running Standard-tier workloads.

Results

  • 98% of licenses were over-provisioned
  • $1.14M saved by downgrading SQL Enterprise to Standard
  • Avoided $3.42M in 3-year EA lock-in

"Our Microsoft rep called it a good deal. The OLA data showed it was a $3.4M overpayment. We renewed at 62% less."

— CTO, Financial Services Firm

Case Study 3 — Manufacturer

47% Core Savings

Annual Savings

36% Total Cost Reduction

!Challenge

High vCPU-to-RAM overprovisioning on AWS. Windows Server and SQL Server licensing costs growing faster than workload demands. Legacy .NET applications blocking modernization.

→Solution

Leveraged AWS Optimize CPU feature to reduce licensed core counts. Migrated eligible Windows workloads to Linux. Modernized .NET Framework applications to .NET 8 on Linux containers.

Results

  • 47% core reduction using AWS Optimize CPU
  • 49% Windows cost elimination via Linux migration
  • 36% total cost reduction (compute + storage + licensing)

"We didn't just optimize licenses—we modernized our entire approach. The savings funded our container migration."

— Director of Cloud Engineering, Manufacturer

Ready to See Your Own Results?

AWS funds the Optimization & Licensing Assessment. The diagnostic costs you nothing. The savings start the moment you act.