Business Challenge
With a steady migration across to Office 365 (O365) covering a total volume of 50,000 users, the business understood that with only the Microsoft portal to help them, they had no clear visibility of how they’re actually using Office 365 and therefore:
Having no means to identify where they had unused or under-utilized subscriptions meant that the O365 investment was most likely costing them money in many cases but delivering no value.
The Certero Solution
Engaging with Certero to help to provide clarity, quickly lead to an agreement to utilize the Certero for SaaS: O365 Module -an Office 365 Optimization solution purpose-built for Microsoft’s Graph API.
The solution ‘connects the dots’ to provide a clear, dashboard-style view of exactly how the business uses Office 365 and where the opportunities to make savings are.
Delivered as SaaS, this solution was spun-up within minutes and simply required an administrator to connect to the business’ Microsoft portal and other information sources.
Once all of the data was pulled-in to Certero, the solution generated the reports and insights required to intelligently and safely make changes to optimize and right-size subscriptions.
The solution identified:
Subscription Utilization: The solution quickly identified areas where licenses were not being utilized creating significant cost saving opportunities.
Security Risks: Identification of users who had not reset their password in the timeframe outlined with the company policy, creating a security risk.
Rightsizing Licenses: A number of users who were not using the full functionality of their allocated license, creating substantial savings.
Business Benefits
Within just two weeks of first discussing licensing with Certero, the business was in an informed position to safely eliminate over $1.6m of over-licensing with Microsoft SaaS products alone.
Opting to invest in the Certero for SaaS: Office 365 module has now given the business continuous control and a much better understanding of how IT needs to be provisioned to serve the business.
Having a trusted relationship with Certero and experience of the Certero for SaaS solution, the business now has the perfect scalable platform to extend the same process of logically identifying and performing license optimization for other SaaS vendors, as well as on-premises and datacenter licensing challenges.
