Responsible For Your O365 Budget? Rightsize Your Licenses Now To Avoid Extra Cost!

Pricing for most Microsoft 365 (M365) and Office 365 (O365) suites are due to increase on 1 March 2022 by up to a whopping 25%, prompting many I&O leaders to assess their Microsoft cost optimization options before their next renewal.

Microsoft first revealed the price increase on 19 August 2021, and are justifying the decision by making a wider set of features and services available, such as security, audio services or device/user management, regardless of whether they’re required. The really bad news? The increase is unavoidable.

Taken from Gartner’s paper, Act Now to Minimize the Impacts of Microsoft’s March 2022 Price Increases, here’s how the expected M365 and O365 price increases look.

Source: Microsoft (August 2021) via Gartner

What can you do if you’re facing an unplanned cost increase and next year’s renewal is just around the corner?

The good news is that there are still options available to help minimize the impact of Microsoft’s price increase on your budget. Some might even say that there’s no better time than now to rightsize your Microsoft license portfolio.

And here’s why. When most I&O teams stop to look, they find they have users with much higher profiles or software editions than needed and have vastly underutilized license pools. In short, they’re spending way more than they need to and could instead be saving money. If you act now, you’ll avoid excess costs and eliminate unnecessary spend in 2022.

What may be of concern however, is that finding time for analysis between now and March is much easier said than done. In such a rapidly changing environment, with a complex range of technologies to manage, we know it can be challenging for I&O teams to set unscheduled time aside to assess application spend and decide where investment is really needed. But with rising remote work and IT budget pressures, we also know that you understand the potential this brings for cost optimization.

So, what steps can you take to get started with your analysis?

Here’s what you should be doing in advance of Microsoft’s price increase to minimize the impact:

1. Assess the cost increase based on your original M365 or O365 licenses to understand the full impact on your contract.
2. Re-evaluate the value of your current licences by understanding the features and editions needed for each user group, along with their usage metrics.
3. Agree to renew M365 or O365 licenses only for active users and lower your overall costs.

How can Teneo help speed up this process?

If you’re short on time, Teneo’s WFA: Visible service can help to accelerate your analysis by delivering visibility into actual license usage. Not only will our service help you to automatically discover and track all M365 and O365 licenses used across the organization, but we’ll also arm you with important metrics such as the number of times used, total usage duration, and last time used. By comparing these metrics, you’ll be able to:

1. Understand all users, and their license usage
2. Reclaim licenses where users don’t use certain features
3. Reclaim licenses for underutilized software
4. Make smart decisions based on what’s fit for purpose
5. Rightsize your license portfolio ahead of the price increase

Why wouldn’t you take a smarter approach to Microsoft license cost optimization? Get in touch with us today to discuss how Teneo and our WFA: Visible service can accelerate your analysis, beat Microsoft’s price increase, and avoid unnecessary costs.