Microsoft Licensing & Cost Management
Right-size Microsoft 365 tiers, eliminate shelfware, control Azure cost and get renewal timing under control, as one discipline.
Checked 4 October 2026. Built from the full service page.
In short: Tier mix, shelfware, Azure rightsizing and renewal timing, reviewed together as one discipline rather than as separate exercises months apart. Start with a reconciliation rather than a renegotiation: shelfware is the largest and easiest saving, and it is found by cross-referencing licence assignment against sign-in data.
Who this is for
The problem
Licence tier decisions get made once, at a point when the business looked different, then renewed on autopilot every year because reassessing feels like more effort than it's worth. Seats stay assigned to people who left months ago, every new starter defaults to whichever tier IT happened to buy first, and Azure spend drifts upward in parallel with nobody accountable for either side of the bill.
What we would do
Start with a reconciliation rather than a renegotiation. Licence assignment cross-referenced against sign-in data and your leavers list finds shelfware first, and shelfware is usually the largest and easiest saving available before anyone talks to Microsoft.
- If a renewal is close, timing matters more than tier: the review has to happen while there are still options on the table.
- If you are an education institution, the purchasing route matters as much as the tier and the A series applies rather than the commercial plans.
When we are not the answer: If nobody will own the starter and leaver process afterwards, the savings come back within a year and you will have paid us to find them twice. This only works if the checks become routine.
What is included
- Microsoft 365 licence tier assessment: Business Premium, E3 and E5 rightsizing
- Shelfware identification: unassigned, duplicated and leaver seats
- Azure resource rightsizing reviewed alongside licensing, not as an afterthought
- Renewal timeline mapping, so decisions happen before contract terms lock you in
- Reserved instance, savings plan and Azure Hybrid Benefit guidance matched to what you actually own
- Board-ready reporting that separates licensing spend from infrastructure spend
What the last 12 months looked like
What it costs
Scoped and quoted against your estate rather than sold from a rate card. We price what you already run, including the parts that are working and do not need replacing, and the quote itemises what is included so it can be compared line by line with anyone else’s. Managed IT support starts at £40 per user, per month if that is the wider question.
Three questions people ask
What's the difference between this and your Azure cost optimisation service?
Our cost management and Azure optimisation service goes deep on the infrastructure side: reserved instances, savings plans, autoscale, tagging and FinOps discipline for the Azure estate itself.
What's the difference between this and your Microsoft 365 service?
Our Microsoft 365 service covers what each tier actually does in full technical depth: governance, Intune, identity, migration and the platform capabilities themselves.
How do you decide between Business Premium, E3 and E5 on cost grounds?
Headcount sets the first boundary, since Business Premium is capped at 300 users. Below that, we compare the bundled security stack against what you'd otherwise buy separately.
Tell us what you need
A short call to talk through how your IT works today, what your team handles, and what you need from a provider. We will tell you plainly how we would approach it.
Prefer to talk now? Call us on +44 (0)1482 770583.