Cloud Licence Advisory

Make sense of licensing in the cloud before you migrate.

Why now?

Rising vendor audits: 52% of organisations have been audited more than twice in the past 18 months. A move to the cloud can trigger a vendor software audit, so be prepared.
Post-pandemic clean up: Covid-19 forced many organisations to move to the cloud without adequate planning, and now they’re paying the price (literally). Prevent cost blow-outs by proactively reviewing your licence position and rightsizing your IT estate for cloud.

Why licence advisory?

Cost control: Complex licensing structures, ease of provisioning and lack of transparency into usage make cloud costs hard to detect and control. Don’t move across licences you don’t use.
Risk mitigation: Make sure you’re aware of contractual blockers and clean up any licensing exposures before you move, or risk facing costly compliance breaches.
Knowledge is power: A clear view of software usage versus entitlements arms you with data to speak confidently with your vendors, especially if your move to cloud triggers a vendor audit.

Why Invictus Partners?

Proven results: We’ve saved our clients more than $825 million in enterprise software costs since 2014.
Extensive experience: We have experience optimising software licensing across major cloud providers including AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, RISE with SAP, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and IBM Cloud.
Vendor-agnostic: We are objective advisors that do not resell, audit or implement software. We don’t have a vested interest in any solution, so our advisory is based solely on your needs and goals.
62%
CIOs looking to migrate their perpetual licences to a subscription model
57%
CIOs who are concerned their on-premise contracts may impact their move to cloud and increase costs
33%
Vendors who have made changes to their pricing and licensing policies for cloud in the last 18-24 months
“We’ve worked very closely with Invictus Partners to manage our licensing costs. We turned off a number of products that were no longer relevant to our business when we moved to the cloud, and we are continuing work on a roadmap for those products that remain.”

Heidy Liu, Head of Service Delivery, NSW Land Registry Services.

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Can you answer the three essential cloud licensing questions?

Compliance

Can you bring your licence agreements with you?

Perhaps an obvious question, but one that is all-too-often overlooked. We ensure your existing software licences can be transferred to the cloud instance, and if not, advise on how you can modify licence arrangements with software vendors to prevent any compliance issues down the track.

Rightsizing

How many licences should you bring with you?

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Licence-to-cloud migration is not an exact science, made more complicated by software vendors’ unique cloud licensing policies and restrictions. We identify the potential business benefits and risks associated with moving each of your applications and workloads to the cloud, help you rightsize your licensing structure for the chosen cloud or hybrid environment, and advise on how and where you could decommission licences not needed under the new model.

Optimisation

How can you manage your licences in the cloud?

With our deep vendor knowledge, we can help you find the optimal cloud configuration to maximise performance at the lowest cost and provide guidance on how you can set your organisation up for ongoing cloud licence optimisation.

Our Cloud Licensing Service breakdown:

Our Cloud Licensing Service breakdown:

Phase 1

Software Licence Health Check

Phase 2

Cloud Migration Roadmap

Phase 3

Vendor Negotiation Advisory

We can provide expert licensing advice before, during, and/or after your move to the cloud. We do this in three phases, which are available as an end-to-end service, or as separate engagements.

Phase 1

Software Licence Health Check

The first and most important step in any cloud project is a comprehensive review of your current licensing position (usage versus entitlements) and software contracts that help you answer the three essential cloud licensing questions above.

Phase 2

Cloud Migration Roadmap

We work with you to develop a roadmap that considers all aspects of your data and applications; which workloads and applications to migrate, the best approach for the platform migration (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), planning and prioritising, accountabilities and governance, contractual and entitlement mapping, reporting and measuring success parameters.

Phase 3

Vendor Negotiation Advisory

We can guide you when it comes to making the big decisions around cloud, providing benchmarking advice in relation to pricing and terms and participating in negotiations with vendors to secure you the best deal.

Get clarity on cloud providers’ licensing models to make informed decisions.

Whether you’re moving some or all of your workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, RISE with SAP, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or IBM Cloud, we can provide independent, agnostic advice. We advise clients on how to prepare and successfully migrate software licences to cloud or hybrid environments, so as to minimise
risk and optimise costs, regardless of the software and infrastructure workloads you’re moving, to or the cloud provider you decide on. Our Cloud Licence Advisory services are international, with clients across Europe, the Middle East, Australia, the UK, and the US.

Get clarity on cloud providers’ licensing models to make informed decisions.

Whether you’re moving some or all of your workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, RISE with SAP, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or IBM Cloud, we can provide independent, agnostic advice. We advise clients on how to prepare and successfully migrate software licences to cloud or hybrid environments, so as to minimise risk and optimise costs, regardless of the software and infrastructure workloads you’re moving, or the cloud provider you decide on. Our Cloud Licence Advisory services are international, with clients across Europe, the Middle East, Australia, the UK, and the US.

AWS Licence Advisory

As the most mature cloud platform on the market, AWS offers organisations the potential for better performance, higher security, and lower ongoing costs. With AWS, organisations unlock the opportunity to licence the actual compute used to support the database and can avoid the overspend typically experienced with an on-premise model, which requires all processors to be licensed, regardless of usage.

Invictus Partners helps organisations optimise their licensing ahead of an AWS migration and ongoing. Gaining a clear position of exactly which licences are being used versus contractual entitlements is a foundational step in mitigating unforeseen cloud costs and unlocking the full potential of AWS.

Microsoft Azure Licence Advisory

Uptake of the Microsoft Azure cloud is high among those with Microsoft products, either as their cloud of choice or as part of a multi-cloud solution. However, most organisations spend far more on Microsoft Azure than they budget for, so a pre-migration licence and contract review is essential.

Invictus Partners can help you navigate Microsoft Azure’s complex licensing and subscription models. We plan your future state whilst securing the best-possible pricing and licensing models for the short term. Whether you are in the planning phase or have already made the move to Microsoft Azure, Invictus Partners can help your organisation find its optimal Microsoft Azure cost, licensing and consumption models.

Google Cloud Platform Licence Advisory

GCP is an open, secure and compatible infrastructure for building and running applications.

Invictus Partners can help your organisation prepare for a move to GCP by evaluating your existing software and cloud estate to identify licence entitlements to migrate. We ensure your licences can be transferred from the on-premise environment to the GCP cloud instance, optimise your licensing structure for GCP, and decommission any licences not needed under the new model.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Licence Advisory

OCI offers a full range of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) capabilities. While entitlement mapping is favourable for existing Oracle licences, moving Oracle workloads to OCI does not automatically keep you compliant, nor will it necessarily save you money.

It is important to assess the software licensing ramifications of a shift to OCI before you move. Invictus Partners can help you with the licence-to-cloud transition, whether you are moving Oracle or another vendor’s workloads to OCI.

Are you getting screwed by your software vendor?

Get back on top.

Download our Cloud Licence Advisory Services datasheet

The Invictus Partners difference: Cloud Licensing Solutions

Invictus Partners is a specialist software licensing advisory firm that supports and supplements our clients’ in-house commercial, procurement, IT and vendor management teams. We provide Cloud Licence Advisory services across a number of leading global vendors, including AWS, Google Cloud Platform, RISE with SAP, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and IBM Cloud.

Invictus Partners’ role is to advocate for the best interest of our clients by delivering independent Cloud Licence Advisory services, providing impartial facts, informed insights, and realities by reviewing and analysing software vendors’ licensing terms, agreement structures, release information and go beyond the ‘glossy brochure’ style marketing information.

Talk to a Cloud Licensing expert

Case Study

NSW Land Registry Services streamlines its software portfolio on AWS with Invictus Partners

Got questions about Invictus Partners Cloud Licence Advisory?



*S&P Global