Are You Overpaying for Microsoft Licenses? A Look at License Audits and Cost Optimization

My colleague, Andrea Mondello, recently published two posts worth reading if you’re navigating AI adoption right now. One makes the case that data quality issues, not AI itself, are what’s holding organizations back. The other draws on lessons from enterprise AI deployments to help mid-market companies avoid the costly mistakes that larger organizations have already made.

Both posts share a common thread: moving too quickly, without the right foundation, tends to create expensive problems that take years to unwind. That same principle applies directly to Microsoft licensing.

The Licensing Version of the Same Problem

When organizations running on Microsoft start an AI initiative, Microsoft 365 Copilot is the first purchase they make. At $25.5 per user per month (with the current promo available until 06/30/26), it’s a meaningful line item. Like many licensing decisions, this one is sometimes made under pressure, without a clear picture of how many existing licenses have been allocated and how many of those are actively being used.

As a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) Direct reseller, we see this pattern regularly across most products. A company’s Microsoft spend has grown over time through a series of individual decisions: a new product here, extra seats there, a subscription that made sense two years ago but hasn’t been reviewed since. Some employees have left the company, but their licenses have not been allocated to others. By the time someone asks whether the spend is justified, it’s already embedded in the budget and hard to question. We review this as part of being your CSP reseller, in an effort to save you as much money as possible.

This is a licensing management problem, and it has a practical solution, which as a CSP, we focus on with our CSP customers.

Software Cost Optimization – What a Licensing Review Actually Reveals

One of the additional service offerings we have at Withum is Software Cost Optimization (SCO). SCO helps companies reduce their annual software spend by 10% to 30% on their most expensive software. We have different variations of this offering, including one that covers only Microsoft spend. SCO is a focused engagement, not a major project. Think of this as a Microsoft license audit – an objective review of how licenses are being used versus what’s actually needed. For the Microsoft-only version, it requires approximately four hours from a Microsoft Global Admin and 30 minutes for a licensing decision maker to review the results. Turnaround time is typically two to six business days. We typically find between 10% and 30% in savings.

For our Microsoft CSP customers, this review is delivered annually as part of the relationship. We strongly believe that being a CSP reseller should not be about profiting from the margins we earn from reselling the software. We discount and use any margins to continue supporting the customer and provide ongoing licensing guidance. Ultimately, we view CSP as a way to establish trusted relationships through supporting ongoing Microsoft license management and earn the opportunity to support broader services over time. That means focusing on what customers actually need – not selling more licenses than necessary.

What the SCO review identifies:

Users who are no longer with the organization but whose licenses are still active
Users who have not used their allocated license in the past six months
Unallocated licenses sitting idle for more than three months
Subscription overlap, mismatched license tiers, and renewal misalignment

Where CSP Relationships Make a Difference

The SCO review tells you what you should be paying for based on actual usage. The next challenge is keeping licensing aligned over time as needs change. Maintaining that alignment over time is where the right CSP relationship can make a meaningful difference.

Withum has been a Microsoft CSP since 2015, the year the program launched. Clients who purchase Microsoft subscriptions through Withum receive:

Microsoft focused SCO engagement included at no charge.
Discounts off Microsoft retail pricing, with discount levels that increase with total spend. Current clients receive between 3% and 12% off Microsoft direct pricing depending on the volume of software you purchase.
Twice-annual licensing reviews to ensure subscriptions stay aligned with actual usage, not just what was purchased a year ago (one of these is a full SCO engagement).
A single renewal date across all subscriptions, which simplifies budgeting and reduces the administrative overhead of managing multiple renewal cycles.
First-level support from Withum, with direct escalation to Microsoft for higher-severity incidents and faster resolution times than going to Microsoft directly.
Included access to an online training portal covering Microsoft 365 apps and features for your entire team, with regularly updated content as Microsoft evolves.

We would rather help you spend less on the right licenses than help you spend more on the wrong ones.

A Practical Starting Point

Whether you are planning a Copilot deployment, approaching a renewal or simply want a clearer view of your Microsoft spend, it may be worth a quick review.

This post is part of an ongoing conversation about responsible technology adoption. For more on the AI governance and data readiness topics referenced above, visit withum.ai.