Anglepoint Helps Global Medical Technology Leader Mitigate $10.8M from IBM Audit and Reduced Support and Subscription Fees by $255k

Little visibility into software deployment

This client had faced a number of challenges since 2019. The decline of elective medical procedures during COVID required them to take steps to reinforce business continuity in their manufacturing facilities and overall supply chain and proactively reduce certain variable costs and discretionary spending.

They had recently ended a 3-year IULA for BD2 Advanced Enterprise Server Edition.  The Db2 environment appeared to have grown 10x and they had missed the declaration period at the end of the agreement.  This left them with substantial potential costs for licenses they thought they needed.  They needed to address this urgently to avoid any unnecessary spend and mitigate risk.  This was then exacerbated by the notification of an IBM audit and, as the client had 2 years’ worth of data required for the audit missing from ILMT, they had minimal visibility into actual software deployment quantities so had no clear understanding of the potential risk that sat on their estate. 

Lacking both resources and expertise to gather the missing data and ensure negotiations delivered the best commercial and contractual agreement, they turned to Anglepoint’s expert IBM team.  They needed a full and accurate view of their environment, understanding as to whether or not there were rightsizing opportunities and support to engage with IBM for the audit, and ultimately the final negotiations.

Reduced year-on-year renewal spend by up to 90%

Our team worked with the customer to identify accurate license consumption for Db2. This was done by understanding the virtual machines on which software was installed and doing a manual calculation of usage at Sub-capacity as well as Full-capacity. It was identified that Sub-capacity exposure was same as Full-capacity exposure which meant customer did not need ILMT for reporting as their license requirement would not have changed. We advised the customer that post-audit they can look at adding more VMs to their infrastructure and use the perpetual license to cover the license requirement for these new machines. This would mean they could optimize some of the existing machines by reducing core counts and use ILMT to monitor DB2 usage going forward.

It became clear through this process that there was in fact only 4x growth of Db2 rather than the 10x first suggested, meaning they could architect accordingly to resize. In addition, they identified that a shift to Db2 Standard Edition away from Db2 Advanced Edition with zero loss of functionality was possible, allowing them to move to a less costly solution. Our team understood the requirements for Db2 and explained to the customer how the two products do not differ in functionality but only in resources. Because of this move the customer will be able to reduce their year-on-year renewal spend by up to 90 percent.

$10.8M in audit cost avoidance

By utilizing resources totaling 180 man-hours from Anglepoint’s extensive team of IBM experts and leveraging their extensive knowledge of this vendor, the client reduced the ongoing support and subscription fees by $522K per year by moving from Db2 Advanced Edition to Standard. Furthermore, the total cost avoidance from the audit was $10.8M which meant the client was able to protect the savings they had realized during COVID and strengthen and futureproof the financial position of the business.  

The client’s relationship with the vendor remains intact and onboarding the IASP program will ensure the client continues to mitigate risk and manage this vendor effectively.