A €4.2 billion global industrial manufacturing group operating in 42 countries was entering the final year of a three-year Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. The EA covered Microsoft 365 E3 licences, Windows Server, SQL Server, and Azure consumption commitments — with approximately 18,000 qualifying users globally.
The group's IT governance team had identified two serious problems ahead of renewal. First, a true-up review had revealed that user counts across several acquired entities had grown materially faster than anticipated, creating significant annual true-up liability that had been absorbed as budget overruns. Second, Microsoft's renewal proposal represented a 38% increase over the previous EA value — driven partly by Microsoft's 2025 pricing model changes and partly by the larger user base.
Internal IT leadership had been managing the Microsoft relationship directly. Despite a long-standing Microsoft account team relationship, the CISO and IT Director both felt they lacked the independent market benchmarking and negotiation structure to challenge Microsoft's proposal effectively. IT Negotiations was engaged ten weeks before the EA anniversary date.
"Our Microsoft account team is professional and helpful on service delivery questions — but they are measured on deal value. We needed someone on our side who knew what 'good' looks like on a global EA of this size."
— Group IT Director, Global Manufacturer (identity protected)IT Negotiations assigned a senior Microsoft licensing specialist with prior experience as a Microsoft global account executive. This insider knowledge of Microsoft's deal approval process and discount authority tiers proved decisive in the negotiations.
Licence Rationalisation and True-Up Defence. We conducted a full licence census across all 42 operating entities — identifying that 1,400 of the 2,200 "at-risk" users in acquired entities were on legacy agreements or had workloads that did not require M365 E3. We built a transitional licence plan that normalised the user count appropriately, removing $2.3M of annual liability while maintaining full compliance. We also challenged the use of peak-term user count as the renewal baseline, negotiating instead to a verified current-month count.
E5 Upsell Rejection. We reviewed the Microsoft security product stack proposed in the E5 upgrade against the client's existing security tooling (including a recent investment in a leading third-party EDR and SIEM platform). We demonstrated to the client's CISO — and directly to Microsoft's deal desk — that the incremental E5 security value was less than 40% utilised under the group's architecture. Microsoft withdrew the E5 upgrade recommendation and agreed to maintain E3 for the full estate, with a limited E5 deployment for the security operations team only.
Azure MACC Structuring. We negotiated the Azure consumption commitment as a formal MACC with a tiered discount structure — starting at 18% on committed Azure spend and scaling with volume growth. This alone delivered $1.4M in Azure savings over the three-year term versus Microsoft's original on-demand pricing proposal. We also secured negotiated credits for Azure migration workloads in the first year.
Throughout the process our advisors maintained direct engagement with Microsoft's mid-market and enterprise licensing teams, escalating where necessary to Microsoft's volume licensing desk. The client's internal team was kept fully briefed and participated in final approval discussions. For more on our approach to large EA negotiations, see our Microsoft advisory service and our enterprise agreement negotiation capability.
The renewed Microsoft EA was signed at $19.4M over three years, against Microsoft's renewal demand of $27.4M — a saving of $8M. The breakdown of savings:
Beyond the financial savings, the renewed EA contained improved contractual terms: a fixed escalation cap of 2% per year on the M365 seat price (preventing Microsoft's standard uncapped increases), a formal process for licence count adjustments at each annual true-up, and an Azure MACC structure with clear overage protections.
The group IT Director reported that the engagement "fundamentally changed how we approach Microsoft commercially" — and the client has since retained IT Negotiations on a standing basis for all Microsoft licence management decisions.
"The Azure MACC negotiation alone was worth the engagement fee several times over. We simply didn't know those structures existed at our spend level — Microsoft certainly wasn't going to volunteer that information."
— Group CIO, Global Manufacturer (identity protected)Don't let Microsoft set the agenda. Our senior advisors know exactly where the EA has room to move — and how to negotiate Azure commitments, true-up structures, and E5 upsell pressure effectively. Book a free 30-minute consultation.
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