From Microsoft renewals to facilities portfolios and M&A diligence, we find savings that others miss. Engagements are structured as shared savings, fixed-fee, or staff augmentation based on scope and procurement needs.
Enterprise software vendors spend billions training their sales teams to maximize your spend. UMS levels the playing field. With 25+ years of vendor-side intelligence, we know exactly how to negotiate the best possible terms across Oracle, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, VMware, and more.
Software publisher audits are a billion-dollar revenue stream for vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and Adobe. They're designed to intimidate and extract maximum payment — often far beyond what's actually owed. Without expert representation, organizations routinely overpay by millions. UMS has defended clients against the most aggressive vendor audits for over 25 years. We reduced a major global financial institution's $35M audit exposure to $7.5M. We've taken clients from multi-million dollar settlement letters to zero. Whether you've just received the initial audit letter or you're deep in negotiations, we can help.
Oracle audit situations rarely stay narrow. A Java question becomes a broader estate review. A script request becomes leverage for a commercial reset. UMS helps organizations slow the process down, validate what Oracle is actually entitled to inspect, reconcile entitlements against deployment reality, and respond in a way that protects both the balance sheet and the long-term negotiating position. We are especially useful when Oracle Java licensing changes, inherited estate complexity, or poor historical records make the internal picture messy.
IBM audit exposure often shows up where licensing operations are weakest: incomplete ILMT coverage, mergers, infrastructure changes, middleware sprawl, and inconsistent sub-capacity measurement. UMS helps organizations sort out what IBM can actually support, where the compliance story is weak, and which claims are inflated by bad assumptions or poor measurement hygiene. That matters because IBM audits do not end with spreadsheets. They end with a commercial ask that can often be reduced materially with the right evidence and negotiation posture.
Many organizations invest heavily in ServiceNow but struggle to realize its full value — multi-year deployments that produce dashboards nobody uses and workflows nobody follows. UMS rescues stalled implementations and builds new ones right the first time. We focus on people and process first, platform second — because the best-configured ServiceNow in the world is useless if your team won't use it.
Most organizations overpay for Microsoft by 15-20% — not because they negotiated poorly, but because Microsoft's licensing complexity is designed to make optimization nearly impossible. UMS brings 25+ years of Microsoft licensing expertise to cut through the noise. We found NYC Housing Authority over $500K in savings in just 3 weeks by analyzing their agreement renewal window. For a 5,000-user enterprise at $25/user/month, typical E3 vs E5 optimization and license right-sizing delivers $270K+ in annual savings.
Microsoft EA renewals are some of the highest-leverage commercial moments in enterprise software. The challenge is that most teams arrive late, with incomplete usage analysis, weak benchmark context, and no clear story about which users need which licenses. UMS helps finance, procurement, SAM, and IT teams turn the renewal into a structured commercial process: validate deployment and usage, model E3 versus E5 decisions, quantify true-up and growth exposure, and build a negotiation posture before the account team controls the narrative.
Most organizations discover license waste only when a renewal gets expensive or an audit gets uncomfortable. By that point, the estate is already carrying years of over-assignment, weak reclamation, inherited products, and unclear entitlement history. UMS helps teams rebuild the license picture across major publishers, determine what the business truly needs, and convert that view into savings, negotiation leverage, and lower compliance risk.
Many organizations already have some combination of CMDB data, procurement records, spreadsheet trackers, or a platform such as Flexera or ServiceNow. The missing piece is often not another dashboard. International ITAM standards treat software asset management as an operating discipline, and implementation research across IT service management consistently shows that outcomes depend on people, process, and technology together. UMS gives finance, IT, procurement, and SAM leaders an independent operating partner who can turn inventory into negotiated savings, defensible audit positions, and a repeatable operating cadence. We are platform-agnostic, vendor-independent, and structured to work where internal capacity is thin or the stakes are commercially high.
Cloud spending is the fastest-growing line item in most IT budgets — and the hardest to control. Enterprise organizations typically see 25-40% savings potential, government agencies 20-30%. UMS combines deep cloud architecture expertise with licensing and contract negotiation skills to deliver real reductions. Our methodical approach delivers 15-20% savings initially through quick wins, then 20-40% on deeper analysis — as demonstrated with NYC Housing Authority's Azure optimization.
Azure estates become expensive in predictable ways: overprovisioned compute, idle resources, weak tagging, fragmented ownership, and missed opportunities around Reservations or Hybrid Benefit. The hard part is not spotting one oversized VM. It is translating estate-wide usage data into a practical savings plan that operations, finance, and procurement will trust. UMS helps clients clean up the workload base, improve cost governance, and align Azure optimization with the broader Microsoft commercial relationship so savings show up both on the bill and in the next renewal conversation.
AWS spend usually gets expensive through a mix of fragmented ownership, weak commitment strategy, and workloads that keep running in shapes the business no longer needs. UMS helps teams evaluate Savings Plans and Reserved Instance opportunities, clean up underused resources, and build a more disciplined operating rhythm around AWS consumption. The goal is not just to lower a monthly bill once. It is to create a repeatable way to control AWS cost while preserving the flexibility the platform is supposed to provide.
Software liabilities are one of the most overlooked risks in M&A. Non-compliant licenses, unfavorable contracts, and hidden vendor obligations can cost millions post-close. UMS provides rapid, thorough software due diligence that protects your investment and identifies immediate post-acquisition savings.
Telecom costs are one of the most overlooked areas of IT waste. Between legacy POTS lines, unused mobile plans, redundant conferencing platforms, and unaudited cabling costs, most organizations are overspending by 15% or more. UMS conducts comprehensive telecom audits that identify every dollar of waste — then negotiates better rates and eliminates unnecessary services. Our clients typically see 15%+ savings with zero disruption to operations.
Broadcom's acquisition of VMware has sent shockwaves through enterprise IT. Licensing changes, forced bundling, and aggressive price increases of 2-10x are creating a budget crisis for organizations dependent on VMware infrastructure. UMS helps you take control — whether that means negotiating the best possible VMware renewal, migrating to alternatives like Nutanix, Microsoft Hyper-V, or cloud-native infrastructure, or building a hybrid strategy that reduces vendor lock-in.
Lease renegotiation, vendor optimization, space utilization analysis, and energy savings for facilities portfolios. Like our software work, engagements are outcome-aligned and built to surface measurable savings quickly.
Many engagements run on our shared savings model, where we get paid only from documented savings.
For scoped initiatives like ServiceNow implementation, audit defense, facilities programs, and specialized remediation, we also offer fixed-fee and staff augmentation options.
Book a free 30-minute consultation. We'll assess your situation and recommend the right approach — no obligation.
Book Free Consultation