Audit.
Once you answer the first scoping email, the data you sent becomes the publisher's leverage. Most clients call us after this. The position is usually still recoverable, but the discount window has narrowed every day since the letter landed.
Now booking diagnostics
$1,300,000,000. Cut from software bills across 2,400+ client engagements over 25+ years.
Book a two-minute diagnostic. A UMS principal reads every request. Zero retainer, zero upfront fee. Our cut is a share of what we actually save you on Microsoft, Oracle, audits, renewals, cloud, and telecom.
$0 upfront paid only on savings 2-minute intake 24-hour response
Engaged across 2,400+ relationships
When to book it
/ 01
If this is on your desk,
If this is on your desk,
book it this week.
UMS is built for the moment a renewal quote, audit letter, board ask, or cloud spike forces the decision. We open the file the same week we hear from you.
-
An audit letter just landed.
Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, VMware/Broadcom, OpenText. Stop responding. Every email you send becomes the publisher leverage. Book us before the scoping call.
-
Renewal quote is 30-90 days out.
The renewal window is when the discount levers exist. The quote that hit your desk is not the number you have to pay.
-
Cloud or SaaS bill is climbing faster than headcount.
Most enterprise estates run 20-40% over-provisioned. AWS commits, M365 G5s, ServiceNow tiers, Salesforce seats. Book a diagnostic to find what is dormant.
-
A CFO or board mandate to cut spend.
You need realized savings on the P&L, not a 200-page deck. We close the deal, document the delta, and move on.
-
M&A diligence or a carveout that exposed software liability.
License transferability, true-ups, ULA exits, audit history. We assess, quantify, and stage the cleanup before close.
-
An EA, ELA, or ULA renewal that does not feel right.
It usually is not. We rebuild the entitlement position and walk the publisher back from the quote.
Don't see your pressure point here?
Book the call anyway - the intake has space for context.
Why timing wins
/ 02
The publisher's number is
The publisher's number is
hardest to move on day 90.
Easiest on day 1.
Every software vendor runs an internal escalation calendar. Every renewal has a quiet window. Every audit has a phase when the facts are still negotiable. UMS's job is to start before any of them close.
Renewal.
90 days out, you have leverage. 30 days out, you are negotiating from behind. The earlier we open the file, the more of the quote we can take back. The longest engagements pay for themselves on the first renewal cycle.
Cloud / SaaS drift.
Every quarter you defer the review, you pay the drift again. A $4M cloud bill becomes a $5M bill not because demand grew, but because nobody pushed back on a tier, a commit, or an auto-renew.
In scope
/ 03
What you actually get
What you actually get
when you become a client.
These are the things we do, not the things we put in a deck. The work is concrete and the number on the P&L at the end is concrete too.
- 01.
A 2-week written diagnostic.
We ingest your vendor contracts, renewal quotes, deployment data, and invoice history. Within 14 days you get a written read on where the savings are, sized in real dollars, and exactly how we would open the file.
- 02.
A principal operator across the table.
Not a deck builder. Not a junior associate. David Burns has 20+ years on the City of New York. John Blasig pioneered the data-driven side of the firm. Jason McGhee runs strategy and implementation. One of them, or a senior operator from their bench, is on every engagement.
- 03.
Audit defense if a publisher escalates.
We have cut a $100M IBM audit by 90%+, a $35M+ publisher demand to $7.5M, and a $2M OpenText claim to $115K for NYC. We sit in the room. We rebuild entitlement facts. We negotiate the number on record.
- 04.
A renewal that ends in writing.
We do not issue advice and leave. We go after the quote line by line: SKU mix, term, true-up assumptions, price-hold, discount tiers, exit. We close the deal at the new number, with you, in front of the publisher.
- 05.
A cleanup of what you actually pay for.
15-40% of enterprise licenses sit dormant, wrong-tier, or duplicated across renewals. We find them, document them, and pull them. That is permanent run-rate savings, not a one-time deal.
- 06.
A pay-only-on-savings contract.
Zero retainer. Zero upfront fee. Our cut is a share of verified, realized savings - the kind that shows up on your P&L, not in a cost-avoidance footnote. If we do not find savings, you do not pay.
Operators on the file
/ 04
The people who'll be
The people who'll be
across the table with you.
Most of UMS spent the early part of their careers running audits for software publishers. Now we use that insider knowledge to defend you against them.
/ 01
LinkedIn
John Blasig
/ Co-Founder & CEO
25+ years pioneering data-driven software cost optimization
25+ years building UMS from the ground up. Strategic thinker who pioneered UMS's data-driven approach to identifying customer savings opportunities. Philosophy: only pay for what you actually use and need.
/ 02
LinkedIn
David Burns
/ Co-Founder
20+ years managing the City of New York - one of the longest government partnerships in the industry
Close to 20 years managing the City of New York relationship - one of the longest and most successful government partnerships in the industry. Known as the voice of reason who turns complex, confrontational vendor situations into win-win outcomes.
/ 03
LinkedIn
Jason McGhee
/ Principal, Strategy & Implementation
15+ years bridging strategy and execution across enterprise and government clients
Bridges strategy and execution at UMS. Leads customer opportunity identification, technology partner relationships with Dell and CDW, and hands-on implementation of savings initiatives across enterprise and government clients.
Outcomes on record
/ 05
What gets done
What gets done
after we open the file.
These are realized, named-client outcomes. Not category averages, not composite rounded numbers. Each is documented in a case study or signed off by the client CFO.
/ 01
$800M+.
saved for the City of New York
80+ agencies, 25+ years, across multiple mayors.
/ 02
$100M.
IBM audit cut by 90%+
Fortune 500 financial services. Reduced to single-digit millions.
/ 03
$35M.
audit demand to $7.5M
Publisher claim against a Fortune 500 reduced 78%.
/ 04
$5.67M.
cut from SQL licensing
Top-20 oil and gas. $7.11M exposure to $1.44M paid.
/ 01 Marquee
UMS has been an invaluable partner in managing our software costs - across multiple administrations, multiple agencies, and over $800M in cumulative savings.
AB
Adam Barski Former CFO / Budget Director · City of New York
/ 02 Testimony
We thought our Microsoft estate was optimized. UMS found over $5M in savings across 16,000 users - and completed the assessment in under two weeks. No disruption, no drama, just results.
A
Anonymous CIO · Fortune 500 Manufacturer
/ 03 Testimony
A hardware upgrade created a hidden $7.11M SQL Server licensing exposure. UMS reduced the final cost to $1.44M - zero re-deployment effort, zero downtime.
A
Anonymous VP, Infrastructure · Top-20 Oil & Gas Company
/ 04 Testimony
During a critical acquisition, UMS uncovered software liabilities that would have been a disaster post-close. As we scaled from 2,000 to 30,000 employees, they kept optimizing at every stage.
A
Anonymous Managing Director · Private Equity Firm
Positioning
/ 06
What UMS
What UMS
is not.
Three things UMS gets mistaken for - and why it behaves differently when the publisher escalates. UMS is an operator firm, not a deck shop, reseller, or SaaS dashboard.
/ 01
Reject
Not a consultant.
Big consulting firms charge $5M for 200-page reports and do not stay for the execution. We do not ship recommendations. We ship savings, and we are not paid until the number is on your P&L.
/ 02
Reject
Not a reseller.
VARs and brokers earn commission from the publishers they sell. They have the wrong incentive when the negotiation gets adversarial. We do not carry quotas for Microsoft, Oracle, or AWS. They pay us nothing.
/ 03
Reject
Not a SAM tool.
A dashboard does not negotiate. Tools find data, we find dollars. We use SAM data - yours and ours - but the work is in the operator on the call, not the report exported from a portal.
Before you book.
The most common questions, answered plainly. If you have a different one, the intake has a context field.
/ 01 What if you do not find any savings?
If we do not find savings, you do not pay. For shared-savings engagements, the fee is tied to documented savings. If the agreed savings outcome is not produced, the shared-savings fee does not apply.
/ 02 How is this different from McKinsey, KPMG, or Gartner?
Large firms can be useful for broad strategy. UMS focuses on a narrower operating problem: turning software, cloud, telecom, and contract data into realized savings, renewal leverage, audit defense, and an ongoing cost-control cadence. We do not deliver advice in a deck and leave - we close the deal.
/ 03 How long until we see something?
We can quantify savings potential in as little as 2 weeks. M365 assessments in 2-3 weeks. Audit defense engagements often produce a written counter-position to the publisher in 30 days or less. Full SAM programs run 90-180 days depending on complexity.
/ 04 Who have you worked with?
City of New York ($800M+ over 25 years), Fortune 500 enterprises across financial services, oil and gas, manufacturing, retail, professional services, plus federal and state agencies. Public, named outcomes live on the Case Studies index.
/ 05 What software publishers do you cover?
Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, ServiceNow, VMware/Broadcom, SAP, Adobe, IBM, OpenText, AWS, Azure, Cisco, plus ~190 others. If it is enterprise software, telecom, or cloud, we have negotiated against it.
/ 06 Do you only work with the largest enterprises?
No. UMS works with enterprise, government, public-sector, private-equity-backed, and mid-market organizations. The right fit depends less on company size and more on whether software, cloud, telecom, renewal, audit, or asset-management costs are material enough to justify action.
/ 07 What about my IT team - will this make them look bad?
The opposite. Every enterprise has licensing waste. It is a function of publisher complexity, not IT competence. CIOs who partner with us get credit for proactively finding savings and reducing audit risk. We work with your team, not around them, and position findings as opportunities.
/ 08 What is the engagement model?
Most engagements run on shared savings. For point-of-pain work (M365 assessments, publisher audits, ServiceNow rescue, SAM/ITAM operations), we also offer fixed-fee, hourly, staffing, and mixed models. The first call decides which model fits your situation.
Book the diagnostic
/ 08
Book it.
Book it.
Pay only on what
we save you.
The intake takes about two minutes. A UMS principal reads every diagnostic request and responds personally, usually within one business day.
$0 upfront paid only on savings 24 hr response
$1.3B+
verified client savings
2,400+
client relationships
200+
vendors covered
Prefer email? Reach info@umsol.com. For audit emergencies, mention "audit notice" in the subject and we route the same day.
After you book
/ 09
No generic discovery call.
We use the intake to decide whether this is an audit-defense problem, a renewal problem, a license-position problem, or a broader operating-model problem. Then the right operator opens the first conversation.
Triage
A UMS principal reads the intake against vendor, timing, and commercial pressure - usually within one business day.
Route
We match the request to audit defense, renewal negotiation, SAM, cloud, telecom, or diligence expertise.
First call
The first conversation starts with likely levers, the data we will need, and whether shared savings fits.