Case Studies — Engagement Records from Fortune 500 Negotiations
Anonymised records from recent enterprise IT negotiation engagements. Every case study includes the opening vendor proposal, the operational mechanics that produced the move, and the final settlement with quantified saving. Clients are described by industry, revenue band and geography. Vendor employees, internal personnel and proprietary commercial detail are removed under engagement NDA.
Twelve records from the past 24 months
The case studies below represent a sample of recent engagements across Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, AWS, ServiceNow, IBM, Cisco, Salesforce and the AI procurement frontier. Each engagement record reflects the vendor's opening commercial position and the final settlement.
Oracle ULA Exit — 14,000-employee pharma group
Opening Oracle proposal: $47M Unlimited Licence Agreement renewal with mandatory OCI commitment and Java SE Universal Subscription attachment. We restructured the exit as a perpetual licence certification at deployed footprint, eliminated Java attachment through OpenJDK substitution, and negotiated a separate OCI Universal Credit at consumption-based pricing. Final cost: $18.4M perpetual, $0 Java, OCI billed quarterly at use.
Microsoft EA Renewal + Copilot Pricing — 78,000-seat bank
Opening Microsoft proposal: $61M three-year EA renewal with 32,000 Copilot for Microsoft 365 seats at $30 PUPM, Azure $14M annual MACC, and Dynamics 365 attach. We sized Copilot to evidenced productive use (8,400 seats), benchmarked Azure consumption against AWS and GCP credible position, and unbundled Dynamics. Final settlement: $38.9M three-year, Copilot at $22 PUPM with quarterly true-up, Azure MACC at $9.2M annual with consumption flexibility.
SAP S/4HANA Migration & Digital Access Settlement — 42,000-employee manufacturer
Opening SAP proposal: $44M S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition migration including a $12M Digital Access settlement for accumulated indirect access exposure. We reverse-engineered the document-counting methodology, identified $7.4M of out-of-scope documents, modelled Private Edition vs Public Edition vs on-prem economics, and secured RISE bundling for HANA Database and SAP Business Technology Platform. Final: $24.8M three-year RISE with $2.1M Digital Access.
AWS EDP Renewal & Multi-Cloud Re-Architecture — 8,200-employee media platform
Opening AWS proposal: $84M five-year EDP renewal at flat consumption commit with no exit ramp. We benchmarked against Azure Cloud for Sovereignty and Oracle OCI alternatives for the Postgres and analytics workloads, established a credible 22% multi-cloud shift roadmap, and negotiated a tiered EDP with year-on-year off-ramp. Final: $52.6M five-year EDP with declining commits, $4.2M in incremental Savings Plan, eliminated data-egress for cross-region replication.
ServiceNow Renewal & Now Assist Pricing — 36,000-employee insurer
Opening ServiceNow proposal: $34M three-year renewal expanding from ITSM Pro to ITSM Enterprise with Now Assist (AI) attachment on every fulfiller seat, plus ITOM Visibility and SecOps Vulnerability Response bundling. We unbundled Now Assist to per-feature consumption, declined ITSM Enterprise upgrade for half the estate, and benchmarked HR Service Delivery against Workday Help. Final: $22.2M three-year, Now Assist scoped to 2,400 fulfillers with usage-based metering.
IBM ELA + Red Hat OpenShift Renewal — 78,000-employee bank
Opening IBM proposal: $84M five-year ELA renewal with mandatory watsonx attachment and a 7% annual escalator. We ran ILMT remediation, modelled Tailored Fit Pricing on mainframe MLC, sequenced the Red Hat renewal six months ahead of ELA close and surfaced Databricks/Snowflake credible position. Final: $40.6M five-year ELA, watsonx optional at 38% discount, MLC restructured under Tailored Fit at 27% effective reduction, escalator capped at CPI.
Cisco EA 3.0 + Splunk Cloud Renewal — 64,000-employee manufacturer
Opening Cisco proposal: $52M three-year EA renewal with mandatory Splunk Enterprise migration to Splunk Cloud at full Cloud list, 6.5% True Forward growth baseline, and Webex Suite sized 41% above measured usage. We ran independent Smart Account audit, sequenced Splunk renewal six months ahead of EA close, and surfaced credible Arista, Microsoft Teams Phone and Datadog positions. Final: $32.2M three-year EA, Splunk Cloud at 41% off list with 24-month rate lock.
Salesforce Renewal & Org Optimisation — 38,000-employee hospitality group
Opening Salesforce proposal: $27M three-year renewal with Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Data Cloud and Einstein 1 attach across 14,200 seats. We ran a 90-day Org optimisation that eliminated 3,200 dormant licences, unbundled Data Cloud to consumption-metered pricing, and benchmarked Marketing Cloud against HubSpot Enterprise. Final: $17.6M three-year, Data Cloud at $0.18 per record processed, Einstein 1 scoped to 4,800 active users.
OpenAI Enterprise + Anthropic Multi-Provider RFP — 110,000-employee financial services
Opening OpenAI proposal: $14M three-year ChatGPT Enterprise + API commitment for 18,000 seats. We ran a parallel RFP with Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini Enterprise and Microsoft Copilot Studio, surfaced bias-audit and EU AI Act compliance gaps in OpenAI's MSA, and structured a two-provider commit with model arbitrage. Final: $7.8M three-year split (60% OpenAI, 40% Anthropic) with bias-audit clause, training-data exclusion, and indemnification covering output IP claims.
Workday HCM & Financials Renewal — 92,000-employee retailer
Opening Workday proposal: $23M three-year renewal including Workday Illuminate (AI agents) at $4.20 PEPM across the full HCM seat count, with mandatory Adaptive Planning attachment. We benchmarked Illuminate against measured productive use, declined Adaptive Planning bundle, and structured a 24-month price lock with right-to-true-down at year two. Final: $14.3M three-year, Illuminate at $2.80 PEPM for 22,000 admin/manager seats only.
VCF Subscription Transition — 48,000-employee telecom
Opening Broadcom proposal: $42M three-year VMware Cloud Foundation subscription transition replacing perpetual ESXi/vSphere licences at 4.2x prior-year run rate, with Tanzu and NSX bundled at full list. We modelled credible Nutanix AHV and Red Hat OpenShift migration timelines, scoped the VCF estate to genuinely virtualised workloads only, and negotiated a co-terminus exit clause at year two. Final: $24.7M three-year with NSX unbundled, Tanzu eliminated, exit credit at month 24.
Adobe ETLA Renewal & Creative Cloud Optimisation — 24,000-employee consumer goods
Opening Adobe proposal: $16M three-year ETLA renewal with Creative Cloud All Apps at 3,200 seats and Experience Cloud bundled at attach pricing. We ran usage analytics that identified 1,400 dormant seats, declined Experience Cloud attach, and structured a hybrid Named-User model with department-level true-down rights. Final: $10.4M three-year, Creative Cloud at 1,800 active seats with named-user reallocation rights.
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