Most SQL Server estates are over-licensed.
Not by a little. We've taken more than NZ$50 million off our clients' licensing bills, and we're still finding it. A licensing audit checks every instance you run: edition, cores, Software Assurance, and what each one actually does. Then it finds the licences you're paying for and don't need.
That's pretty impressive.Ray, CEO
A prioritised plan with a dollar figure against every change. Biggest wins first. It usually pays for itself on the first finding.
Six things decide your SQL bill.
We go instance by instance and check each one. The biggest single lever is almost always edition.
Edition
Enterprise costs roughly four times Standard, per core. If the workload never touches an Enterprise feature, you are paying four times over for nothing.
Cores
Physical core counts, the four-core-per-processor minimum, and how your VM density changes the maths.
Software Assurance
Licence mobility, failover rights, pay-as-you-go. You either use the benefits you pay for, or you leave them on the table.
Passive & DR replicas
Some need a licence, some do not — it depends on your SA. People get this wrong in both directions.
Virtualisation
Per VM or per host. Live Migration and vMotion quietly spread licences across hosts when nobody is watching.
Idle servers
Dev, test, decommissioned boxes, old replicas. Still licensed, still on your bill, nobody using them. The fastest money back.
Read-only, start to finish. A few days to a week.
We look at configuration and usage metadata only. We change nothing on your servers, so there is no production impact.
We inventory every instance, edition and core count. For most sites it is the first accurate list anyone has had.
We map the features actually in use against the edition that requires them.
We reconcile that against your Microsoft licensing and Software Assurance.
We model the cheapest compliant setup: edition changes, consolidation, the SA calls.
You get a prioritised plan with a dollar figure against each change. Biggest wins first.
Non-profit? No charge.
The price for enterprise-grade SQL Server support and licensing optimization is often out of reach for non-profit organizations, leaving their data vulnerable to outages and risk.
Registered non-profits pay nothing for this work. Our sponsors cover it in full. Email info@sqldba.org with what you run, and you get a straight yes or no on whether you qualify.
Common licensing questions.
How much can a licensing audit save?
Usually 20 to 40% of your SQL licensing spend, sometimes more. We've taken over NZ$50 million off client bills — about $7 million a year.
Will this trigger an official Microsoft audit?
No. We operate completely independently of Microsoft. We are not a Microsoft Partner, specifically so we have no obligation to report our findings to them. Your audit is strictly confidential.
Is there any downtime required?
Zero. The audit runs read-only using DMV queries and extended events to capture configuration and usage metadata. There is no impact on your production workloads.
Not sure how much you are overpaying?
Tell us what is going on. A senior DBA reads every message and points you at the right next step, even when that is not us.