From OEM licences to Microsoft 365 subscriptions: 60 seats to start, 100 planned, one agreement

Context

The company was growing faster than its way of buying licences allowed: OEM packages shipped with computers. Every new seat meant a separate purchase, there was no single list of licences, and e-mail and endpoint protection were scattered.

Innowacje 4 IT supported the company in moving to a Microsoft licensing partner and choosing a subscription model that handles growth from about 60 to about 100 seats without renegotiating every few months.

Challenge

• Which licensing programme?Microsoft offers several purchasing paths that differ in commitment length, rules for adding seats mid-term, billing and support. For a company of this size, flexibility and simplicity mattered, not the prestige of the agreement.
• Which licences are really needed?OEM licences covered neither cloud e-mail nor endpoint protection, and not every user needed the same bundle.
• How to secure growth?The plan assumed growth to about 100 seats. The model had to allow adding licences on known terms, without paying up front for seats that do not exist yet.
• What is in the agreement?The partner's offer and programme terms cover commitment, pricing, changes in licence count and support. The client needed someone to read them from the company's side, not the seller's.

What we did

1Inventory and licence fit

We gathered the actual state: users, devices, domains, existing OEM licences and what the company really used. From that came a needs map: Microsoft 365 for workstations, Exchange Online for e-mail, Microsoft Defender for device protection.

2Choosing the programme and partner

We compared the available purchasing paths and recommended CSP through a Microsoft licensing partner: the most convenient to run, flexible when the seat count changes, invoiced, with a one-year commitment for a stable price.

3Negotiating the terms

Price made the difference in talks with the partner, but just as important were ease of licence management, the client's control over the whole environment and professional partner support. These were confirmed in the offer before signing.

4Domain migration and launch

We migrated the company's domains, launched Microsoft 365, Exchange Online and Microsoft Defender, assigned licences to users and tidied the environment so one person on the client side can see the whole picture.

5Rules for the future

The client received a simple procedure: how to add a seat, when to update the licence count, what to check before the agreement anniversary and how to document licence compliance.

Under the hood

• Programme: CSP via a Microsoft licensing partner, one-year commitment.
• Products: Microsoft 365, Exchange Online, Microsoft Defender.
• Migration scope: company domains and change of partner.
• Scale: about 60 seats to start, growth planned to about 100.
• Documents handed over: inventory, programme comparison, notes on the offer, licence register and change procedure.

Result

• One partner, one agreement and one licence register instead of scattered OEM purchases.
• A subscription model that grows with the company: seats added on known terms, no new agreement needed.
• E-mail and device protection in one environment under the client's control.
• Financial terms remain confidential at the client's request; the price difference was one of the arguments for the change.

Why this matters for other companies

Microsoft licences in a company above a few dozen seats are a multi-year agreement, not a shop purchase. The difference between a well and a badly chosen programme is usually tens of percent of the annual cost plus the freedom to add seats. We read offers from the company's side, not the seller's, and treat every vendor the same way.

The names of the client and the licensing partner are withheld. We do not publish unit prices or savings figures.