SHI delivered millions in savings and peace of mind for a not-for-profit health system

When managing a sprawling software estate across Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware environments, a not-for-profit health system needed more than a point-in-time audit — they needed a partner built for the long haul.

Challenge:

A not-for-profit health system with roots stretching back nearly 150 years and a network spanning multiple hospitals and hundreds of outpatient facilities across two states needed more than a software audit. The organization had turned to SHI after recognizing that managing a complex, multi-publisher software estate required ongoing visibility, strategic guidance, and a trusted partner, not a one-time exercise. Their core priorities were clear: reduce compliance risk, optimize software spend, and demonstrate measurable value to internal stakeholders across Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware environments.

That challenge grew more pressing when the health system completed an acquisition that introduced a newly inherited environment with significant Microsoft licensing deficiencies. SQL Server Standard licensing alone represented substantial exposure, and gaps existed across core infrastructure, productivity, and development products as well. Without a clear picture of what had been acquired and what it would cost to bring the new environment into compliance, the organization faced the prospect of unwelcome surprises during a Microsoft review or renewal.

Solution:

SHI employed a continuous improvement approach grounded in proactive project and customer success management, consistently reviewing service delivery, processes, and methodologies to meet the customer's current and future needs. We took ownership of the overhead and domain-specific challenges the customer faced, freeing their team to focus on their core mission of delivering quality healthcare to the communities they serve.

At the foundation of the engagement was a commitment to trustworthy, continuously maintained data. SHI developed and sustained an accurate, ongoing view of the customer's software environment, eliminating discrepancies, verifying usage against entitlements, and providing a single, authoritative source of truth across Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware. This included managing procurement records and usage rights documentation to give the customer a reliable baseline for both day-to-day governance and high-stakes vendor negotiations.

When the acquisition introduced new licensing complexity, SHI moved quickly to identify and quantify the inherited Microsoft deficiencies introduced by the newly absorbed environment. Our team provided granular visibility into risk by product area, surfacing the largest exposure drivers and supporting the licensing cleanup efforts and targeted procurement needed to close the gaps. Beyond remediation, SHI also identified approximately $214,000 in potential Microsoft overspend, including ongoing optimization opportunities within M365 subscriptions, ensuring the customer wasn't simply resolving one problem while overlooking another.

Governance remained a constant throughout. Ongoing guidance, data analysis, and pricing alignment to the customer's cost structures and risk profile ensured that savings opportunities were identified and acted on continuously, not just at renewal time.

Outcome:

The value delivered across this engagement has been substantial and consistent. From the service's inception through the end of 2023, the customer realized $779,393 in savings through optimization of Microsoft end-user device software and data center servers. SHI also eliminated potential Oracle Java SE compliance risk worth $2.86 million by identifying required upgrades down to the individual user and device level – a level of precision that turned a significant liability into a resolved issue.

In 2024, the momentum continued. The customer achieved $1.38 million in additional optimization savings across their software portfolio, netting a 496% return on investment against their annual SAM Managed Service spend with SHI. Microsoft Visual Studio deployments and subscriptions were right-sized to yield $546,000 in optimization. Rationalization of VMware's Broadcom portfolio across vSphere and vCenter deployments produced $565,000 in savings. Removal of Oracle Database features used without entitlement, including Active Data Guard, Advanced Compression, and Partitioning, eliminated $267,000 in compliance risk.

The acquisition remediation work added meaningfully to that record. Potential Microsoft licensing risk inherited from the newly absorbed environment was reduced from $691,661 to $237,304, representing a nearly 75% reduction in exposure and approximately $454,000 in risk mitigated.

Oracle risk remained a focus into 2025. A new Java analysis identified $1,584,000 in potential licensing and audit exposure driven by Oracle's employee-based Java SE Universal Subscription model, which substantially expanded the scope of liability beyond what technical usage data alone would suggest. Limited visibility into Java installations, combined with the interpretive complexity of Oracle's current licensing policies, created conditions where the customer could have faced significant unbudgeted costs during a publisher review or audit without ever seeing it coming. SHI delivered a comprehensive Oracle Java compliance and exposure report, quantified the risk under Oracle's current policies, and provided guidance on contract interpretation and mitigation strategies to support informed decision-making by the customer's leadership.

The engagement didn't just resolve immediate problems as they arose. It established a durable governance foundation that has consistently surfaced risk before it became liability and identified savings that internal teams had neither the time nor the specialized expertise to find on their own.