HireVue eliminated Windows Server and SQL Server licensing across 60+ platform services, achieved FedRAMP certification, and cut database costs by over 50% — with one Evolve team from assessment through cutover.
A global enterprise operating a large Microsoft-stack estate began urgently reviewing options for a cloud migration after Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware seemed likely to lead to a costly renewal of their on-premise VMware licenses. This large company initially engaged Evolve Cloud Services to better understand the likely VMware cost increases, and to resolve significant SQL Server and Windows Server licensing inefficiencies identified as blockers for any potential cloud migration to AWS. This became even more urgent after the company acquired a former competitor in the same space, increasing their migration scope to over 10,000 VMs and making Windows Server and SQL Server licensing optimization even more important. Evolve first conducted a VMware vSphere Foundation Renewal Outlook assessment that gave an accurate preview of their new VMware licensing costs if they remained fully in their data center.
The impending increased in costs for VMware were a key part of the customer’s decision to pursue a large-scale cloud migration to AWS. As a first step, Evolve performed a comprehensive licensing and right-sizing infrastructure assessment in the form of an OLA with “add-on” assessments covering the customer’s end-user computing (EUC) estate. The full on-premise estate included over 16,000 virtual machines and more than 1,800 SQL Server cluster nodes, with substantial Enterprise edition footprint and rigid on-premises workload segmentation.
Evolve Cloud Services designed and implemented an infrastructure based on AWS Dedicated Hosts to optimize license utilization, eliminate compliance risk, and materially reduce total cost of ownership. The engagement aligned migration wave planning with license governance strategy, ensuring that workload placement, core allocation, and edition usage were engineered specifically to maximize existing BYOL entitlements while preventing unnecessary licensing consumption. The optimized infrastructure delivered by Evolve represents a 35% savings over a straight lift-and-shift to EC2.
Empower™ maps your Microsoft estate against your AWS deployments before you sign anything.
