Vendor Expertise

IBM Licence Advisory

Reduce IBM licensing costs while meeting annual compliance requirements.

IBM updated its Passport Advantage Agreement in August 2024, requiring all customers to self-audit and prepare annual software deployment reports.

What’s worse, this goes beyond a simple self-declaration. Customers must now provide evidence: ILMT reports for sub-capacity usage and system tool outputs for metrics ILMT doesn’t track. This effectively shifts the audit workload and cost from IBM’s auditors onto you.

The result? IBM gains unprecedented visibility into your environment, giving them more power to:

  • Catch compliance gaps early, with annual reports instead of 2–3-year audits.

  • Use findings to upsell or restrict negotiations, tightening your ability to lower spend.

  • Frame missed or incomplete evidence as non-compliance, even when usage hasn’t changed.

Key challenges

Guaranteed annual compliance risk

Cost savings under pressure

Heavy tooling & reporting workload

Our team combines ex-IBM auditors, ex-IBM deal makers, and tooling specialists with over 20 years’ experience across the full IBM licensing lifecycle. We’ve conducted and defended audits, implemented and verified the IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) and IBM License Service (ILS), and sat on both sides of the table – structuring deals at IBM and negotiating them down as trusted customer advisors.

This dual perspective means we understand exactly how IBM leverages compliance evidence, Cross-Brand Allotments (CBA), Cloud Pak dual entitlements, VPC conversions to increase customer spending at Passport Advantage and ESSO/SSSO agreements. Rather than being left exposed by IBM’s annual reporting requirement, we help you turn it into a recurring opportunity to review and reduce costs while staying fully compliant.

How we can help

Our team of ex-IBM auditors and tooling specialists brings over 15 years of experience in IBM licence audits, audit defence, and ongoing licence management. We can seamlessly integrate with your internal SAM or ITAM team to support this new reporting requirement—or take full ownership of your IBM licence management and tooling maintenance, depending on your needs.

IBM Tooling Services

We provide health checks, remediation, deployment, and integration of IBM’s official licence tools, including ILMT, ILS, IRS, and the mainframe SCRT, ensuring they function correctly and report accurate data.

Non-IBM Tooling Support

If you use third-party solutions like Flexera for IBM licence reporting, we offer health checks, remediation, and ongoing maintenance to ensure accurate and compliant outputs.

Complex Metric Management

For IBM products licensed by non-standard metrics (e.g. Users, Terabytes), we help you collect and interpret measurement data to build a reliable compliance position.

Compliance Risk Remediation

When risks are identified - weither from tooling or complex metrics - we provide clear explanations and practical steps to resolve them cost-effectively, often without needing new licences.

Annual Reporting Service

We prepare your IBM licence position using IBM’s required format, guide you through iterative remediation, and ensure you’re confident in the final submission.

Fully Managed Service

Beyond annual reporting, we take over day-to-day IBM licence management, including tooling and purchase records, delivering a service level comparable to IBM’s IASP, but at a lower cost.

Audit & Contract Advisory

Whether you’re facing a formal IBM audit or approaching the end of an ESSO/SSSO agreement, we help you negotiate strategically to reduce financial risk and maximise value.

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Why us

Poacher-turned Game Keeper

Many of our team came from software sales or compliance auditing backgrounds, providing invaluable insight to cost governance and risk mitigation.

IBM Licensing Experience

Our team has been at the forefront of IBM audit defence since the early 2010s and currently leads the IBM licensing course on the ITAM Forum’s LISA Training Platform.

Governance Expertise

Our team has an average 10 years of technology governance experience covering fields such as IP protection, information security and data privacy.

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