What Healthcare Organizations Need To Know About the Recent Microsoft Licensing Changes

How Can Healthcare Organizations Navigate the Shift Effectively?

The first step a health system should take when preparing for its next renewal is to undergo an audit of all the organization’s licenses and determine who is actually using what. They’ll be surprised at how many licenses are just sitting there unused. That’s money down the drain.

The next step is to ensure that licenses are at the right level. If someone is using a Microsoft 365 E5 license, a premium enterprise plan, when all they need is a Microsoft 365 F1 license, a more budget-friendly license for frontline workers, then the renewal presents an opportunity to right-size the organization’s licenses.

Along with cost savings, another benefit of optimization is IT not having to worry about staff using software they don’t need or having access to data that they shouldn’t.

At the end of the day, though, healthcare and patient outcomes are at stake, so it’s important to ensure that optimization doesn’t interfere with patient care. Health systems might be using Microsoft Teams for collaboration between care teams or Power BI to generate reports. Since they will still need these services, it’s crucial to identify essential business needs and prepare for the discount ending.

How CDW Can Help Health Systems Adjust to the Cost Shift

Health systems need to take a hard look at which Microsoft services they’re using and determine what can be trimmed away for cost savings. Working with a technology partner such as CDW can be beneficial for healthcare organizations as they navigate the situation. If an organization already has a Microsoft enterprise agreement through us, then we’re already aware of what licenses they’re using and can help to right-size their agreement going forward.

But even if an organization hasn’t worked with CDW, we can still help them audit their licenses and plan for next steps. We can help ensure an organization is paying for the right number of licenses at the right level to meet their staff needs.

As part of that process, we run the numbers to understand what kind of discount they had and what the impact of the new pricing approach will have. Then we help them optimize their licenses.

READ MORE: Navigate Microsoft’s pricing shift with CDW’s CSP program.

There are tools that can help IT teams track usage. CDW is rolling out a new one called Asato that can identify waste and optimize resource allocation to ensure an organization’s Microsoft licensing agreements are right-sized. It can be used for other services beyond Microsoft as well.

CDW is also a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, and if we already have an organization’s Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, we’re easily able to help them migrate over to subscription-based licensing that runs month to month (though organizations can pay annually as well). The benefit of the CSP model is that organizations can adjust the number of licenses they have month to month with no penalties. It offers flexibility. Even though there isn’t a set discount, working with a CSP like CDW increases the likelihood of finding a discount.

My biggest advice is to start thinking about this now rather than waiting until you need to renew, to try to get those discounts in place. It’s also important to remember that no one has to go through this process alone. All health systems that use Microsoft are going through this, and it can be helpful to see how other organizations have handled the situation.

While the price increase is going to hurt, don’t let it overshadow the bigger picture of why healthcare organizations are there: to care for patients and improve their outcomes. Remember that you’re investing in your staff to provide the care that patients deserve.

This article is part of HealthTech’s MonITor blog series.