What is the article about?

The article explains how poor control over licenses, users, and access rights leads to unnecessary IT costs and increased security risk.

Why are IT costs increasing in many organizations?

Costs often increase because organizations lack visibility into which licenses and access rights are actually being used.

Why is offboarding important?

Poor offboarding processes can result in active accounts, unnecessary license costs, and increased risk of security breaches.

How are cost control and security related?

Lack of control over users and access rights leads to both higher costs and a larger attack surface.

What are the benefits of modern license and access management?

Organizations gain better visibility, reduced manual work, faster decision-making, and lower costs.

Why is this relevant for leadership?

The article demonstrates how managing identities, access, and licenses impacts financial control, security, and operational governance.

IT costs out of control

In April, Digi reported that the Norwegian government’s IT licensing costs have increased by 40% over three years. It sounds dramatic. But it is not unique. The same thing is happening in the private sector, just a little more quietly.

The uncomfortable truth

Most organizations think they have a cost problem. But what they really have is a control problem. You rarely pay too much because the licenses are expensive. You pay too much because you do not know what you are actually using.

The classic licensing trap

We see this again and again: Users who have left the company but still have active licenses, consultants who are never offboarded, employees with premium access they never use, and standard packages selected for convenience instead of insight.

And the root of the problem? It often does not start in IT, it starts in HR. When HR does not notify IT that someone has left, access and licenses remain active. IT simply does not know they need to clean it up. Standardization without insight is just an expensive shortcut.

Offboarding: The most underestimated cost driver

Most organizations have onboarding processes. Few have good offboarding processes. What actually happens when someone leaves? Are their access rights removed? Are licenses released? Is anyone actually following up?

This is not only a financial question. An active user account without an owner is not just a cost, it is a security risk.

Cost and security are two sides of the same coin

Poor license control is not just waste. It is a sign of lacking control, also from a security perspective. Users without MFA, accounts that have not been used for months, overprivileged access: these are classic entry points for attacks. Where you lose cost control, you often lose security control as well.

From gut feeling to real time insight

Modern tools give you visibility you did not know you were missing: who is actually using their account, who does not have MFA enabled, and who is sitting on premium features they never use. You see unused licenses, receive downgrade recommendations and gain control across platforms, not just Microsoft, but everything integrated with Entra ID and AD.

And when you delete an inactive user, you see the savings immediately, not in a report afterward, but directly in real time. Once you gain that insight, license management stops being cleanup work and becomes governance.

A real world example

We recently gave a customer free access to the system for one week. Setup took one hour. After one hour of reviewing the environment together, they had full visibility and had already identified NOK 1.7 million in annual Microsoft licensing costs they could cut. Two hours of work. NOK 1.7 million in savings. They spent the rest of the week cleaning up and watched the savings grow in real time for every user they removed.

Would you like to know what we would find in your environment? We offer one week of free access, contact us and we will set it up.

Who owns this responsibility?

It is not always a CIO or CISO who handles this. Many organizations have an IT Manager or Head of IT managing everything, often without dedicated support. Regardless of title, the question is the same: Do we have control over who has access to what, and is it costing us more than it should? The answer is almost always: yes, and more than you think.

The hidden benefit

Most organizations start this work to save money. What they discover is something else: better security, better visibility, less manual work and faster decision making. And not least, an organization that actually has control over its own resources. The licenses are not what is expensive. The lack of control is what costs.