Microsoft removes Enterprise Agreement discounting on Online Services, SPLA use ends on the hyperscalers, SAP withdraws special discounts on-premises, Broadcom faces a lawsuit from Tesco, and Oracle Java keeps pushing customers towards OpenJDK. What changed in August 2025, and what it means for your licence position.
August was a heavy month for licensing change. Microsoft removed a discount lever that large customers have depended on for years, SPLA stopped working where most service providers actually run, SAP quietly withdrew the discounts that made staying on-premises tolerable, and Broadcom acquired its first serious piece of litigation over the VMware licensing model. Here is what changed and what it means.
Executive summary of the August changes:
From 1 November 2025, Microsoft aligns Enterprise Agreement pricing for Online Services with public web pricing. That removes the volume discount tiers customers have used to soften the impact of large renewals.
For organisations with tens of thousands of seats, the effect is immediate. For smaller organisations, it removes the one pricing lever they could realistically pull. Microsoft’s intent is not hidden: simplify pricing, and push more customers into CSP, where discounts are harder to negotiate and contract terms are less flexible.
Implications. Any budget forecast that assumes historical discounting is already out of date. Procurement teams need to prepare executives for higher costs and adjust their negotiating position accordingly. The focus is likely to shift towards securing value through multi-year commitments, premium services such as Copilot, or workload bundling. Start scenario planning now, so the renewal conversation is not the first time anyone sees the number.
Oracle’s handling of Java licensing remains a live problem. The 2023 Universal Subscription model is the reason: it licenses every employee, not just the people using Java. For a large organisation that turns a modest technical dependency into a headcount-scaled bill, and it is why open-source distributions — OpenJDK, Amazon Corretto, Azul Zulu — keep appearing on migration roadmaps.
Implications. Oracle has stepped up soft-audit outreach, and ignoring it usually escalates into a formal compliance review. Migrating to open-source Java is not free either; it needs testing, governance changes and a support plan. Either way the first step is the same, and most organisations cannot take it: a complete, evidenced inventory of every Java deployment and who actually runs it.
That is a recognition problem before it is a licensing one. CerteroX SAM resolves installations against the Software Recognition Database, which holds more than 3.5 million normalised publisher, product and version titles, and AppsMonitor meters actual file-based usage with first-used and last-used tracking and a rolling 90-day utilisation figure. The difference between “Java is installed on 4,000 machines” and “Java has been executed on 900 of them in the last quarter” is the difference between a defensive position and a guess.
On 30 September 2025, Microsoft ends SPLA (Services Provider Licence Agreement) use on hyperscale clouds, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
This closes years of flexibility in which managed service providers could host workloads on hyperscalers and share the cost benefit with customers. From that date, workloads must either be licensed through the hyperscaler marketplaces or moved into smaller datacentres or back on-premises.
Implications. Using SPLA on a hyperscaler after the deadline is non-compliant, and non-compliance of that shape attracts audit attention. Costs will rise, and MSPs will need to renegotiate contracts to cover their own increases. The work to do now is mapping which workloads are affected, modelling the financial impact of marketplace licensing, and getting a straight answer from your MSP about its transition plan. Left to the deadline, this becomes a compliance gap, an unbudgeted cost and a workload disruption at the same time.
Mapping is the hard part, because it requires knowing which virtual machines run which Microsoft server products on which host, across providers. CerteroX ITAM inventories VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer, Nutanix, AWS and Azure through the same agent and schema as everything else, and CerteroX SAM applies core and processor licensing with cluster and virtualisation awareness on top of it. The affected set is a query, not a spreadsheet exercise.
SAP is turning the screw on customers still running on-premises. For years, capable negotiators could secure special reductions well beyond the standard volume tiers. Unless you hold an older contract that locks in specific terms, those are largely gone, and most customers are now much closer to list price.
This is not subtle, and it is not accidental. It is SAP’s latest lever to move customers to S/4HANA and cloud subscriptions, where it has more room to charge for bundled services and lock in long-term revenue. Customers staying on ECC or running hybrid feel it first, at renewal.
Why it matters for cost and risk
Implications. Plan on the worst case — list price minus volume discount — so renewal and audit do not surprise you. Re-read every contract for protected terms or clauses that still guarantee a discount. Model both the “with discount” and “without discount” scenarios; the gap between them is your negotiating brief. Independent validation of your position is what lets you resist the timetable SAP would prefer you followed.
Independent validation means measuring SAP usage without touching production. The CerteroX SAM SAP connector is a non-invasive ABAP read: named users de-duplicated across systems, roles, role groups, engines and authorisation definitions, with priority-ordered analysis rules proposing the licence type each user should actually hold. You get the current, suggested and optimal positions side by side, which is the evidence a discount conversation turns on.
Broadcom’s integration of VMware continued to generate legal disputes, roadmap announcements and customer exits through August.
UK retailer Tesco has filed a lawsuit against VMware, Broadcom and reseller Computacenter, alleging unfair treatment over licensing and support contracts. At the centre of the dispute are Broadcom’s post-acquisition changes: the end of perpetual licences, the move to subscription, and steep support fees. Tesco argues these breached contractual agreements and created operational risk.
The outcome could set a precedent. If Tesco succeeds, other enterprises may feel able to challenge Broadcom’s licensing changes through the courts rather than absorbing them. For Broadcom, the case puts an uncomfortable spotlight on whether its post-acquisition strategy is consistent with fair contract practice.
At VMware Explore 2025, Broadcom doubled down on VMware Cloud Foundation as the flagship product, promising tighter integration, lifecycle management automation and expanded AI-driven capabilities. VCF is positioned as the single pane of glass for VMware customers, consolidating what used to be sold separately.
The reception was mixed. The technical roadmap reads well, but customers are wary of deeper lock-in as more features are tied into VCF bundles that come with subscription-only licensing. For organisations already absorbing cost increases, “all-in on VCF” reads less like innovation and more like revenue design.
Reports continued of large enterprises leaving VMware altogether, citing cost increases, subscription-only contracts and inflexible terms. Alternatives including Nutanix, KVM, OpenStack and open-source hypervisors are gaining traction among organisations that want to regain cost control and reduce dependency on a single vendor.
These migrations are not trivial — they are multi-year programmes with real per-workload cost. That major enterprises are willing to take them on anyway is the clearest signal of how far VMware’s standing has fallen since the acquisition.
Implications. VMware customers face three risks at once:
What ITAM teams should do
All four depend on knowing your actual per-core position across every hypervisor you run, not the position your last renewal assumed. CerteroX SAM handles assignment per device, per processor and per core, with the virtualisation topology coming from the same inventory that discovered the hosts.
Microsoft closed its financial year with another set of results that make the direction of travel obvious. From Microsoft’s FY25 Q4 earnings release, for the quarter ended 30 June 2025:
Source: Microsoft, FY25 Q4 earnings release, 30 July 2025.
The story behind the numbers is how the licensing strategy works. Copilot is not sold as a simple add-on; it is bundled into premium tiers, so customers who want the AI functionality have limited routes to it other than upgrading. Revenue per user rises, dependency deepens, and Microsoft’s position at renewal strengthens.
Market context. These results also put Microsoft ahead in the AI arms race. Google and AWS are investing heavily in their own AI portfolios, but weaving AI directly into products people already use is paying off faster. That creates pressure on IT leaders to justify not adopting Copilot, particularly where competitors already have.
Implications. For ITAM teams, the results are both a warning and a prompt:
Treat Copilot adoption as a licensing decision, not just a productivity one. Model the value delivered against the premium, and look for negotiating room elsewhere in the Microsoft agreement to offset it. The prerequisite for both is knowing who is actually using what: CerteroX SaaS Management converges identity provider sync, vendor API connectors and a browser extension to attribute real usage per user, flags licences with 30 or more days of zero usage, and reports cost per licensed user against cost per active user. If you are going to argue that half the E5 seats are not earning their place, you need that number before the meeting, not after it.
Other posts covering the same ground.
Hybrid IT broke the ITAM tools built for the data centre. What unified discovery, software recognition and governance actually have to cover when your assets span on-premises, virtual, cloud and SaaS — and how to test a vendor against it.
Four things that stall a transformation programme — organisational resistance, data silos, legacy infrastructure and the skills gap — and what each one actually requires of your IT asset data before you can move past it.
The difference between a genuine SAM platform and a rebranded collection of tools, and the eight criteria worth testing before you sign anything.
Everything argued above is checkable. Name the publisher, the billing account or the platform you would argue with, and the session is built around it — the reasoning attached, not a summary slide.
No gated download at the end of it.