Project Liberate

For the past several years, IBM's Project Liberate team has been engaged in helping mid-size and large customers to understand their alternatives with respect to Microsoft Enterprise Agreements, and, in most cases, guiding them to save money.

A Project Liberate Consultant helps customers understand these enterprise agreements, and shows them alternative strategies to purchase their Microsoft licenses that often result in lower costs than are available via the Enterprise Agreement. Customers benefit by learning to buy what they need versus buying into a bundling of products that they may not fully utilize. In the process, customers have "liberated" budget dollars to fund other projects or initiatives.

Customers with Microsoft Enterprise Agreements might be able to save up to 40% or more on the cost of their renewal through this "no-charge" evaluation of their current Enterprise Agreement.

During a Project Liberate consulting engagement, the Consultant:

• Helps customers to evaluate their current expenditures with their Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and provides alternatives based on current deployment plans, product readiness and end user types.
• Shares best practices that other customers are using when negotiating Microsoft Enterprise Agreements (Office Pro vs. Office Standard, OS Upgrade charge vs. OS upgrade with hardware refresh, etc.).
• Helps customers understand what analysts are recommending when negotiating contracts with Microsoft.
• Delivers a presentation about cost savings using our experience with Microsoft contracts.

Project Liberate engagements have helped customers around the world to achieve significant cost savings.

Value Proposition:

• Potentially reduce your Microsoft bill, using the same products you use today via alternative buying options.
• Savings can self-fund innovation and productivity initiatives.
• Reduce your dependency on Microsoft bundles, buying only what you need.
• No-charge consulting engagement.

Call to Action:

Learn how to reduce your software license expenditures by downloading the following report, Project Liberate: An IBM complimentary Consulting Engagement to help customers understand alternatives when negotiating a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (PDF, 612KB).

Review the Project Liberate Consulting Engagement presentation (PDF, 136KB) for additional details about this service.

If you are interested in knowing how much a customer in your situation might be able to save, complete the attached Questionnaire (XLS, 12KB) and send it to liberate@us.ibm.com. (A Project Liberate Consultant will contact you to assist you in getting started.)

Listen to this webcast to discover ways to help save money on software costs with alternative procurement strategies.