IBM Audit Defense

Stay one step ahead of IBM and its license compliance audit firms.

High impact audit expertise

IBM periodically audits its customers through third parties such as KPMG and Deloitte. These audits can be disruptive and sometimes lead to significant license compliance exposure. We provide immediate support, helping you to navigate the audit process to ensure optimal results, whichever audit phase you are in.

Many organizations unknowingly face license compliance risks far exceeding their annual spend. We can help reduce any license shortfall value by more than 90%, even when the audit firm has already shared the draft audit report.

Protect your organization

High impact audit expertise

IBM periodically audits its customers through third parties such as KPMG and Deloitte. These audits can be disruptive and sometimes lead to significant license compliance exposure. We provide immediate support, helping you to navigate the audit process to ensure optimal results, whichever audit phase you are in.

Many organizations unknowingly face license compliance risks far exceeding their annual spend. We can help reduce any license shortfall value by more than 90%, even when the audit firm has already shared the draft audit report.

Protect your organization

Key services

Initial risk assessment

During our one-week risk assessment we compare your IBM entitlements list and discovery tool reports with our audit benchmark data. We then identify your key risk areas and establish a high-level plan to mitigate those risks.

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Internal audit

Using detailed audit procedures for all IBM products in scope, we produce an effective license position (ELP) report, equivalent to those produced by IBM’s own audit firms.

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External audit support

From negotiating the audit scope and data collection approach, to delivering technical evidence, we guide you through the external audit from start to finish.

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Audit report review and settlement support

Our careful and detailed analysis of the draft ELP identifies all mitigating evidence, technical arguments and licensing interpretations, helping to reduce your compliance exposure and strengthen your settlement negotiating position with IBM.

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Benefits of IBM Audit Defense

Manage the timeline

During our IBM audit support process, we do whatever we can to take the pressure off your organization by pushing back the audit dates where needed, so you have the time and peace of mind to make well-considered decisions.

Risk mitigation

With our innovative tooling and expertise, we can quickly assess and subsequently minimize the damage of any hidden non-compliance.

Our goal is to ensure optimal financial results for our clients. This includes mitigating full capacity risk exposure, even in the absence of the IBM license metric tool.

Avoid future non-compliance

If your organization does need to pay a settlement, we strive to tailor this investment to your future IT environment, by ensuring it fits within your medium-term IT strategy, helping to avoid future non-compliance.

Streamlined audit process

IBM audits can often take up to two years. Our extensive technical audit experience reduces the effort required to navigate the audit process.

See the results for yourself

We work with a variety of IBM customers, across a wide range of industries and specialisms.

By relying on our vast experience, our clients achieve tangible cost savings and real results, every time.

This project started by coordinating audit information collection from 50+ stakeholders in a large and complex organization. We mitigated ILMT deficiencies during their audit and collected evidence to support the client during their audit report negotiations.

We reduced the client’s risk from $140M to $8M in the final settlement.

In this pre-audit support + audit support project, our experts conducted an initial risk assessment that conducted that the client’s full capacity risk was $38M. By helping them to implement ILMT and audit support, we brought their final settlement down to $400k (a 99% risk reduction).

We performed a second-opinion review of a KPMG audit report, and supported with the client’s subsequent negotiations with IBM.

Through this process we fully mitigated $3.1m in fees that were incorrectly claimed by IBM, resulting in 100% risk mitigation.

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Expert IBM support

If you’re facing an imminent IBM audit, book a call with one of our experts today. Fill out the form and we’ll be in touch within 24 hours.

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