SQL Server Tools and Consulting Assessments Cost & Pricing Guide
We understand that IT Budgets are shrinking, and the pressure is on you to ensure you are spending those budget dollars wisely. Our goal is to empower you with an honest and reliable estimate on the costs to assess your SQL Licensing environment to help you budget for your project.
This SQL Server Tools and Consulting Assessment pricing guide will help you develop an initial budget and plan for the costs associated with the different types of assessments that we offer.
Want more details on how SQL Server Licensing and pricing works? Check out our blog post on this topic.
Cost of SQL Server Assessments: A few things to consider…
There are a few things to consider when looking at the costs of these types of consulting engagements:
Your IT Environment
• The size of your SQL Server Environment
• The complexity of your architecture
• Is SQL in the Cloud (AWS or Azure) or 3rd party datacenters?
• Any tools that you currently have for inventory or Software Asset Management (SAM)?
How you purchase
• Is there any customization in your contract?
• Do you have a good accounting for all your license entitlements?
• Are you mixing and matching licenses from multiple contracts?
• Do you purchase Software Assurance on all licenses?
Your Consultant
• How much (or how little involvement) do you want from a consultant?
• How experienced is the consultancy staff? Are they junior and just starting out; or do they have years of experience?
• Amount of training your consultant provides its staff?
• What level of customer service do you need?
Your answers in the three categories above will have a definite impact on the cost of an engagement. We always remind people that a Single SQL Enterprise Server can cost $35,000 or more. With the right program and team in place committed to finding ways to reduce the costs on a couple of these servers will more than pay for the cost of your entire engagement.
Now let’s look at how each of these categories factor into pricing:
Your IT Environment
Obviously, the more SQL Servers you have, the more time it is going to take to collect, process and analyze the data needed to determine an Estimated License Position. A complex environment (multiple domains, multiple toolsets, 3rd party data centers, etc.) will also contribute to the overall costs of an engagement. Environment size and complexity are things that add to the costs of the engagement, but effective tools can decrease costs. Tools that provide accurate inventory versus tracking via a spreadsheet (or anything in between) also impact the price.
How you purchase
Do you have an accurate inventory of what you own, and do you fully understand what your contractual rights are for Microsoft SQL Server? The more places you purchase from (we have clients that have 30 or 40 contracts), the more difficult it can be to get a complete picture of what you own. Although these factors may have a limited impact on cost – clients are often surprised with just how long it might take to gather this information.
Your Consultant
There are a lot of people out there that are ex-vendor or licensing experts. This could be anyone from your reseller, a small consulting firm that specializes in licensing and Software Asset Management, to the big consulting firms. You want to make sure you partner with someone that understands you and is going to invest the time in constantly training their people. By some reports, Microsoft makes almost 500 changes per year to their licensing programs. MetrixData 360 prides itself on the quality of our staff. We spend hundreds of hours each year training all of our staff on licensing changes and industry trends. Your data is where we really shine. Our clients will happily serve as references for us on our ability to take your data and make information clear and concise so you can make informed decisions on your SQL Server Licensing requirements.
SQL Server Tools and Consulting Assessments Costs:
Depending on the type of SQL Servers Assessment you are looking for the costs will vary.
To use our curated toolset for a do-it-yourself approach the costs for a SQL Assessment start as low as a $5000 one-time set-up fee + $20 per SQL Server.
Assessments that are done as a consulting engagement or assessments to make your SAM Tool work for you range in price from $10,000 to $50,000+.
SQL Cloud assessments are typically annual engagements where we monitor your on-premise servers and your cloud environment to decrease overall costs to run SQL in VMware, Azure, or AWS environments (these engagements typically include all your Windows Servers as well). These assessments start at $7500 one-time set up fee + $150 per year per instance.
