IT Advisory

IT Cost Optimisation: Quick Wins You Can Check This Month

Last updated 2 October 2026

IT cost optimisation means finding spend that buys little value and redirecting it, while service stays the same or improves. The quickest places to look are unused licences, idle or oversized cloud resources, and contracts that renew without anyone deciding. Each can be checked with data you probably already hold, before any project starts.

The steps below run from savings you can confirm this month to savings that wait for a renewal date, which is a practical order for IT cost optimisation and for anyone asked to reduce IT costs quickly. Most of it is practitioner method. Where a framework or vendor document says something specific, the text names it and the Sources list links to it. No saving is promised in advance, because the size of each depends on what your own data shows.

Start the IT spend review with one list

An IT spend review is the first step of IT cost optimisation, and it needs a single list before anything is cut. For every line, record what you pay, to whom, for what, when it renews and who owns it. Build it from the finance ledger for IT cost centres and the billing consoles of your cloud and software vendors, then check it against your contract folders.

The sources will not agree. The gaps are often the first findings, such as a subscription paid on a department card or a cloud account nobody owns. If you also need a proper asset and licence record, the IT asset management checklist sets out the steps.

Give each line a named owner. IT cost optimisation without one rarely delivers, because nobody has the authority to switch anything off.

IT cost optimisation quick wins for this month

Licence rationalisation starts with who uses each seat

Licence rationalisation means bringing the number and type of licences you pay for in line with what people use and are entitled to. It is often the first part of IT cost optimisation to check, because the usage data already sits in the vendor’s admin console. Start with your largest per-user suite. In Microsoft 365, the admin centre’s Active users report shows each user’s last activity date per service and whether a licence is assigned, over 7, 30, 90 or 180 days. A paid account with no activity for 90 days is a candidate for review.

Candidates are not conclusions. Someone on long leave, a seasonal role or a shared mailbox can be correctly licensed and quiet. As an illustration only, if you hold 400 seats and 310 accounts were active in the last 90 days, the gap of 90 is the number to investigate, not the number to cancel.

Compare three figures for each product: what you are entitled to, what is assigned, and what is used. The FinOps Foundation describes the aim as avoiding both over-deployment, which is a compliance risk, and under-deployment, which is shelfware. Check the gap in both directions before cancelling anything. Then read the contract to see whether seats can come off mid-term or only at renewal.

Cloud cost optimisation begins with idle, oversized and unscheduled resources

Within IT cost optimisation, cloud cost optimisation covers three separate checks. The FinOps Foundation’s Usage Optimization capability names them as removing idle resources, rightsizing, and running resources only when needed.

Idle resources. Look for storage disks attached to nothing, old backups and snapshots, and test environments left over from finished projects. Azure Advisor, for example, flags disks not attached to a virtual machine and warns that deleting a disk is irreversible. Take a snapshot and confirm the data is not needed first.
Oversized resources. Azure Advisor also recommends right-sizing or shutting down underutilised virtual machines, and notes that low use can be by design. A server that looks idle for eleven months may carry year-end processing, so ask its owner before resizing.
Resources running when nobody needs them. Test and training environments often do not need to run overnight or at weekends. The FinOps Foundation describes scheduled start and stop for pre-production. Check that no overnight job depends on them first.

Duplicate tools and orphaned subscriptions

Ask every department head for the tools their team pays for. For IT cost optimisation, two project-tracking products or several file-sharing subscriptions are typical things to look for. Consolidating saves fees but costs migration effort and retraining, so count both before you decide.

Commitments and consolidation for the next quarter

Commitments are where IT cost optimisation can go wrong expensively. Commitment discounts lower the unit price in return for committing to one or three years of use. AWS, for example, describes its Savings Plans as a commitment to a specified amount of compute usage per hour for one or three years. The FinOps Foundation compares commitments to coupons. If no matching resource is running, you still pay.

So the order matters. Remove waste and rightsize first, then commit to the steady baseline you are confident will still exist in a year. The Foundation also cautions against waiting until usage is perfectly tuned before considering commitments, since that tends to cost more than a balanced approach. Start with the part of the bill that has been flat for months.

This is also the point in IT cost optimisation to decide which duplicate tools to retire, and to ask each vendor you keep for a price review against your current usage rather than last year’s forecast.

Contracts and support at each renewal

A contract that renews by default spends money nobody approved this year. List every contract above a threshold you choose, with its renewal date and notice period, for the next 12 to 18 months, and set a reminder well before each notice date. These dates set the calendar for your IT cost optimisation work. Renewal dates belong on the roadmap as well, as the guide to an IT roadmap that survives budget season explains.

At each renewal, check whether the service is still needed, whether the quantity is right, whether a competing quote exists and whether the support terms still match what you run. Support contracts deserve a specific check, because they can keep covering equipment that was retired years ago. Compare each support schedule with your current asset list.

What to leave alone when you reduce IT costs

Some IT cost optimisation measures cost more than they save.

Backup, recovery and monitoring. The National Cybersecurity Authority’s Essential Cybersecurity Controls (ECC-2:2024) apply to government agencies and their affiliated entities and to private entities that own, operate or host critical national infrastructure. They require backup scope to cover critical assets and periodic testing that recovery works (control 2-9-3), and they require continuous monitoring of cybersecurity event logs (control 2-12). If you are in scope, a cost cut here is a compliance problem.
Data location. A cheaper cloud region or provider can change where your data sits. ECC-2:2024 records that its data-localisation controls were moved to the National Data Management Office at SDAIA, and it tells entities to refer to that office before acting. Treat location as a requirement, not a price variable.
The only person who knows a system. Releasing a contractor before knowledge is documented moves cost into risk.

How to report IT cost optimisation savings honestly

Report each saving on three separate lines. The first is the recurring annual saving. The second is the one-off cost of getting it, such as migration work, early-termination fees and staff time. The third is cost avoided, for example a price rise you declined. Only the first is a reduction. The second lowers the net figure, and the third should stay out of the headline.

Record the price before the change, because an IT cost optimisation saving cannot be shown without a baseline. Then check again after 90 days. Licences get reassigned and cloud resources reappear. The FinOps Foundation calls its three phases Inform, Optimize and Operate, and the third is what stops savings drifting back.

If spend is spread across many vendors and nobody has time to build the baseline, WASNA Digital Solutions offers IT cost analysis within its IT strategy and technology consulting, which can be bought on its own. The result depends on what the review finds, so no figure is promised beforehand.

Get a second view of your IT spend

Tell us which contracts, licences and cloud accounts are in scope and when your budget is set. We will say where IT cost optimisation is likely to find the most.

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