Everyone knows that proprietary software licenses — such as those for Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server — are far more expensive than open-source alternatives like Linux. Yet in the cloud, these license costs have historically been bundled directly into the price of compute instances, making it nearly impossible to see exactly how much you’re paying for software versus infrastructure.
Until recently, Cloudamize followed the industry standard of including license costs within the total cost of compute. Consider this real-world example using a common memory-optimized instance:
- The On-Demand cost of an R7a.4xlarge instance with Linux is about $889/month.
- The same instance with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is about $1,015/month.
- With Windows Server and SQL Server Standard Edition, the price jumps to about $2,827/month.
In actuality, the base compute cost is identical in all three scenarios — approximately $889/month. The difference is entirely due to the included licenses: roughly $126 for RHEL and $1,938 for Windows plus SQL Server Standard. This bundling has long hidden the true impact of licensing on your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), especially in Microsoft-centric environments where licenses can represent a substantial portion of your cloud spend.
Cloudamize Now Delivers Full License Transparency
The Cloudamize Console has been updated to clearly separate included license costs from base compute costs. You can now see at a glance exactly how much of each recommended instance’s price is attributable to the operating system and any bundled database licenses.
This simple but powerful change gives you unprecedented visibility into your true cloud economics and makes it far easier to identify and act on optimization opportunities.
With full visibility into license costs, Cloudamize helps you find practical ways to reduce them during migration or cloud optimization.
1. Automatic Core Optimization Based on Actual Workload
Cloudamize calculates the precise number of vCPUs your workloads actually require by analyzing detailed performance metrics collected during the assessment period. The platform then recommends instances sized to those real needs, automatically reducing the number of licensed cores wherever possible.
This optimization applies to both Bring Your Own License (BYOL) and License-Included scenarios (following AWS’s late-2025 enhancements that extended core reduction to License-Included Windows and SQL Server instances). The result is automatic savings — often 20-50% or more on licensing costs — simply by paying only for the cores your workloads truly use, while still meeting memory, storage, and network requirements.
For a deep dive into how this feature works, including real customer results showing millions in license savings across thousands of servers, see our previous blog post: Unlocking Cloud Savings: Reduce License Costs by Optimizing Cores.
2. Actionable SQL Server License and Usage Insights
During the standard two-week assessment, Cloudamize automatically collects detailed performance metrics for every server, including basic SQL Server details such as edition, version, and core usage. For deeper analysis, customers can enable advanced database-specific metrics using the Cloudamize agentless data collector or SQL Telemetry tool.
The resulting SQL Server License and Usage Report summarizes everything into a clear, easy-to-digest format. It highlights immediate savings opportunities such as:
- Servers not using any Enterprise Edition-only features can safely be downgraded to Standard Edition, delivering 73.9% savings on SQL Server license costs for those instances.
- Non-production environments can often switch to the free SQL Server Developer Edition instead of paid licenses.
- Additional insights into actual feature utilization, database workload patterns, and core requirements that compound savings when combined with instance rightsizing.
These reports turn complex licensing rules into straightforward, actionable recommendations — helping you avoid over-licensing without any guesswork.
Achieving the Lowest Possible TCO
By unbundling license costs and equipping you with intelligent optimization tools, Cloudamize goes beyond traditional rightsizing to deliver holistic, license-aware cloud recommendations. Organizations that leverage these capabilities routinely uncover substantial savings that were previously invisible in bundled pricing models.
Whether you’re planning a lift-and-shift migration, modernizing applications, or optimizing an existing AWS environment, license transparency and optimization are now essential levers for minimizing TCO while maintaining performance and compliance.
Ready to see your true license costs and start unlocking savings? Request a free assessment or contact the Cloudamize team today. Our experts will show you exactly how much you can save with full license transparency and optimization.
Author
