A compliance assessment builds your Effective License Position (ELP): a reconciliation of what you have deployed and consumed against what you have actually bought, by product and licensing metric. Doing it before a publisher does means you find and fix any shortfall on your own terms, with the findings under your control rather than in an auditor's claim.
Last reviewed: 5 June 2026 · A directory, not a ranking. Information, not legal advice.
A compliance assessment, often sold as an ELP or licence health check, answers one question for a given publisher: across every product and metric in your estate, are you over-licensed, under-licensed, or exactly compliant? The work has three parts. First, inventory: what is installed, deployed, or actively used, gathered from your own tooling rather than the vendor's scripts. Second, entitlement: what your contracts, order forms, and amendments actually grant, including downgrade, virtualization, and migration rights that vendors routinely under-credit. Third, reconciliation: the two sets compared under the correct counting rules for each product, producing a position by metric with the assumptions written down.
The highest-value time to run an assessment is before anyone else looks. Surveys in 2024 and 2025 reported that 62 to 63 percent of organisations faced at least one software audit within a rolling 12-month period, with Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Oracle Java, Red Hat, and Broadcom's VMware the consistent escalation leaders, and 52 percent of audited firms now bring in outside defense help. Common triggers for a proactive ELP are an approaching renewal or true-up, a merger or acquisition, a major virtualization or cloud migration, the expiry of an unlimited agreement, or early, informal vendor interest. Finding a shortfall yourself lets you remediate, re-architect, or buy on a normal commercial timeline rather than under audit pressure.
A typical engagement scopes the publishers and entities in question, collects inventory and entitlement data under an NDA, reconciles the position, and delivers a report with the surplus or shortfall by product, the assumptions behind each number, and a remediation path. Good firms keep the raw data with you, document every counting assumption so the position can be defended later, and separate the factual reconciliation from any commercial recommendation. Because the same skills apply to audit defense, many firms offer both; the directory lists each firm's services plainly so you can engage one firm for the assessment, another for any defense, or the same firm for both.
This page lists firms; it does not rank them. They appear in neutral alphabetical order by firm name, and no firm is marked best, top, leading, or recommended anywhere on the site. Independence, meaning no vendor partnership, no reseller relationship, and no commission, is listed as a pro, because the firm's incentives then align with an accurate position. A reseller, Big-Four, or vendor-side audit relationship is listed as a con, because it is a potential conflict with buyer-side work. Neither is a verdict; both are factual trade-offs for you to weigh.
Listed alphabetically with balanced pros and cons. A directory, not a ranking.
Independent boutique focused on multi-vendor licensing compliance and audit defense.
Independent boutique with a ServiceNow-led estate reconciliation practice spanning major vendors.
IT sourcing and compliance advisory, now part of Accenture, working multi-vendor audit and optimization.
German vendor-neutral consultancy with a SAM and audit-defense practice across the DACH region.
Independent boutique known for Oracle-on-VMware and cloud licensing positions, including in-court testimony.
Independent advisory that does not resell, implement, or run vendor audits, staffed by ex-vendor auditors.
Independent multi-vendor licensing advisory covering audit defense, negotiation, and ongoing optimization, including Tier-2 publishers.
Independent boutique pairing buyer-side advisory with its ArxPlatform tooling and a compliance-guarantee model.
Independent boutique with strong IBM and VMware/Broadcom reconciliation work and current enforcement content.
Independent, ex-Oracle-led firm focused on Oracle contracts, Java exposure, and negotiation, with no Oracle partnership.
Independent, buyer-side licensing advisory with the broadest multi-vendor coverage in our registry.
Listed alphabetically by firm name, not a ranking. Every firm shows balanced pros and cons. Independence is shown as a pro and a reseller, Big-Four, or vendor-side audit relationship as a con, both as factual trade-offs for you to weigh. Firm data is demo until the verified registry is live.
The metric and the common findings differ by publisher. Pick the vendor whose position you need to establish.
Build an ELP for your Microsoft estate →
Build an ELP for your Oracle estate →
Build an ELP for your SAP estate →
Build an ELP for your IBM estate →
Build an ELP for your Salesforce estate →
Build an ELP for your ServiceNow estate →
Build an ELP for your Broadcom VMware estate →
Build an ELP for your Adobe estate →
An ELP is a reconciliation of deployed and consumed software against your purchased entitlements for a given publisher, expressed as a surplus or shortfall by product and metric. It is the factual baseline a buyer uses to understand exposure before an audit or renewal.
A compliance assessment is commissioned by you and stays under your control, so the findings are yours to act on privately. A vendor audit is initiated by the publisher, follows its process, and produces a claim. An ELP done first lets you fix gaps on your own terms.
Common triggers are an approaching renewal or true-up, a merger or acquisition, a major virtualization or cloud migration, the expiry of an unlimited agreement, or simply a vendor showing audit interest. Running one before the vendor does preserves the most options.
Many do, and the skills overlap, but the directory lists each firm's services factually so you can pick a firm for the assessment, the defense, or both. Independence is shown as a pro and any reseller or vendor-side relationship as a con.
Yes. The directory and matching are free for buyers, no vendor sees your brief, and we take no money from software publishers.