License optimization is one of the fastest ways identity teams can deliver measurable value without changing business workflows. The challenge is that in most organizations, “license management” lives in spreadsheets, tribal knowledge, and last-minute renewal drills. You can see how many licenses you bought. You can often see how many are assigned. But turning that into an operational answer (who is assigned, who is actually active, and what that costs) takes time.
Syba Identity’s Entra license cost and app-level cost analysis is built to make that question operational and repeatable: load the relevant Entra datasets, model costs, and surface the parts of spend that deserve human review. This stays aligned to Syba’s positioning around visibility, optimization, and audit readiness (Syba Identity).
Why Entra license optimization is harder than it should be
In a modern enterprise, “Entra license optimization” isn’t a single problem. It’s a stack of problems that compound:
- Licenses are purchased at the tenant level, but value is realized per user or per app.
- Assignments often outlive intent (contractors, role changes, project-based access).
- Activity signals are messy: usage can be intermittent, and “no sign-in” can mean “not used,” “sign-in data not available,” or “user uses a different path.”
- You need audit-friendly reasoning: “we removed it because we felt like it” doesn’t fly.
The practical goal is not to automate removals blindly. It’s to give IAM and governance teams an accurate map of spend so they can decide where to focus.
What Syba uses (high level, without exposing proprietary logic)
Syba’s Entra cost analysis is grounded in three kinds of data that are commonly available in Entra environments:
- License snapshots: what exists/what’s owned at a point in time.
- License assignments: who is assigned what.
- Activity indicators: sign-in/activity fields that help approximate “active” vs “inactive” usage over a chosen window.
Syba then combines those with cost inputs (for example, cost-per-user-per-month for a SKU, or per-user app license cost where applicable) to compute:
- Estimated monthly cost for assigned licenses
- Estimated “inactive portion” of assigned licenses based on inactivity thresholds
- Estimated “unassigned portion” (owned but not assigned)
- A prioritized view of potential savings to review
This approach is intentionally operational: it helps teams identify high-value investigation targets without claiming magical accuracy beyond what the upstream data can support.
Tenant-level view: SKU costs, assignments, and potential savings
At the tenant (license SKU) level, the most useful output for many organizations is a simple breakdown:
- Total owned vs assigned vs unassigned
- Within assigned: how many accounts appear active vs inactive based on your policy window
- Monthly cost estimates for each portion
- “Potential savings” estimates that highlight where to investigate first
Syba supports configurable windows so teams can align the “inactive” definition to the organization’s posture. Some environments use 30 days. Others use 60 or 90. The important point is consistency: once you define the window, the analysis becomes repeatable and measurable over time.
App-level view: where spend hides in “enterprise applications”
Tenant SKUs tell one part of the story. In practice, some of the biggest waste comes from app-level entitlements: users who still have access to an app that costs money per user, but who no longer need it.
Syba includes an Entra app license cost analysis view to help answer:
- Which enterprise apps have a license cost assigned in Syba?
- How many users are assigned to each app?
- How many appear active within the selected window?
- What is the estimated monthly cost and the “inactive” portion that deserves review?
Syba also includes app provisioning visibility so teams can apply practical filters. For example, you may want to focus first on apps where provisioning is enabled (because those apps typically represent more operational dependency and risk if mismanaged).
Again, the point is prioritization, not blind automation.
Interpreting “inactive”: avoid the common traps
The fastest way to create friction with stakeholders is to treat “inactive” as a definitive verdict. It isn’t. It’s a signal.
When you use license analysis responsibly, you treat inactivity as:
- a queue for investigation, and
- an input for governance workflows (reviews, approvals, exceptions)
And you always keep context in mind:
- Some roles sign in rarely but still need access.
- Some apps are used through automation.
- Some data can be constrained by upstream licensing/permissions for audit logs.
Syba helps reduce this ambiguity by pairing cost outputs with operational reporting and connector health visibility, so teams can distinguish “no activity” from “no data.”
How teams operationalize savings (without destabilizing access)
The biggest wins usually come from establishing a consistent cadence:
- Review the top cost drivers and the “inactive” queue
- Validate with app owners or business stakeholders where appropriate
- Use a governance campaign or controlled process to track decisions
- Apply changes in batches, with documentation
Syba is designed to support this workflow: analysis identifies candidates, and governance/operations workflows help ensure decisions are reviewable later. That keeps cost optimization aligned with audit readiness (Syba Identity).
A practical “first month” approach
If you’re implementing cost analysis for the first time, this phased approach works well:
- Week 1: validate inputs (tenants connected, costs entered where applicable, connector health clean).
- Week 2: run a first pass and pick a narrow scope (one SKU or one app category).
- Week 3: perform a small pilot remediation with approvals and an exception path.
- Week 4: measure the impact and expand scope.
This creates a repeatable operational loop instead of a one-time exercise.
Closing thought: savings are a governance outcome, not a spreadsheet outcome
The goal of license analysis isn’t to generate a pretty report. It’s to create a reliable process that helps teams remove waste safely, defend decisions during audits, and improve operational efficiency over time.
If you want to see how Syba models Entra tenant-level and app-level costs (without exposing sensitive internal logic), request a demo and we’ll walk through the reporting views and the workflow that teams use to turn “potential savings” into controlled action (Syba Identity).