Microsoft 365 spend grows while nobody is watching
Licenses, storage and premium services are easy to switch on and easy to forget. Left ungoverned, three costs climb quietly on every invoice:
Licenses nobody uses
Disabled and inactive accounts keep their assignments, every unused seat renews at full price, and overlapping license bundles can take one user from $40 a month to several hundred.
Storage that scales itself
When SharePoint or OneDrive approaches its limit, your subscription can auto-scale, and the overage lands on the next bill.
Premium and pay-as-you-go services
Power Apps on premium licenses and Copilot agents billed by consumption add spend that nobody budgeted.
Nothing pays back faster in Microsoft 365 governance than optimizing licensing and storage costs
Address unnecessary platform costs as part of your overall governance approach for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Copilot, Entra ID, and Power Platform.
Reclaim the licenses nobody is using
Locating unused licenses and rectifying disabled accounts attached to licenses helps you control excess licensing costs:
- Detect inactive or disabled users
- Reclaim unused licenses
- Flag users holding overlapping licenses
- Plan license allocation with clarity
Read more about how our customer Royal BAM did it.
Act before storage costs auto-scale
Knowing your capacity thresholds means you can save on storage costs by addressing your capacity alerts straight away:
- Monitor capacity thresholds
- Receive alerts before auto-scaling
- Reduce data volumes with cleanup insights
- Avoid unexpected costs from archived OneDrive accounts
Keep premium and pay-as-you-go spend predictable
Gain visibility and remediate costly Copilot Chat consumption, Power Platform premium licenses and more for accurate cost planning:
- Identify premium Power Platform connectors
- Monitor Copilot agent consumption
- Forecast additional costs
Turn cost control into full control
Reducing cost is a great place to start your governance journey, but doesn't end here. Use Rencore Governance to:
- Stay compliant with international data protection standards (GDPR, EU AI Act, HIPAA, internal guidelines)
- Monitor AI usage and platform growth
- Automate data discovery, reporting, and policy remediation
Trusted by security, IT, and platform leaders
Security, IT, and platform leaders use Rencore to see their Microsoft estate, cut cost and risk, and roll out Copilot and agents on a governed foundation.
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Rencore provides an excellent overview of our Microsoft 365 services in a central interface, thus saving us a lot of time retrieving that information from the platform.
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Automating M365 governance with Rencore resulted in freeing up significant resources in our IT team of up to 50%.
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With Rencore's scalable automation solutions, organizations can not only meet current challenges but also prepare themselves for future technological advancements.
Case Study
Philipp Widmer Head of Platform Services Universitätsspital Basel -
26% vs 3%
Organizations that govern Microsoft 365 well realize significant Copilot value 26% of the time, versus 3% for those that do not.
Gartner, 2025 Microsoft 365 Copilot Survey -
As we continue to expand our cloud capabilities, the foundation laid by Rencore Governance will undoubtedly play a crucial role in ensuring that each step forward is taken with confidence, security, and compliance in mind.
Case Study
Claude Bisdorff Head of IT Systems Ville de Luxembourg -
116%
ROI from Microsoft 365 Copilot once the program is adopted and governed, in Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study.
Forrester Total Economic Impact -
I currently estimate that we save around €80k per year by freeing up our IT admin team to do the work that counts.
Case Study
Undisclosed Former Lead O365 Competence Center Royal BAM -
71%
of enterprises name security and governance among their top challenges to deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Gartner -
Rencore's centralized governance tool excelled at ensuring secure data in Microsoft 365 and minimizing the risk of unauthorized access.
Case Study
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150,000+
AI agents in use at the average Fortune 500 company by 2028. Agent sprawl is the next sprawl.
Gartner -
With Rencore Governance we are able to reduce manual governance activities, improve our service quality and generate valuable insights across our Microsoft service stack.
Undisclosed Head of AI & Process Automation Wacker Chemie AG
Microsoft 365 cost FAQs
Where do Microsoft 365 costs usually leak?
In four places: licenses that stay assigned to disabled or inactive accounts, storage that auto-scales when SharePoint or OneDrive reaches its limit, premium Power Platform licenses and connectors, and pay-as-you-go Copilot agent consumption. Rencore Governance reports on all four in one place.
How does Rencore Governance find unused licenses?
It flags every disabled account that still has a license assigned, every license with more enabled units than consumed, and every license assigned to a user who has not signed in for more than 90 days. From there you can reclaim seats or automate the cleanup.
How does Rencore Governance find over-licensed users?
It flags every user account holding overlapping licenses and every license with a high number of unused seats, so duplicated spend stops going unnoticed.
Can I stop storage overage charges before they happen?
Yes. Rencore Governance flags every SharePoint site collection near its storage limit and every OneDrive above 75 percent of quota, early enough to clean up or archive before your subscription auto-scales. It also names the site collections nobody has opened in 90 days and totals the storage they hold, so the cleanup starts where the wasted space actually sits.
Does this cover Copilot and Power Platform costs too?
Yes. It identifies every Power App requiring a premium license and every connection running on a premium API tier, flags Copilot Studio pay-as-you-go plans that exceed a set billing amount within 7 days, surfaces Copilot licenses unused for 30 days or more, and breaks Copilot license cost down by department for chargeback.
How much can Microsoft 365 cost optimization save?
Enough to notice on the invoice. Overlapping license bundles can take a single user from $40 a month to several hundred, and unused storage adds its own line. Royal BAM estimates around 80k euros saved per year by freeing its IT admin team from manual governance work; read the Royal BAM success story.
How do I estimate what my organization could save?
Use the cost savings calculator for an estimate based on your tenant, or start a free trial and let Rencore Governance report the real numbers from your own environment.
