Service 02 · Assessment

Measure. Before they do.

A proactive licensing assessment of your full Broadcom estate — VMware, Symantec, CA Technologies, and Carbon Black. We map every entitlement against actual deployment, surface every exposure, and hand you a remediation plan that closes the gap on your timeline, not Broadcom's.

Contact Us → Read: What Broadcom collects

The cheapest defence is knowing first.

Audit exposure is almost never a surprise to the auditor. By the time an audit letter arrives, Broadcom's sales operations team has already modelled your likely shortfall based on telemetry, partner data, and your renewal trajectory. The customer is the only party that does not know the answer.

A licensing assessment closes that information asymmetry. It tells you, before the auditor does, what the exposure is, where it sits, and how much of it can be remediated unilaterally. That changes every conversation that follows.

What the assessment produces.

You receive a written entitlement register for every Broadcom product family in use, a deployment baseline drawn from your own discovery data, a reconciliation table showing variance and probable monetary exposure at Broadcom's current list pricing, and a prioritised remediation plan ranked by cost-to-close.

The deliverable is yours and stays under privilege where appropriate. We never share findings with Broadcom or any partner.

How the assessment runs.

01
Contract baseline
We collect every executed agreement, order form, amendment, and acquired-entity entitlement. We build a single authoritative entitlement register — the only source of truth for what you actually own.
02
Deployment discovery
We use buyer-side telemetry to measure actual deployment of vSphere, vSAN, NSX, VCF, Horizon, Symantec, CA, and Carbon Black. We never depend on a Broadcom-supplied tool or partner data collector.
03
Reconciliation & exposure model
Entitlement vs deployment, line by line. We quantify the gap in licence units and in monetary terms at current Broadcom pricing. We flag the claim lines that are genuine versus contestable.
04
Remediation plan
Prioritised actions ranked by cost-to-close — reconfiguration, decommission, re-host, contractual reclassification, or commercial true-up. You decide which to action and when.

What gets measured in an assessment.

Each Broadcom product family has its own measurement rules and its own audit traps. The assessment covers all of them.

Common questions about assessments.

How long does an assessment take?
A focused assessment of a single product family typically runs four to six weeks end-to-end. A full Broadcom-portfolio assessment for a global enterprise runs eight to twelve weeks. Most of the elapsed time is contract collection and discovery — once the data is in, modelling moves quickly.
Do we have to install your discovery tool?
No. We can work from your existing CMDB, hypervisor inventory exports, vRealize / Aria data, endpoint management reports, and your own SAM tool feeds. When supplementary collection is needed we use buyer-side scripts that you run and control. Nothing phones home.
Will an assessment trigger an audit?
No. We do not interact with Broadcom on your behalf during an assessment. The work is internal and confidential. Many clients run an assessment specifically because they expect an audit and want to be ready.
Can the findings be used under legal privilege?
Yes, where the engagement is structured with your in-house or external counsel. We routinely deliver assessments into privileged channels. Speak to your counsel about the framing you prefer.
What happens after the assessment?
You own the deliverable. If you want help executing the remediation plan or preparing for a renewal negotiation we can extend the engagement into our negotiation or advisory services. There is no obligation to continue.
Engagement structure

What it costs. Roughly.

Typical fixed fee
£25K – £250K
Scaled to audit size, product mix, and timeline urgency.
Success component
% of documented saving
Negotiated up front. Capped. Aligned to claim reduction.
Typical payback
8 – 30×
Fees vs documented claim reduction across 280+ engagements.

Final quote in writing after a free 48-hour position assessment. No engagement commitment until the assessment is complete.

Deep-dive reading

Pillar guides supporting this service

Pillar guide
Build a Broadcom Compliance Programme
Pillar guide
VMware Licensing After Broadcom
Pillar guide
CA Technologies Licensing After Broadcom

Audit might be coming.
Know your position first.

A buyer-side assessment puts you in front of the data Broadcom is already modelling. Confidential, independent, no obligation.

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