Support renews annually, automatically, and without a meeting, and over a decade it usually outgrows the licenses that created it. Module 4 opens by taking the machine apart: the 22 percent base set at purchase, the uplift that doubles bills across a decade, the license sets and policies that stop the number ever falling on its own, the honest value question as products age into sustaining support, and the baseline audit that sorts a real $1.2M bill into value, shelf, ghosts, and frozen versions.
A taught session with three knowledge checks: the flat 22 percent budgeting error, the partial termination that repricing quietly defeats, and the $180K of ghost support found billing on systems decommissioned two years ago. It closes by dissecting a $1.2M support bill into $700K of value and a $500K gap that is the module's syllabus.