Two calls, before the response.

The first call is a working call, typically thirty to forty five minutes, and the purpose is to scope the matter. Three artefacts make the call materially more useful when available. The first is the audit notice itself, if Red Hat or a Red Hat compliance partner has issued one. The second is the next Red Hat renewal date, even approximately, since the calendar to renewal is the constraint against which everything else must be sequenced. The third is the rough current annual Red Hat spend, at the level of a band rather than an exact figure, sufficient to identify deal desk thresholds and the latitude of the responding account team.

None of those artefacts are required to take the call. Engagements have opened on calls where the buyer had only a renewal date and a suspicion that the figure being quoted was off market. Where the audit notice is already in hand, however, the desk treats the call as time sensitive and books it within twenty four hours of inbound. The companion brief on audit defense protocol sets out the response calendar.

The second call follows within a few business days. The desk states what it would do, what the leverage actually appears to be, and whether the practice is the right firm. If the firm is not the right fit, the desk says so and refers the buyer to the closest appropriate resource. For the full firm posture, see the hub on the buyer side Red Hat practice and its independence.

The practice will not sell Red Hat. It is not a reseller, holds no Red Hat partnership of any kind, and earns no commission on any Red Hat product purchased or renewed by a client during or after an engagement. It will not recommend that a buyer purchase more Red Hat subscriptions; the recommendation it does make, where the data supports it, is the one consistent with the buyer's interest in the matter, which is frequently to purchase less rather than more. It will not act as a procurement channel and will not place orders on the buyer's behalf.

The practice does not represent both sides of a Red Hat conversation. It does not take Red Hat engagements. It does not take engagements from Red Hat resellers. It does not advise channel partners on margin design or on customer pricing strategy. The point is structural: a counterparty that sells the product cannot represent the buyer of that product without an embedded conflict, and the practice declines the second engagement rather than carry the conflict. Reading on the question, and on the reseller margin point in particular, is treated in the brief on buyer side only advisory and the reseller conflict.

If the second call ends with both sides aligned that the engagement is the right fit, the desk issues a scoping memo within a few business days. The memo sets the deliverables, the calendar, the named analyst lead, and the fixed fee. The fee is set against the defined scope of work and is not contingent on the eventual settlement figure or any other downstream outcome. There is no percentage of recovered exposure and no separate success fee.

An engagement letter follows the scoping memo, signed by both parties. The desk does not invoice for the two analyst calls, the scoping memo, or the engagement letter itself; the fee clock starts at signature. The full service catalogue is treated in the hub on Red Hat licensing benchmarks and the six service surfaces.