Oracle “On the way home” sessions with Valid
This July the ‘Extended Support’ on Oracle 9 will be discontinued. As database-upgrades often raise a lot of questions and concerns, License Consulting and Valid will host a series of ‘on-the-way-home’ sessions about this subject. End users can attend – for free – and will get insight in the effect of support agreements and fees, as well as the impact of compliance: Many companies are incompliant without knowing it, and an upgrade is a great time to quantify and solve this problem. We will present our most recent case where a potential license cost with many (!!) figures was due, but with mutual efforts this need for Oracle licenses was reduced to almost zero. Read more…
Court decision – Oracle vs License Consulting 0:1
Indeed it is an incredible title for an article, and I never thought anything like it would be written by me.
Sometime last year, my house was raided by Oracle. 2 policemen and 3 bailiffs showed up, with a court order that allowed them to secure data that I obtained during a licensing project at one of my clients. Oracle was then tempting me to handover that confidential information voluntarily, not realizing I’d rather go bankrupt than do such a hideous thing Read more…
Oracle ULA contract agreement risk factors
Oracle really wants to sell ULA license agreements to everyone. ULA stands for an ‘Unlimited License Agreement’. That sounds nice, but what limitations does that unlimited license have? And, what risk factors are involved? Let’s go through the details of what exactly an ULA will do.
First let’s look at the limitations. Unlike the name, it’s limited to at least the following points:
a) The entity/entities that are listed on the agreement
b) A specific (named) list of Oracle products
c) A specific region?
d) A limited timeframe (in general, 2 to 5 years)
e) Capped to a maximum amount of Processors. That’s a ‘Capped ULA’. Very boring indeed. Read more…
The Oracle Support Recalculation issue
Sometimes you find out certain things too late when it comes to license agreements: I tend to call those things your ‘black holes’. Because you didn’t see them when you signed the contract, and because…well… they suck. This one applies to you aswell, if you like it or not. Read more…
New Itanium Processors: New Oracle CPU Count?
I just read on Tweakers.net that the new Intel Itanium processor series has been introduced, namely the 93Xx series. Faster, faster faster! Itanium processors are very good for your Oracle environment. They do many calculations with a relatively low number of processors. And that saves money. So also the heart of the Oracle licensing specialist beats faster: Will it be slightly cheaper now, or not? Read more…
Automating your Oracle licensing audits: Tool comparison
Is it possible to use existing auditing tools to review my Oracle compliance situation?
We often get this question. Unfortunately, it is not possible to do this. However, there are some tools that may support (part of) the discovery phase. However, making any conclusion based on this information is really dangerous. This is why. Read more…
Preparing yourself for an ULA offering by Oracle
Oracle offers enterprise-sized companies the option to purchase ULA agreements (‘Unlimited License Agreement’). In such an agreement, the amount of available licenses is set to ‘Unlimited’ for a limited period (2-5 years in general). However, a few months before the ‘Unlimited’ period has passed, the client will have to count the actual used Processors. In the event the ULA is uncapped, the client will receive the (then needed) amount of licenses at no additional charge (for licenses or annual support fees). Is it SMART to buy an ULA?? Read more…
Licensing Oracle Spatial – Or not?
Oracle, like many other vendors, increasingly audit their clients (see also www.oracle.com/corporate/lms). Usually scripting is used to identify and quantify the use of Oracle software. A relatively new script in the audit processis a script that measures the use of Database Options. This is understandable, since many DBAs start using these options for the sake of performance, uptime guarantee and troubleshooting without knowing that additional licenses are required when doing so. The script used by Oracle even looks beyond the question if an option is installed. Read more…
Software Licensing Handbook for Dummies
Preface
At work, we eat, dream and talk licensing 24/7. And we don’t hesitate to tell the world about all this ‘hard to find’ information. Truth is that none of our clients want to know all the thousands of details we know anyway. But, some deeper understanding about sofware license compliancy may be useful to anyone involved in the compliancy process of a company.
Named User versus Named User Plus definitions
Named User definitions that Oracle had in the past are very diverse. Some time ago – as a result of a critical note by the Meta Group (read it here) – a change was made that distinguishes ‘Named User Plus’ definitions from it’s predecessor, being the ‘Named User’ definition. Now what’s the difference, and what does it mean for you? Read more…
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