The OpenWorld Quiz – Win an iPod Touch

5 replies op “The OpenWorld Quiz – Win an iPod Touch”

1. Alexander andrew on October 20th, 2010 9:43 pm

   Hi Guys,

   I may be being dense, but how does an inventory tool/technology answer these questions. Surely this is the expertise brought on by a license mangement system or consulting expertise. So an interesting quiz, yet it’s subjective to the customers “Right to use”, I know customers for whom your quiz would explode, basically their rights do not represent the examples you give: Specifically:

   1. What Named User Plus minimum requirement does Oracle have for Oracle Database Standard Edition?

   Surley the answer is, it depends on my “rights to use”, proof of entitlement and Master agreement.
   2.What contractual relevance does the Oracle Software Investment Guide (SIG) have?

   Answer is none, it is based on your actual agreement based on the order you placed with Oracle.

   This is why Lime have developed the Lime License Manager which takes all the historic license rules Oracle set and in conjunction with how the customer choses which one applies to them.

   So here is the big Gotcha, as you well know, customers negotiate, and that is the real challenge. Inventory is easy, and we can give you all the out-puts that measure the Oracle requirements, but how you match that to the “rights to use” is the key. and we have a system that is flexible enough to do this. That’s why our customer are happy, and get real, cost effective benefits. And you are always welcome to contact us, to see how our customers do it properly.

   Thanks

   Alex Andrew

   Lime Softwre

2. Daniel Hesselink on October 20th, 2010 11:04 pm

   Hi Alex,

   Thanks for your comment. My view is this:

   how does an inventory tool/technology answer these questions

   A discovery tool does indeed not answer the questions, it simply discovers. I did not mean to suggest otherwise.

   Inventory is easy, and we can give you all the out-puts that measure the Oracle requirements, but how you match that to the “rights to use” is the key.

   I agree that discovery is easy for technology products, if you’re not a big Oracle user. But the same goes for the interpretation of (relatively) small-scale data, say for clients who pay less than € 100.000 on support. In my experience, a special license tool won’t pay off against the price of consulting. For example, for a site with say 20-30 sockets it’ll be less than a handful of consulting days which would include a recommendation about infrastructure and contract/price negotiations (which doesn’t even come as part of any tool). I haven’t met a client who purchased a tool specifically for the Oracle environment, had staff trained for it, had it installed on business critical systems – solely to do something that can be done manually with ease, risk free, and at a lower cost. In general, big organizations however do greatly benefit from good discovery tools, probably more than on the consulting in the long term. In fact, I think for most ULA certifications discovery it’s a must-have (meaning it’ll pay for itself).

   I know customers for whom your quiz would explode

   I agree that ultimately the actual agreement defines the correct answer to any question. To most of the subjects questioned I have never seen an exception, and I’ve read hundreds of OLSA’s over time. Only for a DR scenario and a NUP minimum scenario I’ve seen an exception come along which would alter the correctness of any outcome. If you come up with a client that has anything else written down – which would lead to another quiz answer than based on the default OLSA and/or Oracle’s business practices – I’m always curious to learn about such specific contract modifications. In return I’ll send you an iPod as well

   And you are always welcome to contact us, to see how our customers do it properly

   Thanks for your invitation to contact Lime, I have done so some time ago for a demo but unfortunately never heard again! We do however want to stay informed about any solution that can be valuable to any client, so please add us on your mailing list for demo’s of current and new versions (info at alias).

   Thanks,
   Daniel

3. Chris S on October 21st, 2010 7:30 am

   “Inventory is easy” ?? This statement screams of “clueless”. I think anyone making such a statement must have little or no real experience in large enterprise IT Asset Management. We have estimated 30,000 Servers globally. We have discovery and ITAM software from IBM and HP, have easily spent over a million in the last year alone trying to Inventory IT. Can you please explain how to Inventory Oracle on this large a network, many countries etc. “easy” as it’s taking us over a year

4. Daniel Hesselink on October 21st, 2010 8:40 am

   Hi Chris,
   To give you any recommendation I need to better understand your situation in terms of products, license metrics and network infrastructure. Many have spent a lot of time and money trying to solve the Oracle issue with a pocket-knife or entire toolbox, when all they needed was a telescope. Call or email at any time to discuss, advice is free for the asking and confidential at all times.

   Kind regards,
   Daniel

5. Alexander andrew on October 21st, 2010 2:06 pm

   Hi Chris,

   Thanks for the comment, I think “Clueless” is a little strong, but never mind. I think “Inventory for Oracle is easy” because I know what I am looking for, and because I have been on the coal-face auditing clients of a very large size Oracle implementations, for example 1800 Oracle instances acorss 4 global data-centres. But the main reason is because I make the disctinction between Inventory and Discovery, Discovery is harder agreed. However when you have found where your assets are, then you can get detailed inventory, which is as I say easy, for us and other vendors

   You mention that you are already using tools that perform discovery, I am hoping that these tools can be configured to capture the fact that Oracle is installed, or they can if give the right parameters to look for. (UNIX is of course another challenge, however I would hope that these are in your datacentres not just sitting under some-ones desk!) Another example, is how you configure your TNS and ports, if we understand this information, and that your business uses global standards and policies for this, identifying devices that are configured to listen to this is in effect also easy.

   Either way I agree there are challenges on a large scale, but recent clients we have worked with prove that we can extract inventory on very large number of Databases (100s+)in days and not months.

   I hope that this indicates that we do in fact have a clue and can offer you some assistance if you like

   Many thanks

   Alex Andrew

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