Not without sarcasm we mentioned the theoretical possibility that the SIG would no longer be welcome in the ‘new temple of the red giant’, once Oracle would see that License Consulting would speak. The SIG could hardly imagine that and so we were announced on the agenda. Yet the improbable happened: Oracle said that License Consulting is persona non grata and that in maintaining the agenda the event could no longer take place at Oracle. The SIG was not impressed and moved to a new location, now even more interested in our story.

At the conference the ‘move’ was certainly discussed, and several representatives of the Health group congratulated us with our special status at Oracle. What better advertisement could we possibly wish for? Obviously, Oracle is not happy with the numerous cases where License Consulting has an important role in saving their clients a lots of money and misery.
Thanks Oracle, keep it up!!

Clients hire us to analyze the output for them, so they understand what issues they have before sending the output to Oracle (or even better: change the environment so that they only use what they should really use, avoiding compliance discussions with Oracle in the fist place). Analyzing the output is a intense and time consuming job.. Many of our clients have hundreds of databases in place, and this is very time consuming: Time that can be spent better assisting in the ‘game’ of compliance itself. That’s why we are working on an Oracle Audit Analyzer: A web-based tool that can interpret the script results in human-readable and meaningful content, without having the evident risk of human error.

To test and review the tool, we invite 10 clients for a free analysis. In return (if you’re happy with the output) we would like to receive a few lines in which you reference the tool. Last but not least, we will assist you during a 1 hour conference call to help you with your current Oracle licensing queries.

Interested? Contact us for more information!

Let’s say you have a ULA for

-Oracle Database Enterprise Edition
-Partitioning
-Change Management pack

To get the ULA in the first place, you paid a license fee for the ULA of €3.000.000 NET. The annual support of 22% means an annual fee of €660.000. The support fee you already had prior to the ULA (€340.000) was migrated into the ULA. This means that your annual support is €1.000.000.

You anticipate for 1000 Processor licenses for the Database at the end of the ULA, and 100 Processor licenses of Partitioning. You never started using Change Managment Pack. Your estimation for the number of licenses is based on the Oracle Software Investment Guide, which states that Processor licenses are required for systems where the database is installed and/or running.

At current prices, this means the following:

Support Prices
Database Enterprise Edition: 1000 x €8.248,49 = € 8.248.490
Oracle Partitioning: 100 x €1.996,93 = €199.693
Change Management Pack: € 0

Total support amount: € 8.448.183.  Bottomline: If you will really get this amount of licenses from Oracle, you had an overall discount of approximately 84%.

As a thought: Let’s say prior to the ULA, your €340.000 on existing support were for 300 existing Database Processor licenses. This would mean that the additional deal got you only 700 additional licenses, which puts the 84% into perspective.

In the end Oracle will do the counting and not you.
In section C.1.b (or somewhere around there) your ULA agreements will tell you that at least 30 days prior to the end of your ULA period you and Oracle have to engage in a Certification Process. In general, this means that you’ll receive an audit letter from Oracle months before the end of the ULA, as 30 days is not enough time to complete this exercise to Oracle’s satisfaction. In either case, Oracle will make a full scan of your Oracle software installations. The same section in your agreement also states that you will be certified for the number of Processor licenses on which the Unlimited Deployment Programs are installed and running. Now that’s a different story, because you were anticipating for installed and/or running. Think about Failover . Think about Remote Mirroring scenario’s. Think about Oracle VM’s that are switched off. Think about pre-installed servers that you have in storage in case of hardware failure. Think about developers’ laptops that are shut down. Are they all running? What is installed and what is running in the first place? Could it really be that you end up with 500 Processor licenses and not 1000 as you hoped you would?

Reality check: Also for 500 Processor licenses you’ll end up paying €1.000.000 annual support after the ULA, the same way you would for 1.000 or just 100 or 10.000. That’s the essence of a ULA!

Think what happens the day after your ULA expries: Is that the day when you may only have 500 licenses in place, but are still 500 Processor licenses short (as now you need licenses where the database is installed and/or running?).  Oh, you don’t have a discount schedule in place for additional licenses? Ooops!

When Oracle completed the certification it turned out that you were using some other stuff as well. Let’s take a cheap product, like Tuning Pack and Diagnostics Pack at some €4000.- each. You didn’t know your DBA’s were using it until Oracle found out. So you’re incompliant for € 8000 x 500 = €4.000.000, excluding €880.000 annual support, and a claim for back-support charge for the past two years is lying on your desk. Today is a bad day.

No need to worry, the salesrep calls to help you out. To quietly settle amongst each other you can renew the entire ULA, and add some unlimited use for Oracle Database and Packs and another Oracle product you again end up not using at all. Oh, and Database Standard Edition of course since the wrong installer was used a few times. A bargain for €3.500.000, and a new annual support fee of €1.770.000. Good deal, because otherwise you would have had to pay for Processor licenses without having any discount, right? And with this deal you van even tell your manager that you won’t have to pay for back-support (that is, if you buy an Exadata or two).

You can’t manage what you don’t know! 

A large Oracle Platinum Partner from the Netherlands recently had enough from Oracle auditing their clients. They sent a mailing, warning clients against the audit practices (quotes are freely translated from Dutch):

“Our experience is that in many review reports, big mistakes and incorrect assumptions are being made. As a result, the reviews in general have a negative or very negative outcome.” ….

….”(clients) are told after an audit to buy a (sometimes unjustifiable large)   quantity of licenses from the so-called ‘independent’ LMS partner that has conducted the review, or through an affiliated organization.”

We’ve had many scenario’s where we checked such audit reports, containing no other advice than to ‘commercially settle with the Oracle salesrep within 30 days or else’. Trends shows us that Oracle aims for money (which is fair enough), but even if this means a license overkill for the unprepared client. To the extend where Oracle aims to license testing servers with Processor licenses.

To illustrate: One client had been confronted with a claim of over half a million euro, and after our advice less than 10% remained. This advice took no longer than one day, and we never even visited the client in person. Another client got a claim for over 3 million euro, and only 10% remained in place after one week of our consulting time. We have many examples of larger and smaller audits with results like this. We don’t bring any magic to the table, we just read the client’s agreement and ask the right questions. Is it not surprising that nobody took Oracle to court for attempted theft just yet?

The Partner who sent out this warning is not only a very technical savvy partner, but also staffs experienced Oracle licensing staff. They know what they’re talking about. Without a doubt they risk their Oracle Platinum Partner status by sending this notification out, but probably figured that sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and do the right thing. Kudos to them.

We primarily operate in Europe, with a focus on the Netherlands and surrounding countries. In this region it’s very evident what is going on. Multiple sources have told us that the several CIO platforms in the region even have initiated workgroups for this specific subject, as Oracle became the most disliked vendor for many CIO’s. If you are one of them we’ll be happy to advice and educate your workgroup and share our experiences an best practices, free of charge.

What is your personal experience about this in your region of the world? Let us know. And if are in trouble after such an audit, consult us for  a little advice. It is free for the asking, we’ll be glad to help you out. And if you are somebody from Oracle who actually cares about customer satisfaction and can do something to stop this: Even though your practice is good for our business, we find it unnecessary. Oracle deserves better than this. Many of our clients want to talk to you so about their concerns.

You can’t manage what you don’t know!

With evolving technologies, licensing becomes more and more complex. And companies design their IT around technology and not around licensing. There’s nothing wrong with that: However, more often than not the designs result in an unexpectedly high license requirement. Virtualizing Oracle databases is a very known aspect in this regard.

Some systems offer a wide range of implementation methodologies, far beyond virtualization alone. One of them is certainly the IBM P-Series.. Without a doubt, this platform can be both a minefield of compliance risks, as well as maybe the best platform for your money to run Oracle on.

On February 16th the IBM “P-Partners” have been invited by IBM to join a session, during which License Consulting will explain how Oracle should be implemented on PSeries, with the slightest effort, maximum availability while consuming the lowest licensing costs possible.

If you would like to receive a copy of the presentation, know that it’s free for the asking.

So, here are  the answers:

Question 1: What is the Named User Plus minimum requirement for Oracle Database Standard Edition?

Answer D is the correct answer. The minimum requirement is 5 Named User Plus licenses. Not per Processor, or per anything at all. Just 5! You can verify this in the minimum requirements table on the Oracle Store, or in the minimum requirements table within your license agreement.

81% of all answers were incorrect.

Question 2: What contractual relevance does the Oracle Software Investment Guide (SIG) have?

Answer B is the correct answer: It has no relevance at all. You can see it in the footnote of the Software Investment Guide.

72% of all answers were incorrect.

Question 3: A DBA has Oracle Database Enterprise Edition installed on his Dual Core Intel laptop. What is the cheapest way of licensing the software ligitimately?

Answer D is correct. The cheapest way to license Oracle Database Enterprise Edition for use on a system with a single user, is by means of the Oracle Personal Edition license. Verify it in the Oracle Store.

77% of all answers were incorrect.

Question 4: What is the default discount you will get at Oracle when purchasing 11 Processor licenses of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition?

Answer D: 20% (go shopping in the Online Store and you will see!).

72% of all answers were incorrect.

Question 5: For what environments will you need to be licensed (multiple options allowed).

Answer A, C, D, E, F (being, Standby, Production, DR, SAN Replication, Development). You will not find this in your contract or anywhere else, only in the Software Investment Guide and in Oracle’s audit reports….

100% of all answers were incorrect.

Question 6: Where is your audit clause defined?

Answer A: In your License and Services agreement (OLSA), and nowhere else.

55% of all answers were incorrect.

Question 7: What are the differences between Named User and Named User Plus licenses?

Answer B, C: The wording in the user definition (as the Plus definition allows computer-to-computer batching) and the Minimum requirement (the Plus definition increased the requirement).

98% of all answers were incorrect.

Question 8: You have an Oracle Database Enterprise Edition server on a single CPU Intel machine. It is running the OEM repository, RMAN, and a database for the Metadata of Oracle Application Server. The data is managed by 3 DBA’s. How many Named User licenses do you need?

Answer A: None. All these databases are required for other database/iAS functions to work normally. If you did not modify the database scheme – which is highly unlikely – you can run these databases free of charge, provided you have licensed the environments that they are being used for in a correct way.

91% of all answers were incorrect.

Note: License Consulting is open for discussion on any question. And, should an authorized spokesman of Oracle have proof that any answers given here is incorrect, an update will be issued immediately. This will be reflected in the changelog. The best result was a shared result (5 out of 8 questions answered correctly). The winner of the iPod Touch is the Director of Accounting Operations at Dendreon (whom we tried to contact for shipping details, but until now without any luck).

In this post you see the Questions that we came up with. In a next post, you will find the answers and the winner. Feel free to use the test yourself below, and see in the next article how well (or bad?) you did.

Questions

1. What Named User Plus minimum requirement does Oracle have for Oracle Database Standard Edition?
a) 5 Named User Plus per Processor
b) 10 Named User Plus per Processor
c) 25 Named User Plus per Processor
d) None of the above

2. What contractual relevance does the Oracle Software Investment Guide (SIG) have?
a) The SIG contains licensing guidelines that every Oracle client must comply with
b) The SIG contains examples and is solely for educational purposes: Customers are not obliged to comply with it’s guidelines.
c) None of the above

3. A DBA has Oracle Database Enterprise Edition installed on his Dual Core Intel laptop. What is the cheapest way of licensing the software legitimately?
a) If it is for testing, no licenses are required.
b) Oracle Internet Developer Suite
c) 25 Named User Plus licenses for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition
d) Oracle Personal Edition
e) None of the above

4. What is the default discount you will get at Oracle when purchasing 11 Processor licenses of Oracle Database Enteprise Edition (USD 47.500 each)?
a) 10%
b) 15%
c) 20%
d) 25%

5. For what environments will you need to be licensed (multiple options allowed)?
a) Standby
b) Backup tapes
c) Production Servers
d) Disaster Recovery
e) SAN Replication
f) Development

6. Where is your audit clause defined?
a) Oracle License and Services Agreement
b) Oracle Technical Support Policies
c) Oracle Software Investment Guide
d) All of the above

7. What are the differences between Named User and Named User Plus licenses?
a) The price
b) Wording in the user definition
c) Minimum requirement per Processor

8. You have an Oracle Database Enterprise Edition server on a single CPU Intel machine, It is running the OEM repository, RMAN, and a database for the Metadata of Oracle Application Server. The data is managed by 3 DBA’s. How many Named User licenses do you need?
a) None
b) 3 Named User Plus licenses
c) 25 Named User Plus licenses
d) 1 Processor license

But time has passed, and Oracle no longer has a commercial interest in legally pursuing this case. As such, Oracle tried to settle. The settlement agreement drafted by Oracle said that License Consulting:

a) May not talk about the details of the settlement,
b) May not countersue Oracle’s for it’s acting,
c) Must pay for the inconveniences itself, including the legal costs.

Although those terms are pretty much one-sided I was thinking about closing this case. The only condition I had was that I would have a sit-down with Oracle’s regional Managing Director, Oracle’s LMS Manager Europe South, and the regional Legal Counsel to discuss what had happened. The MD could not attend. Because I know him as an honorable man and I owe him my respects I was a little disappointed about that news.

To start off the meeting I wanted to bring forth some suggestions about Oracle’s internal operation. For example, some LMS and Sales staff tend to increasingly tell clients and partners ‘better not work with License Consulting’. Which is actually good for me: It’s like Oracle saying to a client ‘PLEASE DON”T TALK TO SAP’, so the first thing they would do is call SAP. But I have enough to do, and the existing clientele recommending License Consulting is the only salesforce I long for. I continued by telling that if an Oracle  legal counsel says to a client “You must sign, or I (the legal counsel) will lose my job” in a dispute, it’s embarrassing and a vendor like Oracle should know better. Lastly I mentioned a scenario where my lawyer attended a meeting, where an Oracle salesrep  -let’s call him Mr. B – was insinuating to the meeting attendees that I had not left Oracle voluntarily. Mr. B only met me on one occasion, and probably did not know that right after my voluntary departure I was immediately hired by Oracle Benelux. To be precise, I was asked to train the Oracle salesforce and the partners on licensing issues. To sum up the meeting: in good faith I gave Oracle valuable information about themselves that are by no means to my benefit at all. Much to my surprise however, both the LMS manager and the legal counsel showed little interest in my suggestions. On the contrary, they continued the meeting by saying about the raid that, in any similar future event, Oracle would do the same thing all over again in exactly the same way. So, raid my house and use my personal name instead of my business, and pursue me in court. In their words: “It was entirely factual and had nothing to do with me as a person. It was strictly business.”

With the meeting going this way, my thoughts were and still are somewhat like this:

1) If I go and settle this on their one-sided terms, will Oracle go and just do this over and over again if they run into a fight with a customer I happen to work with? In that case I could just as well give them the key to my house.
2) How impersonal was that raid really? If I would have provided a service to a client on behalf of one of the Big 4 Audit Firms – which is entirely possible – : Would Oracle have raided their offices as well? I think not.
3) If I look at it as strictly business, the way Oracle supposedly did: Am I not better off to continue the court case than signing the aforementioned conditions? In many ways, I have nothing to lose and only to win.
4) If I don’t sign, I retain my rights to pursue Oracle in regard to this issue, so next time they might think twice before they do this all over again in exactly the same way.

I appreciate that Oracle could not guarantee this from happening again, certainly not in writing. This is why I had decided prior to the meeting that if anyone at Oracle would at least show the slightest bit of human understanding for me being slightly upset about the fact that they pursued me in person and not my company, had make bailiff’s sniffle through my private home, and sued me privately and directly (and not my company) and not as part of their actions against my client but towards me as a private person: I would handover the (already signed) settlement agreement right there. But with the meeting evolving in the way it did, I simply would not be able to face myself in the mirror if I would settle under those conditions. So I shook hands and left.

To be continued…

A customer hired License Consulting to take a look at their Oracle environment. The investigation concluded that the company was incompliant with Named User licenses, and even after a migration, a substantial amount of processor licenses should be bought. To be precise: Oracle licenses valued at € 1,000,925.44.

In close cooperation with the IT management organization we went out to look for alternatives to buying that many licenses. Out came several options, including a downgrades to Standard Edition, Standard Editioin One and even Microsoft SQL or MySQL. But obviously such a down / crossgrade also some at a price and risk. It was decided to stay on the Enterprise Edition database. However, the hardware and architecture was changed, resulting in a license purchase (after migration of Named User licenses) of only € 10.230,00. During that change, the databases were also upgraded to a supported version, being 10g. How do you think Oracle would have dealt with the client in the original situation?

Again, yet another customer case where the customer was able to eliminate a compliance risk by pro-actively seeking for their own imperfections.

Reference calls with customers are always possible upon your request. And remember, you can’t manage what you don’t know!

So if you’re in the mood, drop by on June 1st, 2nd and 3rd in Eindhoven, Limbricht or Utrecht. It’ll be relaxed roud-table setting with your industry peers, and lots of room for discussions.  It’s just after work (on the way home), and you’ll be home for the evening news. There’s a limited availability, so be quick!

The sessions will be held in Dutch. For additional information and reservations, contact  Valid or view the Press Release.