Oracle Licence Management

One Partner For All Your Oracle Licensing Challenges

Many organisations have made significant investments in Oracle products over the years, resulting in a diverse footprint across multiple Oracle portfolios. This leads to complexity in managing licensing as well as high support and renewal costs.

As an independent licence advisory firm, Invictus Partners can demystify the complexity of Oracle’s licensing terms and options and help you mitigate licence compliance risk. We have extensive knowledge of the inner workings of Oracle, with licensing specialists who are former Oracle executives, licence contract and compliance auditors, and business practice and policies managers.

We commonly help Oracle customers:

Assess licence compliance in preparation for audits;
Manage licensing requirements during cloud engagements;
Reduce annual spend on Oracle support and maintenance; and
Migrate to third-party support.

Invictus Partners offers two Oracle licence advisory services: Oracle licence management and Oracle audit defence. We follow a proven methodology for Oracle licensing engagements, which we adapt to each organisation’s unique situation.

Types of Oracle software licences

Invictus Partners provides licence advisory and management services across the three Oracle product portfolios: Oracle Core Technology (Database and Middleware), Oracle Applications and Oracle Cloud.

Oracle Core Technology

The bulk of Oracle audits occur in the technology space because the licensing is extremely complex and many organisations get it wrong. Replacing an old piece of hardware with a new one may seem like a simple decision, but what does it mean for your licensing requirements? Oracle Database and Middleware is licenced based on the number of underlying cores, with unique clauses for how you run them. For Oracle Database alone, there are 19 billable options, ranging from $6,000 to $35,000 per core. These options are quite diverse and they are easy to turn on accidentally without licence keys. It’s quite possible for an organisation to own only one or two database options, but have activated a number of other options which they are not licensed for. All it takes is Oracle to run an audit script and you could be billed in the hundreds to millions of dollars depending on the underlying infrastructure supporting your Oracle deployment.

Oracle Applications

Oracle applications such as E-Business Suite (EBS), JD Edwards, Peoplesoft and Siebel are licensed via various metrics, everything from users, through to Enterprise Revenue and read-only access. It’s essential to understand all the aspects of application licence compliance and make sure that you’re not violating any of the terms. For example, certain modifications to EBS will result in additional licensing requirements.

Oracle Cloud

Most organisations are moving part or all of their workloads into the cloud, and Oracle has their own cloud offering, with IaaS, PaaS and SaaS capabilities. However, moving to the cloud with Oracle does not automatically keep you compliant, nor will it necessarily save you money. Invictus Partners can help you with the licence-to-cloud transition whether you are planning a move to Oracle Cloud or a third-party cloud provider.

Oracle licence management service components

While our Oracle licence advisory service is tailored to each organisation, there are four key components: licence health check, licence optimisation, cloud migration and contract negotiation strategy.

1. Oracle licence health check

Invictus Partners’ licence health check involves a full review of your organisation’s current Oracle licensing position to determine how usage compares to entitlements. Once we identify all your requirements, we map them to your entitlements to determine if you are under- or over-licensed. If any potential compliance exposure is identified, we work with you on mitigation strategies to minimise the risks. If there is an opportunity for cost optimisation, we will walk you through the process to realise these savings.

2. Oracle licence optimisation

Invictus Partners also identifies optimisation opportunities for your organisation in order to reduce Oracle support costs. We examine the different licensing options, re-architect environments and determine which, if any, licences can be cancelled.

3. Oracle cloud migration

If you’re planning a move to the cloud, you’ll want to bring your Oracle agreements with you. Invictus Partners can give you an understanding of your current licence position, what you need to do to remain compliant, and where possible, reduce your ongoing Oracle support fees if you optimise your sizing correctly.

Oracle cloud licensing

It’s important that you move to the best cloud for your organisation, which may be Oracle Cloud or a third-party cloud such as AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. Regardless of your chosen cloud provider, we ensure your Oracle licences work in their environment in a compliant and cost-effective fashion. Invictus Partners can help you make the right cloud decision for your organisation.

Oracle licensing on AWS and Azure

Migrating to AWS or Azure offers significant cost savings for organisations, as you only need to pay for the vCPUs you use, rather than the entire server. However, using Oracle on these platforms requires special licensing and compliance requirements that can derail these opportunities. Invictus Partners can help you move your Oracle workloads to AWS or Azure whilst avoiding the cost traps and risks around Oracle licensing.

Oracle licensing on Google

Google Cloud does not benefit from the same special licensing rights as AWS and Azure, as it is not one of Oracle’s “authorised cloud environments”. This means you need to licence Oracle software the same way you would for your on-premise environment. Invictus Partners can help you navigate a GCP migration and ensure you are correctly licensed.

4. Oracle contract negotiation strategy

Organisations looking to adopt Oracle SaaS want to know that they’re getting a good deal. Invictus Partners helps you understand what is in the agreements, and more importantly, what is not in them. We also provide benchmarking advice in relation to pricing and terms. We then actively participate in meetings with Oracle to negotiate the lowest costs and the best terms for your organisation.

Maintaining Oracle compliance

Many organisations think they are compliant with Oracle licensing, only to find out the hard (and expensive) way that they are not. Non-compliance happens when IT teams lack visibility into actual software use and have under- or over-estimated software needs in an effort to balance cost and end-user productivity. Having the wrong volume of licences for your organisation’s operating environment is costly, whether you have too few or too many.

Invictus Partners’ Oracle licence management service ensures you stay compliant by conducting a full review of your existing Oracle deployments. We do this in three steps:

1. Review licence agreements – Review contracts and data to understand the baseline position of Oracle entitlements to compare with actual usage.
2. Take inventory – Replicate the Oracle audit process by analysing scripts, tools and manuals to identify exposure risk.
3. Licence position – Determine compliance position and next steps (remediation strategies or optimisation opportunities).

Oracle licence compliance in the cloud

Do you have enough licences if you go to the cloud? Oracle is very strict on licence compliance during cloud migrations. Transitioning to cloud can get expensive if Oracle were to audit you – and they have been known to hit organisations right in the middle of a cloud migration while they are still running their on premise environments in parallel to their cloud environments. Organisations that aren’t moving to Oracle Cloud are particularly vulnerable to being audited. Whether you are leveraging public cloud hyperscalers or moving to a hybrid environment, you must have an understanding on what impact these deployments may have on their licence requirements.

Oracle licence audits

If Oracle thinks your software is not licensed properly, or that you’re unsure of your licensing position, they will audit you. How confident are you that an Oracle audit wouldn’t result in a large and unexpected financial exposure? Even if you are compliant in your software licensing, an audit will cost your organisation time, money and resources. With Oracle audits on the rise, now is a good time to review your organisation’s environments and usage to ensure your solutions are being used within the terms of their Oracle License Agreements.

Oracle audit defence service

In preparation for an audit, you need to know exactly where you stand in terms of your licensing. This is the only way you can remain in the driver’s seat throughout the audit process rather than following Oracle’s lead.

Invictus Partners helps you defend against an Oracle audit in three steps:

1. Internal audit
We conduct an audit of your Oracle licensing position, to determine the baseline position of your Oracle entitlements for comparison against what you are actually using. Our audit follows the same process and interpretations of agreements as Oracle’s compliance teams. The only true interpretation of the findings is Oracle’s, so knowing how they will interpret your usage is key to developing a strong defence position and remediating where you can before the audit starts. This provides the baseline position of your Oracle entitlements for comparison against what you are actually using.

2. Remediation strategy
Once we have identified where the Oracle licensing exposures are, we develop an effective remediation strategy and guide you through the implementation process.

3. Negotiation advisory
We ensure your organisation has the right response and that your negotiation strategy is planned and effectively executed.

Oracle audit help

Has your organisation already been targeted by Oracle’s License Management Services (LMS) team? Invictus Partners can help before, during and after an Oracle audit.

Have you been notified of an Oracle licensing audit?

In the case that you have already received notice of an Oracle audit, Invictus Partners can work with you to minimise the impact of their software audit process on your organisation. We reduce the stress and hours involved in managing the audit and use our extensive knowledge and experience to deliver the best-possible financial and business outcome.

Has an Oracle software audit found you to be non-compliant?

In the case that you have already received an audit report from Oracle indicating you are non-compliant, Invictus Partners can provide a second opinion. With our understanding of Oracle’s rules, we can normally challenge the findings and bring the baseline down, before using our proven negotiation techniques to reduce it even further.

Oracle advisory services: Why Invictus Partners?

Invictus Partners is a specialist software licensing advisory firm that can supplement your in-house teams or completely manage your software licensing portfolio. Our certified Oracle team has a broad skill-set across the Oracle spectrum to cover licensing analysis in preparation for agreement renewals, optimisation, contract review, licensing health checks, contract negotiation and audit defence. Invictus Partners has a detailed understanding of Oracle’s licensing policies, terms, and processes, product roadmaps, as well as extensive experience supporting our clients in both the commercial and public sectors across Australia and New Zealand, Asia Pacific and Japan, Africa, Europe and the Americas through licence audits, licence optimisation, migration to third-party support and cloud engagements.

Book a 30-minute consultation with our Oracle licensing experts

Doug Gibson – Managing Partner

Doug is a 30 year international IT veteran, having worked with organisations like SAP, Oracle and IBM across A/NZ, Asia Pacific & Africa to drive their licensing business. Since 2014 Doug and his team have been working with clients across Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia and North America in reviewing and optimising their licenses, assisting clients with software audit defence and digital transformation advisory.

Doug’s intimate knowledge of Oracle licensing and auditing practice has enabled him to successfully assist clients in Retail, Manufacturing, Utilities, Public Sector and Financial Service achieve a positive outcome in their audits, along with assisting them during software contract negotiations. Doug has successfully assisted his clients in reducing their overall spend with the vendors; constructing and negotiate Enterprise Agreements, advisory on their platform modernisation initiatives and developing cloud strategies.

Andy Ridge – Specialist Software Licence Advisor

Andy has spent over 30 years working for large corporate customers in all sectors of industry ranging from IT, Mining, Health, Defence, Federal and Local Government institutions within Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, and North America working in Contract Management, Health and Safety, Project Management, Environmental Sustainability, Cloud Migration Strategy and Vendor Compliance roles.

Andy specialises in Oracle License Compliance, Auditing, Audit Defence, Contract Management, Oracle Unlimited and Enterprise Agreement negotiations, Project and Change Management as well as Software/Hardware Asset Management, Cloud Deployments, Cloud license Migrations and Licensing/ITAM/SAM Training.