Software licensing is both remarkably simple and immeasurably complex. Just like Calculus can be broken down into elementary steps, so too licensing is simple math stacked up over decades of disparate metrics and contractual terms. Even so, customers are contractually bound to compliance and Oracle is empowered to throw the book at misuse of its software.

Entitlement and gap analysis is the science of understanding products, quantities, contractual terms and policies. Steps include gathering data, rolling it up into meaningful information, making comparisons between entitlement and deployment, and assessing future growth, among others. This is the heart of Costimizer and the foundation of what I do as a vendor-independent consultant.