I’ll be presenting at this year’s SAM Summit in Chicago as well as teaching a one-day course on Oracle License Management.
The summit is highly recommended for anyone who touches software licensing. Most major software publishers are represented, discussed, presented, etc. The event is also well-attended and an opportunity to network with other software asset managers.
The first step in Oracle Optimization is to understand what is running in the data center. Many organizations, however, do not have asset records that are readily available or accurate. It is often necessary to scan the network for what products are in use. Oracle presents a challenge in that its software is freely available online, does not require keys and installs extra-cost options automatically.
There are various options for discovering assets ranging from open-source to enterprise software packages, each appropriate depending on size, complexity and need. I can provide asset discovery services, Enterprise Manager (12c) mentoring, or if necessary, broker discussions with tools providers that fit your budget and scope.
In my experience, 80% of compliance mistakes fall into five categories. If you avoid these mistakes, then a surprise, expensive true-up is not likely. Therefore, step one in mitigating compliance risk is to become educated on Oracle’s standard policies and any nonstandard terms in your original order documents that would affect entitlement. As a side note, I highly recommend this blog post about contemporaneous agreements.
If you have received an audit letter, then understanding what to expect and how to respond become vitally important. Multiply the feeling of seeing police lights in your rear-view mirror by $millions and you can understand the importance of having a calm, vendor-independent trusted adviser in your corner throughout the process.
I’m looking for beta testers of software that helps organizations reduce the cost of running Oracle.
The Oracle Costimizer is inspired by the reality that most organizations struggle to manage their Oracle assets effectively, let alone set themselves on a path towards savings. Does that remind you of your own organization?
Features of the “Costimizer” include automated compliance analysis, financial modelling of alternative deployments and maintenance renewal discount analysis. It is 100% web-based, cross-browser and drag-and-drop enabled. Both deployment and CSI data may be uploaded via CSV file, and future-state modelling is enabled via the Oracle product catalog and SPECint results for server comparisons.
Please contact me directly for more details on how to participate.
Two articles of mine have been published at the Oracle-specific page of TechTarget: part 1 and part 2. If you aren’t familiar with SearchOracle.com, then I recommend that you visit the site regularly. Industry experts including Mark Fontecchio, the editor, publish regularly.
Please don’t hesitate to send me questions about the articles or anything else by visiting my FAQ page.
To my knowledge, there is no mainstream industry standard to which software publishers may adhere to make their products discoverable. In other words, it’s exceptionally difficult to answer the question what do we have installed? Many in the software asset management (SAM) community refer to this as fingerprinting. As in, how does a software product allow itself to be identified once installed and/or in use.
My friends at iQuate are pleased to announce that IQSonar is the first license discovery tool to be verified by Oracle. The press release can be found here.
Software audit may be the most fear-inducing phrase used in IT today. It ranks right up there with root canal and for good reason: stories of multi-million dollar compliance true-ups are enough to scare anyone, compounded by Oracle’s contractual right to audit its customers’ software usage. That said, such an audit is rarely a surprise to anyone involved. And, from what I have seen, it is rare that Oracle exercises its right to shut down the software in question in a way that hamstrings vital production systems.
The tagline of this blog is: Integrating best practices across all Oracle-related disciplines. There will likely be dozens of posts in the future on what this means, but for starters, I’d like to delineate what all of those disciplines are, and eventually discuss how they need to integrate.
Oracle-related disciplines (that I can think of now):
Call (888) 620-9832 or email to inquire about saving money on Oracle via these services:
