Continue reading »]]> 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.

Continue reading »]]> Here’s what I’ve learned after being in the Oracle food-chain for 15 years and advising 100s of clients on Oracle software licensing: license what you need, when you need it, when Oracle is ready to negotiate.

Said differently, it’s hard to out-Oracle Oracle. The reality is that large vendors such as Oracle employ highly-paid smart people to mitigate risk and maximize earnings. The temptation to buy more, buy forward, etc., is based on the potentially irrational belief that there is such a thing as a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

This is, of course, a wild simplification of concepts within architecture and design, software asset management and vendor negotiation, but it’s worth keeping in mind as a general principle.

On that note, Happy Thanksgiving!

Continue reading »]]> 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. The bad news is that customers are contractually bound to compliance, and Oracle is empowered to throw the book at defiant misuse of its software.

On the one hand, software entitlement is the science of understanding quantities, contractual terms and policies. On the other hand, licensing is an art that necessitates skillful use of timing, negotiation and knowledge of Oracle’s internal culture. Simply stated, your leverage is dependent on knowing what is licensed and deployed, the gaps therein and an appropriate balance between the art and science of compliance.

Continue reading »]]> It’s difficult (i.e. nearly impossible) to save money on Oracle without changing how you’ve deployed its products. License-friendly scenarios for consolidation, virtualization, high availability, disaster recover, tier-ing to Standard Edition, outsourcing, cloud, etc., must be seriously considered for future-state. This is especially true after a decade of marketing against expensive UNIX machinery towards adoption of extra-cost Enterprise Edition options designed for Lintel pizza boxes.

Oracle is smarter than to let its customers simply reshuffle annual maintenance fees, cancel/rebuy expensive contracts, negotiate multi-year support in exchange for better discounts, etc. The bottom line is that Oracle doesn’t need to offer or allow any of this. In other words, saving money on Oracle is hard work and requires someone with technical experience to create alternatives that reduce costs without risking business continuity.