FisherITS ITAM365 for Oracle Increases Oracle License Optimization and ROI.

Fisher IT Asset Consulting (FisherITS) announces the introduction of ITAM365 for Oracle, as a new service for enterprises who want to ‘baseline’ and outsource the ongoing management of their Oracle Contract and License estate.

London, United Kingdom – July 3, 2018 /NewsNetwork/ —

ITAM365 for Oracle provides support to those IT Professionals and Procurement Specialists with experience of Oracle, as well as those who are new to the Oracle Technologies and their License Terms. The service aims to manage the following 5 factors that usually ‘trip up’ Enterprises who are using Oracle products; and cause unnecessary cost either due to overspend or non-compliance of their Oracle License.

Number One – Virtualization:

One of the biggest confusions that we find with Oracle License terms relates to when products reside in a virtual infrastructure. Server partitioning is very confusing for most people. Server Partitioning has been designed to limit the amount of processor resources available to a program.

Oracle has therefore simplified server partitioning into two groups. Oracle then refuse to recognise, the term known as “Soft Partitioning”. The other Group it does accept is really to do with subdivided servers, and this is known as “Hard Partitioning”.

For instance, Oracle defines VMware as a ‘soft partition’ for Oracle infrastructures. ITAM365 for Oracle aims to help organizations through the ‘maze’ that is Oracle technologies working in a VMware infrastructure; Solaris 9 Resource Containers; AIX Workload Manager; HP Process Resource Manager; Affinity Management. To name but a few. We aim to guide a customer through how their vCenter should be set up to comply with their agreements; the configuration of the clusters and VMs; the storage architecture and the impact on the organization’s license agreement.

Therefore the objective of the ITAM365 for Oracle is to provide organizations not only with ‘assurance services’, but also to provide advice on how to optimize new and current virtual Oracle instances.

Number Two – Incorrect understanding of license minimums:

Oracle Named User Plus Licenses (NUP) usually causes confusion for organizations with how NUP Licenses relate to license minimums. Most organizations assume that the number of Named User Plus licenses directly correlates to the total number of the users using the system. To help explain this, FisherITS has used the following example: With Oracle Database Enterprise Edition there is a minimum of 25 Named User Plus per processor. So, with the Named User License, the organization needs to understand the number of processors required first and then multiply this number by 25. . Therefore, when we are reviewing an organization’s compliance position, FisherITS must consider the larger of either the total number of users or the license minimums. Also many organizations forget that when licensing the Oracle Database by Named User Plus, all users who are using Oracle Database, as well as all non-human operated devices that are accessing the Oracle Database must be licensed.

There are differences between the minimums for different products. For example the minimum for Oracle Database Standard Edition Two are 10 per server while with Oracle Database Standard Edition and Standard Edition One are 5 in general and not per server. Oracle do specify in your licence terms and conditions the relevant minimums and therefore the ITAM365 for Oracle Service helps apply these entitlements effectively.

Number Three – Disaster Recovery and Non-Production Systems :

It is important to remember that all processors where Oracle is installed, and/or running, must be licensed by the organization. Oracle makes no distinction between production, test and development. Whilst it is easy therefore to assume all environments must be fully licensed, for disaster recovery environments, Oracle gives its own definition of failover, standby and mirroring, with different licensing implications.

FisherITS have helped numerous organizations to understand how to license correctly their Disaster recovery environment. A standby environment for example must be licensed at 100% and the same metric is required for primary and standby database. FisherITS will look to help the organization to negotiate a license pool for DR Servers, through treating these servers separately from the production environments.

Number Four – Enterprise Edition Options and Packs:

One of the biggest pitfalls for Oracle Licensing is when an Oracle DBA has installed all options and either assumed that all options have been procured; or, forgot to only use those options that have been licensed.

FisherITS constantly reminds our customers that the Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) Database Control and Grid control is provided free of charge as part of the license. However, the real functional value is in the chargeable packs and these need licenses to cover the applications that are being monitored.

ITAM365 for Oracle provides organizations with the management of these instances, to validate the compliance position.

Number Five – Unlimited License Agreements (ULA):

The ULA is a time-based contract for unlimited use for a subset of Oracle products.

On the expiry of the term of the contract term, the organization can choose to renew the ULA, or declare and certify the usage of the Oracle products. ITAM365 for Oracle can help organizations to plan for the three main scenarios:

· An organisation that already has ULA and needs to declare and certify usage to Oracle

· An organisation is considering buying a new ULA

· An organisation is considering renewing a ULA

The ULA is very convenient for large enterprises that expect growth in their internal use of Oracle. Alternatively it could be used by organizations that are at high risk of audit (especially after a merger or acquisition). The first risk with engaging a ULA is that the organization’s Oracle usage does not grow as forecast; and the organization could therefore over-pay for their licenses. The second risk is that when the contract expires and the usage declines from the previous level, the organization may have to pay the same amount of maintenance as during the contract.

Summary

If you wish to understand how ITAM365 for Oracle can help you reduce your risk and increase your return on investment from your Oracle license estate, please contact FisherITS. We will provide a no-obligation assessment of your requirements and how determine how ITAM365 for Oracle can be benefit the organization. Telephone: 0207 554 3000. Website: http://fisherits.com.

Contact Info:
Name: Stephen Waugh
Email: swaugh@hwfisher.co.uk
Organization: Fisher IT Asset Consultancy Limited
Address: Acre House, 11-15 William Road, London, England NW1 3ER, United Kingdom
Phone: +44-20-7388-7000

For more information, please visit http://fiac.hwfisher.co.uk

Source: NewsNetwork

Release ID: 370211