Oracle Third Party Support – Quick Analysis in 5 Steps

The Oracle licensing experts at ProLicense advise on this topic and offer all interested companies an Oracle 3rd party support readiness check in five steps. This service includes:

1. analysis of support contracts and software products according to installations and usage.

• Usually SAM tool data is used for the analysis.
• However, it is also possible to analyze script outputs if no SAM tool is in use.

2. categorization of support

• We set out a simple picture of your current support from Oracle using your data on which installations/versions you have deployed. For old versions the support is often limited. The price, however, remains unchanged. Often key stakeholders are unaware that this is even a problem
• Is the database security (still) guaranteed based on the delivered support-patches? Often Oracle have to re-issue patches. We can share the facts on this

3. analysis of the used patches, updates and upgrades

• Which patches, updates and upgrades were applied?
• How timely was the installation?
• How is your patch policy defined?

4. analysis of the support ticket history

• How often were tickets opened, and for what reason
• Were they handled satisfactorily and closed quickly?
• Did you understand the root cause or could the issue return?

5. analysis of the IT strategy

• What is your long-term strategy with regard to Oracle products?
• Interaction with higher-level strategies (e.g. cloud-first or open source-first strategy).

As a result, customers receive an analysis of their Oracle support usage and payments. A comparison then enables a concrete statement about your 3rd party readiness and the possibilities for cost minimization and risk/service improvements . This forms the basis for answering the question of whether a customer could retain Oracle support or switch to Oracle third-party support.

"We recognize that many companies once looked at the issue years ago, but first ruled out the switch as unfeasible or frivolous. However, the market has evolved significantly since then, so that even companies like IBM offer Oracle third-party support, and even Gartner suggesting everyone should consider third-party support" said Sören Reimers, attorney and managing director at ProLicense. "You can compare this to SAM tools. Imagine if you had once looked at a first-generation SAM tool and concluded you would never use something like that," adds Markus Oberg, Oracle third-party support specialist at ProLicense. In the meantime, SAM tools have become an indispensable part of license management.

Oracle Compliance Quick Check and Oracle Audit Risk

In addition, our  consulting services by Oracle license experts regarding Oracle third-party support includes, if desired, a compliance short check and a concrete assessment of your individual Oracle audit risk. On the one hand, this opens up the possibility to reduce Oracle operating costs and, on the other hand, to avert unplanned costs in case of an Oracle license audit. The 3rd party readiness check takes only a few days. The workload on the customer side is very low.

Low effort – No new stressful project

"For our customers, it doesn’t mean burdening an additional project. Customers just provide us with some information and we give an initial assessment. That alone is very helpful for our customers. You can then consider how far you want to go to leverage all the savings", says Christian Grave, expert for Oracle license consulting and also managing director of ProLicense.

Oracle preowned software – Does it make sense in the enterprise?

In addition to the 3rd party readiness check, the license experts can examine the use of Oracle preowned software in the company. For many customers it is very interesting to find out at which areas in the company costs can be saved with the significantly cheaper preowned software (mostly 80% or more discount on the list price), e.g. in order to cover temporary additional needs in migration projects on the license side. But also for the many thousands of customers who already run environments on third-party support, the use of preowned software is another lever to save costs.

Companies that have already identified concrete Oracle requirements can obtain a direct comparative offer from ProLicense International Ltd, a sister company of ProLicense (www.prolicense-xchange.com).