How Oracle Licensing Differs: Part 2

Continued from How Oracle Licensing Differs. To help alleviate and prevent this situation, managers responsible for Oracle licensing should have a game plan on how to ensure their software compliance. They should get ahead of the game and make sure licensing issues are caught early before the company is already dependant on a platform build on an unlicensed product. Some suggestions are: • Teach developers, testers, and administrators about the Oracle licensing model • Explain to DBA’s and developers which features are included in the base license and which are addons which cost extra. • Explain to them how your company has licensed Oracle products to make sure they understand actions which will bring you out of compliance • Keep an updated license inventory that includes all Oracle software installations, # of users, # of cpu’s on installed server, used features, server name, database name, etc • Use server administrators as gatekeepers to stop unapproved software installations. This is due to the fact that Oracle needs administrator privileges to be installed. • Designate at least one person to make sure they understand the Oracle licensing model in depth such what the different kinds of licenses are and how they are related and used • Create an approval chain where a specific manager or designated employee is responsible for making sure a new deployment is either covered by existing licenses or new licenses are purchased. The yearly renewal is an opportunity for Oracle to create a new revenue stream when you purchase licenses to bring your company into compliance. When you do find yourself out of compliance and need to purchase a batch of new licenses, please read Oracle Licensing | Reducing Costs – What they Don’t Want You to Know to find out how to protect yourself in the future and have the most flexibility in your licensing agreements. Related Articles: Oracle Licensing | Reducing Costs – What they Don’t Want You to Know