Steven Zolman

Jan. 30,2020 | Software, Oracle, Negotiation, Cloud

Clients are well advised to include specific language governing Oracle audits. Most important is the ability to purchase any compliance licenses as a result of an audit action at the contractual price hold discounts (#12 on our Oracle's Most Egregious list), and in the event that the price hold expires, at a mutually agreeable discount at the prevailing discounts available in the market for similar deals not to be unreasonably withheld. The current contract language in the standard Oracle agreement requires clients to purchase compliance licenses at list price. In the case of a 75% price hold discount, this would mean you are acquiring the ...

Dave Young

Nov. 25,2019 | Software, SaaS, Cloud, Infrastructure

In Part I we discussed consideration of a multicloud strategy. Pricing and product transparency were the themes for part II. In part III we address the last in this series: Application Portability. To see all three in our Multicloud eBook, please visit here. The enterprise’s application processing workloads must be compatible to portability between Cloud providers, including technology stacks that are common across all Cloud provider platforms, such as the use of application microservices and open stack services such as containers and Kubernetes. It is also important to consider how you'll integrate data and applications residing in ...

Steven Zolman

Nov. 25,2019 | Software, SaaS, Oracle

What is Auto-Install? Auto-Install is an executable file in the Oracle software kit that activates when a customer installs certain software and automatically loads various options that may or may not be included in the purchase price of the acquired software. Why is it Important? It’s important because generally the people who install the Oracle software are not contextually aware of all the intricacies of software licensing, nor perhaps are they even aware of the particulars of the commercial arrangement between your company and Oracle. They are, however, generally fans of the Oracle technology, and want all the added features, so when ...

Tjeerd Edelman

Nov. 25,2019

You may know the parable “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” and the moral behind it: It is a story of a group of blind men, who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest, and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans tend to claim ...

Dave Young

Oct. 30,2019 | Software, SaaS, Cloud, Azure, Amazon, AWS

If you missed Part I - start here. Is a Cloud Broker right for you? A Cloud Broker by definition is an entity that manages the use, performance and delivery of cloud services, and negotiates relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers. As cloud computing evolves, the integration of cloud services may be too complex for Cloud consumers to manage alone. A Cloud Broker can also be in a unique position to collect, analyze and conduct opportunity assessments on pricing that will be key to a multicloud or Cloud Arbitrage strategy. Generally, cloud arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more ...

Steven Zolman

Oct. 28,2019 | Software, SaaS, Oracle

Business Transaction Protection is language in the agreement that provides some much needed flexibility in the event of a business transaction that significantly alters the value of the Oracle software deployment Why is it Important? These business transactions are often the source of many audit demands, and the standard Oracle language is vague and limited on what rights a customer has with regard to these types of transactions. We suggest clients include language in the agreement that gives added protections and flexibility for business transactions like mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, carve-outs, etc. Transition Service Agreements ...

Dave Young

Sep. 30,2019 | Software, Cloud, Infrastructure

Many enterprises adopt a multicloud strategy out of a desire to avoid Cloud supplier lock-in or to take advantage of innovative solutions with a certain Cloud provider. There are many rationales for using multiple clouds, as they each have different strengths and weaknesses for performance and functionality, different pricing schemes, and some workloads simply run better on one cloud platform versus another. Although neither provide a financial breakdown of their cloud business, AWS continues to dominate the cloud infrastructure market, but its lead is starting to wane as Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Engine make significant inroads. ...

Steven Zolman

Sep. 27,2019 | Software, Oracle

Why is it important? It’s important because many of our clients have multiple operating environments in different business units, sometimes in different geographies or even countries, and sometimes these are unrelated businesses that just so happen to be owned by the same company. In many cases, there is no relation between the needs of the operating environments, and therefore any policy to enforce equal treatment is unjustly onerous and costs our clients dearly. The business reason Oracle cites is to prevent customers from having many similar licenses, but only supporting a few of them, which makes it difficult for Oracle to determine if ...

Tjeerd Edelman

Sep. 20,2019 | Financial Services, Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is an actively discussed topic these days, but this was also true in the late 1990s and again in the mid-2000s. In fact, computerizing processes started back in the late 17th century when Leibniz developed a base 2 numerical system only using 0 and 1. With the introduction of the World Wide Web 300 years later, the scope, scale, and speed of technology have fundamentally impacted the effects of digitalization. First websites connected companies and their customers. Companies including Dell were quickly disrupting traditional PC manufacturing companies selling direct to consumers and gaining valuable insights into ...

Steven Zolman

Aug. 27,2019

Why is it important? Oracle’s ability to re-price can effectively eliminate any product pricing discounts off list, should you cancel a partial license set. Even with a price hold, Oracle leverages its support policies drawn into the contract by External Reference (#6 on our List) to re-price your annual maintenance and service support costs to effectively eliminate your discounts and make your costs as high as list price if you terminate partial orders. If you were to buy 100 licenses at a 50% discount, and you were paying $100,000 of annual maintenance service and support charges, you would think that if you terminated 50 of those licenses ...