Ahh, May. The month itself is named after Maia, the Greek goddess of Spring - and it's easy to see why. In the emerald month of May, life begins anew as the grass turns green, new leaves come out on the trees, and flowers bloom. It is the season of hope, optimism, and renewal. Oops, did I just say renewal? Oh, that's right, May is also Oracle's fiscal year-end, and the busiest month of the year for your beloved Oracle reps as they scramble to sell new business and process your most recent hostage invoices (otherwise known as your annual maintenance service & support renewals). Instead of enjoying the greening of the great outdoors, many ...
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The adage goes: "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Although technology moves at a rapid pace, the predatory behavior of software vendors does not really change. Certainly, it works for them as the numbers show: Microsoft net income: $44.2B Oracle net income: $14.1B IBM profit: $5.6B Not coincidentally, these are the top 3 suppliers most likely to audit you according to a recent ITAM study of 465 IT Executives conducted by Flexera. This fact comes as no surprise to us, as we wrote about this in 2019 in an article titled: The Top 10 Audit Crazy Suppliers, where our top 3 mirrored the IT Executive survey exactly. In fact, 9 ...
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‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ is a popular holiday song and was written by Edward Pola and George Wyle in 1963. It was popularized in North America by singer Andy Williams that same year on his television show by the same name. However, we didn’t have to do much research to learn that the inspiration for that song had nothing to do with the 4th quarter for most business leaders and their respective companies. Anecdotally, we believe most business leaders might say it’s the most *stressful* time of the year, especially for publicly traded companies – most of whom have their fiscal year end aligned with the calendar year end of ...
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If you thought Oracle audits were an issue in past years, buckle your seat belts for 2021. We expect Oracle audits to reach new heights of frequency and intensity over the coming months, specifically around Q2 2021. The driving factor is based on macro-market conditions that have been out of their control: Oracle has essentially been on hiatus for a year, not able to get on site and pester their customers about license compliance. Oracle customers have been more cost conscientious than in years past and have been more active in cancelling support for unused products. The global pandemic has caused many customers to delay or even scrap plans ...
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The end of year mania is underway as sales professionals from some of the largest tech companies on the planet try to capture and fill their Q4 quota. When such a substantial portion of a sales rep’s income rests on their ability to separate company dollars from your budget, it’s no wonder we often witness such unbridled aggression this time of year. It can be personally traumatic for salespeople as they sit in their weekly (sometimes daily) sales meetings with their respective teams, while management tears apart their sales opportunities and deals often in front of their peers with questions like: What is the status of deal x/update on ...
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As 2019 drew to a close, many of you may have missed a significant development that came out of the U.S. District Court of Northern California. On December 17th, the lawsuit brought by the Sunrise Firefighter’s Pension Fund against Oracle Corporation for misleading investors on their cloud business – was dismissed. They have until February 2020 to make some changes and refile the case, but what the real take-away from this case is that we can expect ‘business as usual’ from Oracle on the audit front. To get a real sense of just how egregious and critical the audit practice was (and is) to Oracle’s revenue machine, you need only read some of ...
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Software audits have become an unfortunate but necessary revenue stream for most suppliers today. And who can really blame them? It usually works! Just as governments have now come to rely on revenue from things like speeding and parking tickets, so to have software companies come to rely on software audits to move the needle on revenue or generate fear, using pressure and leverage to create opportunities for new licensing revenue. The reasons are well known, and really haven’t changed significantly in the last few years: Competition from disruptive suppliers Migration away from perpetual licensing to subscription-based cloud solutions ...
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‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ is a popular holiday song and was written by Edward Pola and George Wyle in 1963. It was popularized in North America by singer Andy Williams that same year on his television show by the same name. However, we didn’t have to do much research to learn that the inspiration for that song had nothing to do with the 4th quarter for most business leaders and their respective companies. Anecdotally, we believe most business leaders might say it’s the most *stressful* time of the year, especially for publicly traded companies – most of whom have their fiscal year end aligned with the calendar year end of ...
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Over the years, Oracle audits have become the bane of existence for many of Oracle’s customers, thanks in large part to Oracle’s reputed predatory behavior, especially in its LMS (License Management Service) Group, and the well-earned notoriety for its truculent account management practices in its sales organization. As we’ve often said, it’s not matter of if, but when you will get audited by Oracle. As we are seeing unfold now, the pace of these audits continues to accelerate. Below are some of the reasons we think there will be a continuation of aggressive audits for the foreseeable future. Cloudy Future As with most software providers, ...
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