This latest installment is probably one of our shortest, but no less important! In the standard Oracle agreement, Oracle refers to externally controlled websites for things such as the definition of support, and as such, they have the unilateral ability and control to fundamentally change the terms and conditions of your agreement without you even knowing about it until it is too late. Even if there is notification, over time these communications get lost, people leave who were points of contact, and or it may never have gotten sent to start with. We have many suggestions for Oracle's customers in this area around notifications, potential ...
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What is the Bundling of Support? The bundling of support is Oracle’s long-standing policy to sell product upgrades and technical support together as a single offering, and not allow customers to buy them separately. Why is it important? It’s important because in mature deployments, many customers no longer need product upgradability, but they still want access to technical support for the appearance of risk mitigation. In those instances, they are forced to pay for one to get the other. Oracle combines technical break/fix product support with product upgradability (the rights to upgrade the product with no additional software license cost) ...
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What is a license exchange? A license exchange is a private market setup between you and Oracle, whereby you can ‘trade-in’ the list license value of software you no longer want or need for a list license value credit on new titles you do want. Why is it important? It’s important because absent this protection, it’s exceedingly difficult to get any value from software that you no longer want or need, and in many cases, it’s because the software didn’t work the way you thought it was going to work, or it didn’t provide the level of value you needed to justify its use. The other critical flaw in the Oracle approach to licensing management, is ...
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In our previous posts, we have reviewed the need for: Price Holds Maintenance Freeze And in this post, we will discuss the need for caps on the Annual increases for Maintenance and Support Services. Support Caps What is a Support Cap? A support cap seeks to place limits on the compounded effect of annual increases to the costs of the annual maintenance and support services fees beyond the Maintenance Freeze term. Why is it Important? If there is no language to govern the amount of increase after the Maintenance Freeze (#11 in our list) term, the costs of annual maintenance and support services can skyrocket and quickly get out of control. ...
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NET(net) advises all clients to strive to “lock down” every escalating cost of Oracle’s annual maintenance and support services by negotiating a maintenance freeze for as long as possible. What is a maintenance freeze? It’s a provision in the contract to ensure that Oracle doesn’t increase the annual maintenance service and support costs year over year; and on a compounding basis. Why is it needed? Across our experiences, Oracle often charges a 9% annual increase, which compounds year-over-year, and fundamentally Diminishes the Inclusive Value of the annual maintenance & support services Equation: the DIVE phenomenon). A cost increase of ...
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The votes are counted, and Oracle yet again wins for being perhaps the most tyrannical of all technology suppliers. The standard Oracle Terms and Conditions are legendary for being one-sided. What’s worse, Oracle has gained an equally reviled reputation for leveraging those terms and conditions to their full and unilateral benefit at the great expense of their customers. If you are renewing your annual maintenance with Oracle, buying new Oracle software, engaged in or concerned about an Oracle audit, considering Cloud solutions or having them forced upon you, or just thinking about how to mitigate cost and risk and improve the realization of ...
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Kin Hubbard, a humorist and journalist who lived 100 years ago once said “the safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket”. Clearly views are different today. The value of mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. financial-services sector alone more than doubled to a whopping $196.5 billion in 2018 from $82.3 billion in 2017. According to a report by White & Case, Financial Institutions M&A Sector 2019 Trends, there are possibilities of mega deals in Europe and that Wall Street behemoths may start flexing their expansion muscles. And when that materializes, a Stock Purchase Agreement (SPA) is the ...
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I’m sure your organization is used to fifty calls per week from Oracle. You likely have thirty sales reps calling everyone from custodial services to the Chief Executive Officer to gain more information from you: What’s your IT roadmap? Do you know we have a 'cloud' for everything? What is your cloud migration strategy? What is your budget? Can we have more of it? From the cold callers to the executives, Oracle sales are trained in tactics to acquire as much information about your organization as possible. Their endgame is simple: force you into a sale (probably cloud) or catch you out of compliance. And of course, your being out of ...
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You may recall from our alert in July, Microsoft has substantial changes to their pricing due to take effect October 1, 2018. This pricing will cascade globally from Redmond product managers. As a result, we anticipate an incredibly busy September as customers try to understand what the impact will be and how best to optimize their agreements. The actual pricing is due to be available to resellers on September 1, 2018 and will likely become widely available soon after. In addition to the changes we previously communicated (see below), here are a few of the latest updates that have come to our attention: “Level A” is going away. Any Microsoft ...
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Its been a long time since HCM solutions were primarily used for ‘counting noses’. Companies large and small understand the strategic value in their workforce and are aggressively using HCM solutions to support their investment, and HCM providers know it. Between emerging technology, disruptive companies, mergers and acquisitions, changing licensing models, cloud migrations, and much more, to say today’s HCM software market is under rapid change would be a massive understatement. Unfortunately, none of us really have the luxury of ignoring these changes lest we be left in the wake of overpaying for a non-compliant, underperforming, and ...
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