License Consulting provides clients with a large palette on technical capabilities.
Oracle Audit Script availability
Oracle provides no license codes or any other means to protect clients from utilizing unlicensed features. In fact, most installation media comes with a lot of functionalities that are pre-installed by default, and which require additional licenses upon utilizing these functionalities. At the same time, Oracle provides no tools or guidance that help clients assess their own license risks.
When using Oracle software, the risk for incompliance is a fact of life. At the same time, clients find it equally difficult to understand if they are paying support for licenses that are not utilized.
We have solutions for scripting the vast majority of Oracle products to reflect the utilization of each license and associated license definition. Below we highlight some of our capabilities.
Counting Processor licenses
License Consulting has developed proprietary CPU scripts for all hardware platforms – including VMware – to quantify the number of Processor licenses in accordance with Oracle’s contractual definitions.
Oracle Database audit scripts
License Consulting developed SQLPlus scripts that query the Oracle database system tables. In addition to the tables queried by Oracle’s audit scripts, our scripts query additional information allowing us to provide better and more meaningful advice to optimize your Oracle deployments.
Oracle E-Business Suite
Using SQL queries, tables of (amongst others) the Users and Responsibilities are exported. With your EBS administrator, we map the data to reflect the license position in accordance with the contract you have agreed to. Once we have mapped your specific EBS environment, it is very simple and cost-effective to have us provide you with an Effective License Position (ELP) on a regular basis.
Oracle LMS “Verified Third-Party Tool Vendors”
Oracle maintains a Verified LMS Tool Program. In contrary to what marketing brochures suggest, the tools are not a silver bullet to Oracle compliance: In contrary. Oracle states clearly that that
- Tools from the following vendors have been verified to provide data sets that supplement an Oracle LMS engagement
- The scope of the verification process only covers Oracle Database and associated options.
- Oracle LMS will accept data from any of these tools as an alternative to installing Oracle LMS measurement tools.
- Please note that the installation and usage of a tool from a verified vendor does not replace an Oracle License Audit or revoke Oracle’s contractual right to perform one.
- In addition, the usage data gathered from these tools will still need to be analyzed by the Oracle LMS organization to assess license needs and provide the customer with a compliance statement.
Verified tool vendors are Aspera Smart Collect, iQuate, Lime Software, Micro Focus and Flexera. All of the tools must provide the same ‘usage report’ (pre-defined by Oracle) and the same ‘raw’ data. Oracle’s bullets mean that:
- The ‘user friendly’ data provided by the tools are not accurate, and therefore not accepted by Oracle.
- Oracle will want to have the ‘raw’ data, and create their ‘own’ analysis.
- Clients don’t have the ability to analyze the ‘raw’ data themselves.
Important: The tool vendors cannot be blamed for the shortcomings in the Oracle reports provided by them: They are all acting in accordance with Oracle’s pre-requisites and are not allowed to report other data.
License Consulting is able to analyze the raw data collected by all Verified tool vendors and provide detailed usage- and compliance reports. In addition, we explain the differences between the ‘default’ reports generated – which are all inaccurate – and the report generated by us. This comparison increases the awareness of Oracle license compliance at our clientele and helps them understand which part of the output generated by Oracle’s engine cannot and should not be fully trusted.
Oracle Architectures and design
License Consulting provides support in helping clients making decisions around how to setup and license Oracle environments. This helps that architectures are not only provide the functionality required by IT Professionals, but also prevents that the ‘cost of license’ is forgotten. And, all of the aspects around the costs such as Disaster Recovery, Failover, and the optimisation of costs around specific features such as Database Options. Too often, the cost of licenses are forgotten. License Consuting not only calculates the cost of your ‘initial’ ideas, but also helps in creating alternative scenario’s which equally meet your requirements – but at a much better price point from a licensing perspective.