Navigating Oracle License Migrations
An introduction to exploring Oracle License and Metric Migrations and Upgrades
Introduction
Oracle, being one of the largest enterprise software vendors in the world, continuously adds to its software portfolio, and some of the acquired products have differing licensing models and metrics, and some of the existing licensing metrics can change over time. These changes are driven by several things such as advancement in information technology (releases of new multi-core processors and virtualisation software), acquisitions of other vendors such as Cerner, BEA, Hyperion for example, or technical changes to Oracle software, such as the introduction of Multitenant on Database version 12.
There are many licensing models, some are standard, non-standard or client specific. Moving from one licensing metric to another may not be possible and, where it is possible, could cost license spend to perform.
Many Oracle customers fail to realise that one of the core pillars of Software Asset Management is being able to identify exactly what you, as a business, can do with a license or not. The licensing metric has a huge amount to do with this understanding. Many times, clients have misunderstood the usage rights or limitations of such a specific licensing model and have received a call or email from Oracle regarding compliance.
A license migration is not a default right that is specified in your Oracle Master Agreement. When you submit such a request to Oracle, they must approve the migration and may require specific terms to apply.
A license migration results in new licenses, a new ordering document (called the ‘Migration Ordering Document’) and, on the face of it, does not require the payment of additional license fees (unless there is a difference in costs or there’s a ‘rounding up’ required). From signature date, a new technical support contract is put in place for the upcoming twelve months; a credit for unused support is applied for the remaining period of the previous technical support on the migrated licenses.
Here are a couple of examples of migration:
1. Net to net license migration
An example of this migration would be migrating an Employee license to Number of Expense Reports for Oracle Internet Expenses. This would allow the client to calculate licensing based on the number of Expense Reports in a specified period, rather than to license every Employee, who may never raise an Expense Report.
2. License Rights upgrade
An example of this would be migrating from Application Specific Full Use (ASFU) license to Full Use license. This is considered a license upgrade as it enables the client extra rights, in that the Full Use license does not have the restrictions that the ASFU license had.
Another example would be upgrading from Database Standard Edition to Database Enterprise Edition. This would involve incurring license upgrade fees (the difference between SE and EE being applicable plus support).
There are many other license migrations / upgrades available with Oracle, some include:
· Migrating from legacy products to current products, for example BEA to Oracle WebLogic
· Standard Edition One to Standard Edition Two
· Non standard User to Application User
· Migrating from old metrics to new metrics in the same product category
· Named User Licensing to Named User Plus Licensing
· Named User Single Server Licensing to Named User Plus Licensing
· Concurrent Device Licensing to Named User Plus or Processor Licensing
As ever it requires an approval from Oracle to allow such a migration.
The following requirements apply to a license being migrated or upgraded to an alternative license metric or upgraded product. Bear in mind that Oracle would not approve a migration from one product set to another completely different product set.
Licenses being migrated must be on an active support contract.
If you would like to migrate expired licenses, you must reinstate the support of those expired licenses as part of the migration (which may be expensive given the 150% reinstatement fees applied for every year unsupported).Oracle approval must be granted.
Any migration is subject to Oracle’s approval and may not be granted. Clients cannot force Oracle to migrate; it is not a contractual right (unless specified in an amendment on a master agreement).
Conclusion
It goes without saying, a license migration will be of benefit to a customer when looking at getting a more appropriate licensing model in place, but there are drawbacks such as license upgrade fees, added support revenue and potential reinstatement costs, if expired.
It is very important to stay within the limitations of your licensing metrics — some customers do not realise sometimes the restrictions that are in place for older legacy products are not applicable today. Some licenses could have been bought historically and have differing license metrics applied that if migrated to a newer metric, the customer could be losing some valuable wriggle room.
I would advise before any migration to first examine what are the pros and cons of such a migration, what are you losing and what are you gaining?
As I said earlier, I believe there is not enough emphasis on looking at a company’s entitlement in more detail than should be, across the board and industry wide. There are so many licensing ‘experts’ who can tell you how many processors a company should be licensed for, but not as many that can tell you when it would be more cost effective to have an Unlimited License Agreement, or a nonstandard license, or migrate from processor to Named User Plus — this would be better suited financially as well as technically, for example.
So, before any license migrations or upgrades are even thought of, I’d advise customers to get a detailed and accurate entitlement summary report of their estate — -this is ‘above and beyond’ an extract of Oracle’s support system and is instead more of a forensic review of contracts and agreements.
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About the Author:
Johhny Cree is an Oracle SAM Licencing Consultant within the SAM & Licence Management practice at Version 1.
