I have been working with a little more than a dozen customers on conducting Java license reviews – customers from 10k employees to 200k employees
Some interesting feedback from these reviews:
- Oracle is still not clear – or does not want to give clarity – about what is ‘free’ and what is ‘not free’.
- Usage of Java in desktops is much less than presumed by both customer & Oracle.
- On Servers – Java usage is generally in ‘known’ servers.
- Oracle has been pushing for deals since 12 -24 months, but most customers have not yet succumbed to making a purchase.
- The value of the revenue desired by Oracle has shot up with the introduction of the new license metric – the ask has gone up by 2 – 5 times (of the initial ask on older Proc/NUP metrics).
- There are ways to remediate and rebalance. Customers need to be ready to spend some effort to do this, but the return on the efforts will be very high.
- Most software vendors / ISVs have begun the process of certifying their applications on non-Oracle Java (either OpenJDK or on builds by third-parties like Azul, Bellsoft, IBM etc)
- This is short term money for Oracle – but it could be very large amounts of revenue in the next 3-4 years.
(disclosure: I am an independent license consultant)
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