Oracle Licence Management Knowledge Centre

Oracle Licence Management
Knowledge Centre

The simplest introduction to Oracle products & licensing.

A repository of information on how to license Oracle on-premise & the cloud, Oracle contracts, Oracle license audit challenges, technical issues related to Oracle licensing, and methods of reducing Oracle license cost while remaining compliant.

All information here is from the public domain, but collated and presented for easier understanding of Oracle licensing. This aims to be an Oracle licensing guide. Oracle licensing knowledge delivered in easy to understand language.

Oracle Database

Oracle Database Editions

Oracle, over the years, has had multiple editions of their flagship database. It is very important to understand the entitlement with and match it with deployments. This can save you on Oracle licensing costs.

Options & Management Packs

Oracle Database Enterprise Edition allows customers to use additional features to improve database functionality & performance at an extra cost. Important to understand deployment & usage to reduce costs.

Database Editions & Versions Comparison

Database Options and Packs Functionality

Managing Option & Packs Licensing

Oracle Licensing Metrics & Oracle Contracts

Oracle Licensing Metrics

Understanding the metrics is very important for Oracle licensing. Processor, core, socket, users etc have a specific meaning. On-premise and cloud metrics too differ.

Obsolete Contracts

Oracle has a large number of customers who have been using their products for decades. Their contracts might have undergone a change.

Current Oracle Contracts

Oracle changed from a pure-play software vendor to an integrated one providing software, hardware & cloud services. This has necessitated a change to their customer & partner contracts.

Oracle License Metrics

Oracle Contracts List

Free OTN Licenses?

Oracle Middleware & Java

Weblogic Server

Weblogic Server. came into Oracle when it acquired BEA Systems in 2008, is Oracle’s flagship application server. Weblogic is key to Oracle’s strategy of being at the heart of a company’s IT infrastructure.

Other Middleware Products

Mostly built around Weblogic Server and other key acquired products, they cover functionalities such as integration, application management, content management, identity management etc.

Java

The iconic Java became part of Oracle on its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Oracle has recently changed the manner in which it licenses Java to customers and provides support.

Weblogic Editions & Versions

Middleware Products Functionality

Java Licensing

Oracle BI, Linux, OVM and MySQL

Oracle Business Intelligence

While Oracle always had its own analytic tools, OBIEE & Hyperion analytics products are their mainstay business intelligence tools today. These can be used stand-alone or integrated into Oracle’s applications.

OEL & OVM

Oracle Linux is Oracle’s rendition under GPL. OVM is Oracle’s rendition of the open-source Xen server with an Oracle ADF based management console. It’s important to understand the utility of OEL & OVM in reducing license costs.

MySQL

Oracle bagged the then-dominant open-source database through the Sun acquisition. MySQL, whilst still available as open-source, has many commercial editions. Oracle has continued to add functionality to MySQL.

Business Intelligence Products

Oracle Linux and Oracle VM

MySQL

Oracle E-Business Suite

Oracle EBS

E-Business Suite, with a 30 year history, underpins Oracle’s dominance in the ERP market. The product has evolved to provide almost every functionality needed to run any kind of business. Licensing challenges can be many too.

Database & Middleware for EBS

Database, Weblogic and other Oracle technology components are crucial to run EBS. These throw up a large number of licensing challenges that can impact the cost of implementing Oracle’s applications.

EBS Product List & Functionality

DB & MW License Rules for EBS

Oracle’s Other Dominant Softaware Products

PSFT, JD Edwards, Siebel

Peoplesoft was the first large acquisition by Oracle bringing with it JD Edwards. Later Oracle acquired Siebel, the then leader in CRM. These two acquisitions gave an immediate heft to Oracle’s dominance in the ERP & CRM space.

Oracle Primavera

Primavera, acuired by Oracle in 2008, is the pre-eminent project management application for large & complex industries. Primavera gave Oracle the ability to onboard customers using SAP as their own core customers.

Industry Specific Products

Oracle has built or acquired a large number of applications that are the core for specific industries. The acquisitions helped Oracle to get access to large customer bases. Healthcare & Hospitality are discussed here.

PSFT, JDE, Siebel

Primavera, Oracle Healthcare

PSFT, JDE, Siebel

Oracle Hardware

Engineered Systems

Oracle’s engineered systems combine software, storage, compute, and networking hardware in a single integrated SKU simplifying deployment & improving database, middleware & analytics performance manifold.

Oracle/Sun Hardware & Storage

Oracle’s continued support to the development roadmap for Sun servers and storage provides customers with some of the best available Unix (Solaris) servers for general purpose application deployment.

Exadata, Supercluster, Database Appliance

Sun SPARC & Intel Servers, Storage

Oracle Cloud

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

This is Oracle’s public cloud competing with AWS, Azure & Google Cloud. OCI provides IaaS, PaaS as well as hosts Oracle’s SaaS applications and cloud services for multiple functionalities needed by enterprises.

OMCS

Oracle Managed Cloud Service is an offering from Oracle Support to host & manage Oracle technology & application workloads on Oracle cloud. The goal is to provide a virtually outsourced environment to Oracle customers.

Oracle SaaS

Oracle’s legacy applications re-written & migrated to the cloud. Provided to customers as a full-fledged SaaS application as ready to use solutions. Oracle legacy application migration to cloud’s most popular choice.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Oracle Managed Cloud Service

Oracle SaaS

Oracle Databases 7.1 to 19c

Weblogic Editions & Middleware

E-Business Suite

Unix, Linux, Windows Platforms

All Hypervisors

Intel, AMD, RISC platforms

Your Internal Oracle Auditor

We conduct the best discovery – in fact, better than Oracle’s scripts & tools in some cases. Our knowledge of licensing gives you the most accurate effective license position.

Oracle License Optimization

Oracle contracts, Oracle license costs, Oracle database & Weblogic deployment optimization, Virtualization techniques, feature usage in Oracle products – we go into every detail to come up with the best & most optimal solution for your Oracle deployment.

Oracle Audit Defense

Come to us at any stage of an Oracle license audit and we will save you money. The earlier the better. But even towards the end, we can help as most Oracle audit reports are not ‘final’ & they generally have mistakes.

Licensing Oracle is a division of Rythium Technologies LLP.

https://rythium.com/oracle-database-2/