Better than that, of course, is to address this problem when concluding the agreement. A company should require that non-standard terms be included in the agreement that allows for cloud-based declaration of use. Although the focus has been on the cloud in recent years, some vendors continue to push for unlimited software licensing agreements for large enterprises. In many ways, the benefits of a customer opting for the cloud or unlimited licensing agreements are aligned. The most important of these benefits is the long-term commitment. The most common term ULA is three years. At the end of this period, the company must provide Oracle with documentation detailing the deployment of all Oracle products used. Oracle processes this information to determine the number of regular licenses to grant. For companies that grow on time, the ULA can provide significant savings compared to the initial purchase of individual licenses. However, if the organization shrinks during the duration of the ULA, it can cause it to pay too much for the licenses it ends up acquiring. If you are certified, you represent that you are using Oracle products and must comply with Oracle`s certification clause in the ULA. Upon receipt, Oracle will use this information to determine the number of software licenses to grant to your organization. The two should go hand in hand – whether you run your Oracle licensing optimization program in-house with the purchased tools (don`t think Oracle tools will do the job, they won`t) or you outsource ULA optimization to a qualified service partner.
If you have any doubts about any part of the unlimited software contract, from deciding what`s included in it to certification, seek help from software asset management professionals like License Dashboard. Whether you`re buying your own in-house deployment tools or outsourcing them to a partner, your goal is to completely identify and inventory all of your Oracle deployments. This gives you a complete view of your Oracle legacy so you can manage your lifecycles, consumption, and licensing. This article highlights what an ULA is, what you need to consider when buying an ULA, how to manage it for its duration, and how to declare it successfully. An Oracle ULA gives you the right to provide an unlimited amount of a fixed set of products for a fixed period of time (usually 3 years, but can be between 2 and 5 years – and usually called an unlimited deployment period or UDP) for a fixed amount of money and fixed ongoing support. This last sentence is particularly important! The ultimate goal is to ensure that the fees you pay perform well on the products you use. If your Oracle consumption increases during the ULA period (within the ULA settings), the agreement can result in huge cost savings compared to purchasing licenses individually. However, if your consumption decreases, you will almost certainly pay too much for your licenses.
It is important to understand your current and expected future use to estimate the cost-benefit ratio of a potential ULA. Although the ULA is presented as an “everything you can eat” offer, it is a fact that it does not cover all situations. This means that you can easily be led to a false sense of security and use Oracle software in a way that is not covered by your agreement. This will inevitably result in an unexpected bill at the end of your ULA or, worse, a violation of the deployment terms, which means you`ll be forced to certify sooner than expected. This can only really be mitigated by careful monitoring of Oracle`s heritage and its future use. If you don`t track your usage throughout the life of the ULA, you can desperately perform an Oracle audit of your own usage before the reporting date: this may mean that you are “missing” (and therefore not licensed) from the facilities or that you are counting incorrectly. Overloaded software usually comes from the “Deploy wherever you want” setting. This is not to say that software is useless, but that licenses did not play a role in the delivery of software. For example, Oracle databases may have been deployed in a vSphere v6 environment, which may require a license for all ESX hosts in the enterprise. Let`s get back to this important sentence about support – you pay one-time fixed licensing costs plus fixed continuous support, under a number of main conditions and restrictions.
Thus, even after the declaration, your support costs will be set at the amount set at the time of purchase of the ULA – they are NOT affected by the size of the declaration. Typically, Oracle SLAs apply only to Oracle technology products and not to applications. The limitations of an ULA are governed by the terms of the agreement. Some ULA clauses refer to the product and use, while others refer to your organization or the term ULA. When your ULA term ends, you have two options: you can certify Oracle and declare your usage, or you can extend your ULA by three years (or more). Given the apparent simplicity and variety of benefits, what should companies consider before entering into such an agreement? Should there be other concerns? If you have Oracle licensing experts in-house, you can use an Oracle SAM solution like Certero for Oracle to manage your Oracle investments. However, if you do not have Oracle licensing specialists with the skills and experience required to use such a tool, Certero can provide a managed SAM service. At the end of the unlimited supply period, you can either negotiate another ULA or declare your use of the products. This becomes your perpetual license: your use effectively “crystallizes” like those declared numbers, and you then retain the right to use as many licenses as any other normal Oracle perpetual license. You are not “renewing” an ULA as such – if you decide to enter into another ULA at the end of your unlimited deployment period, this is a completely separate contract with additional costs.
Of course, migrating to the cloud or an unlimited license agreement for businesses offers benefits, and they can also be similar. One of the main factors motivating companies to take advantage of any of these options is flexibility, although it can take various forms. .