Procurement is a tough job from any perspective. You have multiple requests at once for some kind of technology investment, which must be run through various channels, negotiated (if at all) and then implemented. We find in many cases that the job is made more difficult by a lack of policies in place. Policies are, in many cases, either not in place, not well implemented, or not being communicated.Managing procurement with vendors like Microsoft and Oracle, in some cases, will require its own dedicated person within the organization. This function requires somebody with a lot of specialty to keep up with the frequent changes within Oracle.
One easy improvement that can be made within a procurement process is to have a system in place for analyzing software and hardware contracts as they arrive. Standardized processes are also extremely helpful. In the case of companies that are the product of consolidations or mergers, each company will have different processes which are badly in need of consolidation. It is important to have a real compliance management process with definite policies and enforcement in place. To help with your internal compliance, you need to have some means of doing an internal audit on a relatively frequent basis. If you can’t manage this process internally, outsource it.
With software and hardware vendors, timing is everything in terms of negotiation. With a strict set of policies and procedures in place, your procurement department will be better prepared to respond in a timely fashion and take advantage of quarter and year-end concessions and discounts. Planning and forecasting your needs is also a vital part of this process, but a lack of policy is the most common issue with procurement, a flaw that can end up costing organizations a lot of money.
We recently answered that question in SearchOracle.com, where Miro is part of the Ask the Oracle Expert: Questions & Answers column. Here’s the original question and our answer.
Has Oracle changed its policy in licensing databases on VMware? From my understanding, they are treating VMware as soft partitioning. Is there any official documentation with regards to VMware/Oracle licensing that I can refer to?
Yes, in a nutshell it is treated like soft partitioning given that they are not recognizing VMware for purposes of limiting CPUs needing licensing. No, there is NO official Oracle document regarding Oracle’s treatment of VMware, likely because they are still developing their position on the topic.
Why not put your existing Oracle assets to work without having to commit to a large upfront investment?
License rebalancingTM is the art of taking existing licensing – such as Concurrent, Named User, application specific and/or CPU-based licensing – and converting them to generate a new license that is more value to your organization, while creating cost efficiencies. It is possible and very probable that the initial act of rebalancing your Oracle licenses will result in an initial 5-10% savings. Over time, the savings will increase exponentially due to the initial insured lower support cost (which was right-sized due to the license rebalancing acts).
It may seem like you’re only trading in your licensing for something of equal value, but the reality is that you get a greater value by gaining flexibility in your licensing (especially during times of corporate growth or change), same or better Terms & Conditions, and possibly lower annual support costs.
The name of the game is to increase the license value to your organization while possibly reducing your annual support payment without sacrificing benefits. You want to ensure that you have the best value – not just in terms of dollars and cents – which can often turn from short-term savings to long-term pain of having to spend more and more on new licensing every year because the initial purchase/re-up didn’t allow for flexibility for growth.
While some information on Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has been made public, there are still a number of unanswered questions – one of them being about licensing. While we don’t have any more information on this, but we’re speculating that it can be a very sweet deal for the right company.
Retailers are a unique breed when it comes to licensing. We recently worked with a number of retailers seeking to understand their Oracle licensing and they all had a mix of Named User Plus licensing and CPU licensing. With Oracle or any enterprise software for that matter, licensing is about access and authority, but not necessarily limited to people. The latter being an extremely important point to software licensing, usage and retailers.
One of the major differences in the retail industry is the equipment that houses the software application – from point of sales equipment such as registers and scanners to backroom inventory systems. These systems need to be considered as part of the licensing mix and, more often than not (in our experience), the IT executives at retailers overlook them.
So, if you’re a retailer, you may want to take another look at your Oracle licensing inventory.
Procurement is a tough job from any perspective. You have multiple requests at once for some kind of technology investment, which must be run through various channels, negotiated (if at all) and then implemented. We find in many cases that the job is made more difficult by a lack of policies in place. Policies are, in many cases, either not in place, not well implemented, or not being communicated. Managing procurement with vendors like Microsoft and Oracle, in some cases, will require its own dedicated person within the organization. This function requires somebody with a lot of specialty to keep up with the frequent changes within Oracle. 
