With the expectation of an effective and successfully distributed vaccine for COVID-19, and the current height of stock market and real estate values, the new year could be promising for companies and individuals who struggled in 2020. Typically, the beginning of a new year is the perfect time for planning – New Year’s resolutions, business goals and Software Asset Management (SAM) strategies!
Now is a good time to take a look at the big picture for 2021. Does your organization have any upcoming software contract renewals, audits or true-ups? Are you searching for a hardware and software asset management tool to add to your current environment, or enhance an existing platform? Hopefully, your organization planned ahead in terms of budgeting so that you will have the funds available to accomplish your IT and Software Asset Management goals for this year.
If you use Oracle in your environment, you are well-aware that going through an audit or contract renewal can pose major challenges. Typically, there are numerous Oracle contracts to review and a variety of licensing models and metrics to understand, all creating complexity. One of the major issues with audits is that customers tend not to understand Oracle’s partitioning rules and find they are using more licenses than expected. This often results in unbudgeted, significant purchases to regain compliance.
As part of the audit process, Oracle requires its customers to use their Global Licensing and Advisory Services (GLAS)-approved scripts to discover installations. These scripts are essentially queries that pull back information that can be imported into the SAM tool the customer is using. The scripts are heavily relied upon for discovering Oracle database products – the queries reveal database product usage details, including which features and options are installed and have been used. Oracle provides a worksheet for its customers that is used to report back the information they require for audits, and the scripts help return the information in the format that Oracle requires.
After the scripts are run and report back data, many customers don’t know what to do with it, and in the end, send it to Oracle prior to doing their own analysis and interpretation. Once customers release this data, they are no longer in a position of power or control during the audit, and Oracle now has a hold over them.
Because Oracle’s fiscal year runs until the end of May, it’s a remarkably busy time for audit reconciliations and contract renewals. If your organization needs to complete an audit or contract negotiation by the end of May or even later this year, now is the time to get started. Oracle audits can drag on for months. How can you simplify and expedite this process?
If Oracle software is prevalent in your environment, then Eracent has some exciting news to share. In December, we announced that our IT Management Center™ (ITMC) Discovery solution now provides Oracle Database detection and reporting that has been approved by Oracle’s GLAS third-party tool verification program. As a result, the data provided by ITMC Discovery™ about Oracle Database installation and usage will be accepted by Oracle for use in a variety of license management activities including compliance audits and true-ups, among others. Now Oracle customers using Eracent’s ITMC will no longer have to run Oracle scripts in their environment for discovery and proof of installations during audits.
Using Eracent as your SAM platform to generate Oracle data will make your life easier by reducing preparation time and the actual duration of the audit, and eliminating the stress of having to run Oracle scripts and interpret the output.
When it comes to contract negotiations, organizations should be confident that their data on Oracle software deployments and usage is complete and accurate. Using Eracent’s IT Management Center as the platform to produce this data will give you peace of mind through the negotiation process and will prevent your company from ordering software that you already have and don’t need.
Begin this new year using Eracent’s ITMC to help prepare for and navigate your Oracle audits and contract renewals!
– by William Choppa
William Choppa is the President of Eracent. He has almost twenty years’ experience helping clients meet their ITAM and SAM challenges with his knowledge of technical solutions and business process best practices.