Managing Oracle ULAs

Use accurate inventory to maximize value and minimize risk

An iQuate Whitepaper

Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 2 What Exactly is a ULA?...................................................................................................................... 3 Keeping track .................................................................................................................................... 4 How to keep track ......................................................................................................................... 4 Work within the limitations ............................................................................................................... 5 How to keep within the limitations................................................................................................ 5 Using what you have paid for ............................................................................................................ 6 How to make sure you are using what you have paid for ............................................................... 6 Using ULAs to centralize procurement of Oracle licenses ................................................................. 7 How to manage a centrally-purchased ULA .................................................................................. 7 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 8 iQSonar: Oracle Edition Helping you manage your ULA ............................................................. 8

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Introduction
Oracle offers ULAs (Unlimited License Agreements) to its larger clients. Unfortunately, the use of the word Unlimited gives the impression that once a ULA is agreed, the customer no longer needs to concern themselves with the details of their Oracle deployment and usage. The reality is that a company that is entering into a ULA needs to proactively monitor their Oracle deployment. Failure to do this can result in customers failing to maximize the benefits of the agreement or, in a worst case scenario, lead to significant unexpected costs and potential liability to prosecution for non-compliance during or after the term of the ULA. This whitepaper discusses specific challenges surrounding the effective management of ULAs and how they can be addressed, focusing on four different aspects of ULAs: Keeping Track of the products Working within the limitations of the agreement Using what you have paid for Using ULAs to centralize Oracle license procurement

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What Exactly is a ULA?

Put simply, a ULA is a multi-year agreement that offers significant discounts and is designed to provide the licenses you need during its term. Typically, the ULA will include licenses to cover potential future use which are not needed at the time the agreement commences, but are expected to be required. Despite its name, a ULA does have restrictions. It is typically restricted to a specified set of products, options and packs. Unless it is an Uncapped ULA, it will also include a limitation on the maximum number of installations / licenses included based on the definition within in the ULA. Any organization with a ULA is contractually obliged to ensure compliance with the terms of the agreement at all times. Compliance can only be maintained if the customer is aware of the potential issues and has strong policies and procedures in place to address them.

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Keeping track
A ULA will specify a maximum amount of licenses for the purchased product(s) as per the definition included in your agreement (e.g. Processor, Application User, Named User). The contract will state that in the event of more licenses than the maximum number specified in the agreement being deployed, additional licenses need to be purchased prior to such deployment. Therefore it is important that the actual, up-to-date deployment is tracked throughout the term of the ULA. If you dont do this, you have a compliance risk and are liable for damages including but not limited to fines and backdated support revenue claims from Oracle.

How to keep track

The only way to ensure usage within the terms of the agreement is to implement a process to regularly monitor deployment and usage. If additional licenses are required, then this process will identify the exact amount needed. Manual discovery is too time-consuming and error prone to be of use in this process. Regular monitoring can only take place with the use of an automated discovery tool. This will allow accurate, rapid and repeatable scanning of the estate to take place. An automated process will ensure continual compliance throughout the lifetime of the agreement and help avoid the risks of unexpected bills or non-compliance.

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Work within the limitations

All Oracle customers - including those with ULAs - are restricted to a specific set of Oracle products. Some customers have what is referred to as an Uncapped ULA agreement. Although this gives unlimited usage to Oracle products it is limited to a specific set of products as defined in the agreement. Many Oracle customers in this situation feel that they do not need to measure usage and deployment as it is unrestricted. However this lack of monitoring means that there is no effective management or tracking of deployment. Where there is no management of deployments, software can easily be used which is not covered by the ULA meaning the organization incurs costs without being aware of their liability. For example, a ULA may cover unlimited deployment of Processor licenses for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. During the lifetime of the agreement it is almost inevitable that the original implementation will be altered in some way. This may include upgrades, new installations or general reconfiguring. Such work may also be carried out by a third party such as a partner or application provider. With (currently) 7 different Oracle Enterprise Management Packs and 11 Oracle Database Options available and not controlled by license keys, it is very simple for software not covered by the ULA to be deployed during these changes (e.g. OLAP or Advanced Security could be deployed). If the work is carried out by external staff, they may not be aware of the license limitations and it may not be possible to monitor, or even determine exactly what they have done. This is a clear compliance risk.

How to keep within the limitations

Regular monitoring of usage and deployment during the lifetime of the ULA will provide the intelligence needed to ensure this is not a problem. An automated discovery tool should be at the heart of such a monitoring regime as it will quickly discover everything in use. It is then a fairly simple task for this list to be cross referenced with the software covered by the agreement and the software in use. The exceptions can then be clearly identified and removed, before becoming a costly issue.

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Using what you have paid for

Many companies do not fully achieve the benefits they expect from having a ULA in place. The biggest reason for this is that they do not ultimately end up deploying as much Oracle software as they had planned at the start of the ULA. For a ULA to fully deliver all of its potential benefits, it is imperative to maximize its utilization. The way to do this is to ensure as much software as possible is included within the ULA and the numbers of licenses included represent the real requirement over the lifetime of the agreement. Once a customer has signed a ULA, they ideally do not want to purchase new licenses during the term of the ULA, as the cost will be higher and there will be additional management overheads. Optimization of the deployment must be done within the ULA timeline, or the customer will run the risk of finding out that they have been under-deploying when it is too late. For example, a company engages in a 3-year ULA for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and no Management Packs. The deal is based upon an expected requirement for an additional 300 Processor licenses by the end of the agreement. 3 years later, at the end of the agreement, it is discovered that only 200 additional Processor licenses were deployed. Of these 200, 150 of them are now managed by a partner who utilizes Diagnostics and Tuning Pack for incident management. As a result, the customer has effectively been paying for 100 unused licenses during the agreement, but as this did not include the Tuning and Diagnostics pack, they are now unexpectedly liable for 150 Processor licenses for the management pack used by the partner.

How to make sure you are using what you have paid for
Before a ULA is agreed, it is critical that the customer has a true picture of their current Oracle usage and deployment. A key part of a ULA is to build in planned future requirements, but without an accurate view of current usage this will only be based on guesswork. An automated tool should be used to perform a full discovery of the entire estate before negotiations begin. The tool should be capable of matching up physical hardware (including CPU and core details) with any partitioned or virtualized servers. If possible, these results should be compared with previous records to see how accurate future requirements forecasts were in the past.

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Using ULAs to centralize procurement of Oracle licenses

Many organizations enter into ULAs to effectively centralize the procurement of Oracle licenses. The software included in the ULA is then distributed across the organization and, typically, the departments are then cross-charged to cover their proportion of the agreement. This offers many benefits including economies of scale, simpler budgeting and easier management of licenses through consolidating the renewal process and providing a single view of Oracle expenditure. For cross-charging to work it is critical that all departments are charged for what they are using. To ensure that the costs of the software are distributed based on utilization, it is critical that the part of the organization responsible for the ULA has a mechanism in place to continuously monitor the deployment and usage of all the software and options across its customer departments. This will ensure that departments are only using (and therefore paying for) their portion of the software included in the agreement. It will also help ensure that the organization avoids compliance issues. If the requirements of individual departments change and some use fewer licenses than expected, while others have a greater requirement than envisaged, monitoring deployment and utilization will also allow for effective redistribution of licenses to meet overall business requirements, while avoiding additional expenditure.

How to manage a centrally-purchased ULA

The only way to effectively manage and monitor a ULA is to regularly scan the entire network to discover deployment and usage. An automated tool will ensure the scan can take place frequently enough with minimum human intervention to ensure that accurate information is always available when it is needed. As Oracle licenses are only required when the software is in use, it is important that cross-charging is based on that measure. A reliable automated tool will be able to differentiate between software in use and that which is just installed. An automated process will also seamlessly cross departmental boundaries to provide a truly accurate, central view of all software usage.

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Conclusion
ULAs can deliver many benefits to Oracle customers, but they must be proactively managed to maximize those benefits and avoid unexpected problems or costs. If a ULA is not managed it is likely to become a financial and contractual liability. To manage a ULA, you need to continually monitor Oracle deployment and usage. To do this you must have access to accurate and up-to-date information whenever you need it. The only way to guarantee accurate and up-to-date information is to use an automated Oracle software discovery tool. iQSonar: Oracle Edition is the worlds first automated Oracle software discovery tool to be verified by Oracle License Management Services (LMS) team as providing data which Oracle will accept as an alternative to their own LMS measurement tools.

iQSonar: Oracle Edition Helping you manage your ULA

iQSonar: Oracle Edition has been designed to uncover the truth about large and complex Oracle networks while offering unparalleled levels of speed, accuracy, scalability and control, all with negligible impact on daily operations. It provides the continual visibility and control you need to maximize the benefits of your ULA. Speed iQSonar: Oracle Edition starts providing real intelligence about even the most complex Oracle estates in just a few hours. Once it starts, it is capable of scanning thousands of devices per hour. Accuracy It is very easy to gain an incorrect view of hardware and software installed across a network. Technology such as virtualization, multi-core processors and device partitioning can distort the real truth and have a significant impact on Oracle licensing exposure. iQSonar: Oracle Edition has been engineered to correctly interpret physical and virtual environments to provide accurate data you can rely on Scalability ULAs deliver the biggest benefits to customers over large, complex and dispersed environments. iQSonar: Oracle Edition has been engineered to work across the largest and most complex Oracle environments to rapidly deliver the data you need regardless of the size of your Oracle deployment. Control By providing a centralized, clear and accurate view of even the most complex Oracle estates, iQSonar: Oracle Edition gives real control to those responsible for managing the ULA and ensuring compliance.

iQSonar: Oracle Edition Oracle Licensing Made Easy

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The Foundation for Better Decisions

iQuates primary purpose is to provide an accurate picture of our customers installed IT assets. Without this, it is impossible for them to make the right management, procurement and licensing decisions. We provide this foundation for better decisions through our flagship product iQSonar - which automates the discovery and reporting of accurate and timely information on installed software and hardware within complex, multiplatform environments.

iQuate acknowledges the assistance of iQuate partner License Consulting (www.licenseconsulting.eu) in the creation of this whitepaper. License Consulting enables large Oracle clients to independently gain and maintain control over their Oracle compliance. With over 15 years of experience, the company has become an independent innovator in resolving licensing challenges.

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