Blog Why pay for Oracle Support?
Why pay for Oracle Support?
The annual Support you pay on your Oracle on-premise and Bring-Your-Own License (BYOL) software licenses.
Door Insight Editor / 19 Jun 2024 / Onderwerpen: Software Asset Management (SAM)
Software Support seems to be one of these costs which companies pay without many questions asked. A brief verification as to whether the software is still used, an attempt to reduce an annual cost increase on the amount quoted, these seem to be the limits of actions taken by procurement departments where it concerns the renewal of software support contracts.
Question is whether you as a client get value for your money, whether you actually need this support, or whether there are possible alternatives which could seriously reduce the annual support cost and be more in line with the value received.
This article is about Oracle Support, more specifically about the annual Support you pay on your Oracle on-premise and Bring-Your-Own License (BYOL) software licenses.
Oracle Support contains both maintenance, such as Upgrades, Software Patches and Updates, as well as support in case of issues to the software. However looking at the cost for supporting the software licenses used on-premise and as BYOL, the ROI seems off scale.
Take a look back five years. How many tickets you have logged in the Oracle Support Portal? This is likely to be very minimal (less than 5?).
Of course you will have applied the available patches and security updates, however have you applied any of the new functionalities made available? Not likely, unless you have deployments on OCI, as the new functionalities (e.g., Autonomous Database, AI, etc.) for most products are only made available if you run them in the Oracle Cloud (e.g. OCI).
Another reason brought up, when asking clients why they pay for Oracle support, is the possibility for consulting the Oracle Support Knowledge base. This is indeed valuable information, especially when you are in a hardware migration or software upgrade. Clients most likely upgrade their on-premise software to ensure they remain on a Supported version, and as such avoid the expensive (150%) Extended Support. When upgrading or migrating, the available maintenance windows are always too short. Fixing any unforeseen issue quickly is a key priority.
One of the main reasons why the continuous value, if paying for Oracle support needs to be reviewed in minute details, is Oracle’s application of the indexation rate. This method of Oracle, to apply a more or less random annual indexation to the renewal quotes, causes for unbudgeted costs increases to your OPEX. Oracle determines the applied indexation rate annually and where this tended to be in the area of 3 to 4% in most countries, since last year they applied a staggering 8 to 11% indexation rate to their support renewal quotes.
So what does this mean for you as a client? How to handle this?
It’s important to take a look at the future. What is your Oracle Roadmap for the coming 3-5 years? Is there a requirement for buying additional licenses ahead? Or are you considering a move to the Oracle Cloud (OCI). Understanding your Roadmap for Oracle and future plans are important to determine whether or not an optimization of your support is a possibility.
In our next article we will explain how Insight can support you in reducing your spend on Oracle’s on-premise and BYOL license support.
Author
Joost Bakker
EMEA Executive Consultant Oracle, Insight
