Three Licensing Issues Your Business May Have

There is a lot for DBAs, CIOs, and IT professionals to know when it comes to licensing requirements. If your company has any of the three licensing issues described in this post, you may receive an Oracle audit sooner rather than later. This can be an unnecessary strain on your company’s budget. Here are three common licensing problems your business may have and how you can resolve them.

There Are Unlicensed Programs in Your IT Ecosystem

Oracle has many programs and add-on options within those programs, so it can be easy to forget what is within your licensing agreement and what is not. For example, if you installed Oracle Database, you can connect different products along with Oracle Database. It’s not uncommon to accidentally deploy options and pacs not covered in your portfolio, which leads to compliance issues.

With Oracle’s extensive program options, some products come included in your initial purchase. However, other features are not included and must have an additional license purchased if used. It’s imperative to understand what is in your environment and if there is sufficient licensing for these items. The best way to solve this problem is to stay informed of all the programs your business currently uses. The more knowledge you have on your installations and what’s included in your licensing, the better.

You Don’t Have Adequate Licensing Rights

Another licensing issue that is crucial to reducing your risk of an Oracle audit is to know the specifics of your licensing rights. An Oracle license agreement allows the use of Oracle programs for internal business purposes only. These licenses cannot be used by partners or other outside personnel unless the specifics have been addressed explicitly with customized contract language with Oracle. When in doubt, it’s best to learn your contract details to see what’s allowed rather than face a fine.

If your company seeks outside sources for additional support, you’ll want to pay close attention. The use of Oracle licenses to open commercial applications to third-party access requires special hosting permissions. The purchase of licenses from Oracle is for the sole use of a pre-registered, legal entity. Some Oracle agreements give the green light for limitations on using Oracle licenses after a merger, acquisition, or divestiture. However, ensuring you have acceptable licensing rights remains essential as this type of activity gets the Oracle audit team’s attention.

As an IT professional, you have to track a lot of information for your company. Understanding the extent of your licensing rights with Oracle will help keep you off Oracle’s radar for a potential audit and a budget-breaking fine. Staying up-to-date on what’s current with Oracle’s specifications is also a helpful way to reduce your chances of triggering an Oracle audit.

There is Excessive Use Outside Your Contracted License

Losing control of the number of licenses your company has is more common than you’d expect. As a result, there may be issues with unwarranted use beyond what is in your licensing agreement. Especially in the tech industry, it has become even more common to outsource some aspects of an ecosystem to third-party specialists. Although this may seem beneficial on the surface, your business may run into some compliance issues with excessive use outside of your licensing contract.

The outsourcing company may configure redundancy solutions to ensure your software has maximum uptime or choose infrastructures that installs or runs the software on multiple machines. The doubled efforts can result in compliance issues that will only affect your business, not the third-part specialist working in your tech environment.

Another example is that you may be using services outside of your licensing rights. When looking at any Oracle product, it comes with a complete suite of services upon installation. You can activate individual services and features, but it will require an additional license in many cases. Your company must know what is within and what is beyond your contracted license. This can lead to an Oracle audit, and not only are you left with a large bill, but you also have more licenses than you originally planned on.

Resolve Licensing Issues with Vendita’s Expert Team

What makes Vendita unique as a third-party tool vendor is that we can both detect and resolve compliance issues. Besides serving as one of IBM’s preferred Oracle software and license resellers, we have also served as an Oracle partner for the past decade. Our team of experts has experienced and solved many companies’ software issues and saved millions of dollars in potential auditing problems.

Are you interested in learning more about Vendita’s experience in compliance resolution? Join us for a free webinar, presented by Kyle Leonard – Senior Director; Oracle Global Partner Services. You will learn more about common licensing problems in addition to advancements of our proprietary software, Master Automation Solution (MAS). In addition to being an Oracle compliance tool, MAS is a proprietary database automation software that allows you to increase productivity, reduce costs and achieve standardization across all popular databases in on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.