What is Oracle’s Verified Third-Party Tool Vendors program?

In-Depth Answer

Start with What is an Oracle audit? if unfamiliar.

Oracle auditors can only measure how much software a customer is using if provided script output. While running scripts is not a complicated process, it can be time consuming and delay audits for months, even years. Oracle’s scripts–primarily CPU Query and ReviewLite–have been around for decades.

Meanwhile, software asset management (SAM) tools may already be collecting data, often via agents installed on servers that happen to be running Oracle. Wouldn’t it be handy if Oracle’s scripts were embedded in these agents?

Oracle distributes its scripts to tools vendors willing to collect, consolidate, and package what would otherwise be gathered manually. Oracle is remarkably forthcoming on its Tooling Options page, stating “data gathered from these tools will still need to be analyzed by Oracle.”

An unsuspecting SAM team may send Oracle the massive Zip file its tool has created without understanding its content, which includes PowerCLI output, enabling Oracle to perpetrate its VMware policy.

What’s most important to realize is Oracle doesn’t want the front-end reporting created by the tool. That’s how much Oracle trusts the tools market.