The Top 5 Things To Consider When Seeking Oracle Advice

There is a small community of consulting firms, service offerings, and consultants that advertise as disconnected from—even working against—Oracle’s aggressive sales and audit behavior. And, while all publishers have their tricks, Oracle’s infamous ABC “Audit Bargain Close” playbook remains alive and well.

In response, you may be interested in engaging an expert to sit firmly on your side of the table and give you Oracle advice to keep you from getting taken advantage of within an audit or otherwise. Where to find license advice and how much to pay are the questions.

This is where Remend comes in.

Here are 5 things to consider if you are seeking Oracle advice

You are probably overpaying to run Oracle to begin with: over-engineered systems, shelfware, poorly discounted support, inflexible terms, etc. Therefore, it is important to take a holistic and long-term view by setting Oracle equal to zero and working up to defensible value from there. This requires a unique blend of technical, contractual, negotiation, and legal experience that is rare, and yes, expensive. Remend has the expertise and the tools to provide you with a long-term holistic plan covering your entire Oracle deployment.
“Don’t trust a reseller!” is a common refrain. Of course, if consulting is funded via product/reseller margin, and optimization is the goal, then motives are not aligned. Resellers run towards profitable, cost-neutral, well-supported channel programs, which Oracle is not on any casual basis. Most resellers will fail at bullet one above even if you prefer, or there is good reason, to buy from a reseller. In truth, the net new license business for Oracle has been drying up for years and few multi-publisher VARs are good at making money on it. Either way, rest assured that Remend is not partnered with Oracle in any way.
Your systems integrator, managed services, and/or hosting provider is probably not well-versed in the Oracle licensing policy even if they include such services. The main pitfall here is that such providers have access to your systems, and you may be tempted to outsource the audit to them accordingly. Blindly handing script output to Oracle is a recipe for disastrous and unbudgeted cost. Remend actually delivers in the background for a few of these, so it is wise to interview the licensing consultant directly; you may just end up on the phone with us anyway!
Pure Oracle third-party negotiators only make money if/when you buy something. That’s not bad, just deceptively aligned with the publisher in that gain-share fees, rather than resell margin, are capitalized. While getting you a better deal on something you intend to buy anyway has value, saving you money on a long-standing, committed, perpetual cost is invaluable, especially if it’s not costing you in capital to create operational savings.
The tools providers (e.g., Flexera, Snow, ServiceNow) may advertise as “easy button” solutions for SAM, but they rarely deliver as promised and they certainly don’t deliver audit defense or optimization. These tools approach ERP-level license and implementation costs, leaving little room for additional consulting where it’s needed most: when and how to execute a negotiation strategy. Our Remender tool is specialized for Oracle, eliminates the need for these expensive tools, and enables you (with us) to focus on creating savings.

The wrong license advisor will keep you over-paying, unbeknownst to you both

Remend is a trusted Oracle license advisor that knows the “art of the possible” on reducing long-term total costs. We can tell you story after story about reducing pre-existing support fees. Schedule a call with us here.