Licensing 101: what is it, and why should you care?

If you’re in the software industry, then you know that licensing is a big deal. It’s how companies make money from their products, and it’s how developers get paid for their work. But what exactly is licensing, and why should you care about it? Licensing is basically a way for companies to control how their…

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The cloud demigration

While many organizations fully migrated to the cloud over the past decade, many others had one foot in the cloud and one on the ground. By now, companies have seen all the cloud has to offer, from on-demand bare metal to Kubernetes, and have a more educated opinion on its benefits and shortcomings. The cloud…

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What is an Oracle Audit and what does it mean for you?

Most software licensing agreements contain some form of audit clause. Vendors wish to protect against abusive use of their software and IP thus including an audit clause allowing them to audit their customers to check compliant usage is thus a great deterrent to keep organisations in check but also a great way to obtain financial…

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Licensing Automation Streaming Sessions (LASS)

We started our career in software licensing a decade ago. Back then, SAM was still the new kid on the block for most companies. Nearly all software audit programs were scaling up, and there was no real fear of the software boogeyman. The most popular SAM tool was a spreadsheet.  Today, some of the most notorious…

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What you have is cheaper

In the past few years, we’ve seen how on-demand access to assets, rather than ownership, has set the tone for financial transactions. We’ve seen that in industries like accommodation, transportation, entertainment, computing, and software. Aside from other obvious advantages, such as convenience, increase in choice and offering, and scalability there is a strong financial incentive…

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Oracle DB Analysis Tutorial

Part 2 Required Data Your DB Admins and product owners will help you find and collect the data you need. If you don’t have all this information already collated in a spreadsheet, create one. The Oracle Server Worksheet (OSW) is a great place to start. The bonus here is that in the event of an…

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Oracle DB Analysis Tutorial

Part 1 The big debate The debate on spreadsheets vs. tools is a sort of SAM version of the chicken and the egg. And just like in the aviary version, the jury is still out. Yes, tools are supposed to make our lives easy and we’d all love to ditch the spreadsheet and still have…

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Oracle DB Compliance Risk Scenarios

For over four decades, Oracle DB has been one of the most popular commercial databases in the world. Many enterprises rely on it as a mission-critical component of their business. During this time, aside from its obvious business utility the database product has also become well known for its complex and ever-changing contractual terms and…

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Why Do I Need To Run Oracle Review Lite?

If you are part of the SAM world or if you manage Oracle software within your organization, surely the Oracle Review Lite or Oracle LMS script popped more than once in the conversation. To support their license management and audit strategy, Oracle has built tracking mechanisms inside the Oracle Database software. These mechanisms log any use…

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API Wars

As technology evolves, software copyright laws become fuzzy and open to interpretation. This year we’ll see the Supreme Court review the legal status of a copyright dispute related to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) between Oracle and Google. Previously the ruling was in favour of Oracle, who accused Google of infringing the copyright of the Java…

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