Top 3 challenges when optimizing Oracle licenses
The fine print is confusing by design
Wether it's Oracle or any other big software vendor, contract jargon is everywhere and meant to favor the party that owns the intelligence, by design. Owning different Oracle products or even purchasing the same product throughout the years comes with different sets of licensing rules. This sets you up for undesired challenges.
Support fees for Oracle licenses are expensive
Oracle’s support fees typically are ± 22% of their license cost. There's an obvious risk in being under-licensed, but also in being over-licensed. If you own more licenses than you actually need, you are wasting money on support costs. Which is a nice revenue stream for Oracle as they earn more on support / maintenance fees than on new software licenses.
Choosing the most beneficial metric
Do you license by processor (CPU * # of cores * "Core Factor") or by Named User Plus (NUP)? The Processor metric allows for an unlimited user count, interesting if the user population is large or uncountable. The Named User Plus metric allows you to license by the number of users. The complexity lays in other factors, like clusters, virtualization and variations in core types and counts.