Shocking Facts About Oracle Support Programs

Understanding various Oracle support programs and keeping track of support transition dates for your Oracle estate can be confusing. It can also be costly if you’re not careful with your support choices and timelines.

Let’s take a closer look at Oracle Premier, Extended, and Sustaining Support and the value of each of these options. 

Premier Support

At first glance, you might think of Oracle Premier Support as ‘full support’. With this level, you’ll get basic break/fix technical support along with Critical Patch Updates, security alerts, and new software updates. Where appropriate, you also receive tax, legal, and regulatory updates, as well as new certifications for third-party products. The cost for Premier Support is an annual fee based on a percentage of the purchase price of your software. Premier Support traditionally lasts 5 years from when it’s released not from when you purchase the software. Oracle Database innovation releases are only two years from GA.

But is Premier Support really ‘full support’? For example, there is no support for customisations you’ve made to the software. You’ll first need to replicate any problems in a vanilla environment to secure Oracle support. A common refrain from Oracle is, ‘it’s a customisation issue; you’re on your own’. Oracle likely won’t provide you with performance support for intolerably slow systems or for any interoperability or integration problems. If you want these services from Oracle, they cost extra in the form of professional services.

Extended Support

Extended Support is a near copy of Premier Support, except you pay a 10% surcharge the first year and 20% the second and third years. Occasionally, the Extended Support fee is waived or modified. Essentially, Oracle charges you extra just because your software is older.

However, software doesn’t wear out like an appliance. Problems with software usually arise because of changes in the surrounding ecosystem, data, or human error. Oracle is more interested in upgrading you to a newer version, so they don’t have to continue to fund support resources. So, the most common solution from Oracle when you’re in Extended Support is that you need to upgrade.  

Extended Support is usually only available for three years after Premier Support ends. In some cases, it may not be available at all, and you go directly from Premier Support to Sustaining Support.

Sustaining Support

While you’re still paying significant support fees, you don’t have access to anything new in Sustaining Support: no new fixes or new Critical Patch Updates. According to the Oracle Technical Support Policy, Sustaining Support does not include:   

  • New program updates, fixes, security alerts, and critical patch updates  
  • New tax, legal, and regulatory updates   
  • New upgrade scripts  
  • Certification with new third-party products/versions  
  • 24-hour commitment and response guidelines for Severity 1 service requests as defined in section 9 – Severity Definitions   
  • Previously released fixes or updates that Oracle no longer supports 


Sustaining Support will point you to all the entitlements available before the software enters Sustaining Support. There is very little value if you have an archive of your entitlements.

Are you tired of hearing that your issue is a customisation problem or you’ll have to upgrade to get a critical fix? Or maybe you’re tired of paying too much and waiting forever to get issues resolved? It’s time you considered Revolutionary Third-Party Support from Support Revolution!

With independent third-party support from Support Revolution, you get full personalised support, including support for 24/7 technical break/fix and for customisations, performance, and interoperability. You can run your existing software for as long as you need with no forced upgrades and still receive full support. Plus, our SLAs will astonish you!

Contrast Oracle’s support plans with third-party software support — the differences will amaze you.

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