Webinar Highlights: Are ULAs cost-effective?

Oracle are very clever at getting their customers to believe a ULA is their most cost-effective option. It’s an all-you-can-eat software buffet, and if your organisation is hungry, you can access a huge variety of software just for one fee.

However, if you only eat a starter and then choose to leave the buffet, it’s not Oracle’s fault if you feel you didn’t get your value for money.

In this webinar highlight, Mark Smith and Mark Bartrick, experts in ULAs, explain exactly how this kind of agreement is the exact opposite of affordable.

Initial investment

Before you purchase a ULA, let’s say you’re paying £1m in support costs for your existing software. You’re planning to invest in £10m worth of licences with a ULA. Your “new” support for this additional software costs £2m, so your total annual support bill comes to £3m combined into a single support stream.

Certifying out

You reach the end of your ULA and you’ve been working away on the projects you intended to during this period, but you’ve only deployed half of the licences in the agreement. You certify out with the intention of deploying the rest of what you have purchased, but Oracle state that because you can only certify your active licences, you can’t access any more. You’ve spent £10m on software and you’ve only received £5m worth.

Oracle’s “solution”

At this point, Oracle will try to sell you a new ULA so that you can finish your projects and deploy the rest of your purchase. Essentially, if you want to return to that software buffet, just to re-enter the restaurant you’re expected to pay another £10m. You’ll need “new” support added to this again, so your support costs become £5m annually, on top of your capital investment.

This example shows what can happen if you choose to renew your ULA just once. You can end up paying a ridiculous sum of money if you allow the ULA to renew term after term.

Stacking support costs

In the current economic climate, roughly 1-2% of organisations are growing, and could potentially get the most from their £10m ULA investment.

Even if you manage to escape the ULA, your support costs will continue to increase by 4% YoY, for as long as you use the software you’ve deployed. In our example, that means you’ll continue to pay £5m at least for support each year for as long as you’re in business with Oracle.

Support lock-in

The ultimate kick in the teeth is that you can’t cut your support costs while you’re in a ULA. But, when you do finally manage to escape the ULA prison, you’re able to avoid any more inflating support costs, by using a third-party provider like Support Revolution. We can cut your support costs in half and provide the exact same level of service.

As Mark Bartrick from Forrester and Mark Smith from Support Revolution explain in this webinar highlight, ULAs are in fact the opposite of cost-effective for the majority of organisations: