As a techie par excellence, I have always kept my distance from anything related to licensing. “How hard can this be?” I always thought, not quite understanding the challenge. In addition, I have sometimes been guided by the idea that licenses will eventually (in the cloud) become irrelevant. However, due to advancing insight, I have come to a completely different conclusion.
The formal definition of licensing is broad but also simple. A software license is a right to use someone else’s computer program, commonly referred to as “usage rights”, in common parlance. So, whether cloud or on-premises, in both cases the term “license” remains relevant, because in both cases, the right of use is required. But will everything just stay the same, and what exactly does this mean for organizations that want to make the transition to cloud, or use on-premises and cloud side by side for a while?
How do we make the right decisions?
Fortunately, most organizations, and certainly Oracle, offer many options to optimally capitalize on the previously made investments in licenses, and add associated support in the chosen cloud environment. The term BYOL (Bring Your Own License) is the commonly used term in this context. In the case of Oracle software, this means that existing licenses may be deployed in an authorized cloud of your choice under specific conditions using defined calculation rules. However, because the calculation model in the cloud is different, there are factors to take into consideration. The software is often offered as a composite service: a combination of server, network, storage, and management, plus a set of software components. In this case, billing takes place afterwards based on current usage or estimated in advance (In Oracle terms: “Pay as you Go” or “Annual Flex”). Fortunately, a program like Oracle’s “BYOL to Cloud” offers enough flexibility to reuse previous investments in licenses and support.
Determining the number of licenses required for your Oracle products and determining the current usage in an existing environment, however, can be challeging for any administrator. And what does it mean for software to be used in a hybrid cloud environment while a longer term migration is planned? Traditionally, Oracle provides support for the on-premises environment in determining the necessary licenses, including through the script, “options_packs_usage_statistics.sql” (found as Doc ID 1317265.1 on My Oracle Support), via Enterprise Manager (Diagnostics Pack). Additionally, Verified Third-Party Tools can also provide significant support in this regard.
OCI License Manager to the rescue
So how do you measure the required licenses in the Oracle Cloud if an organization wishes to use its licenses via BYOL, and therefore does not use “License Included”? A new service option has recently been added for this, called OCI License Manager. Though it was announced with little fanfare, but undoubtedly picked up by the observant OCI administrator who may have seen this extra menu item in the cloud console or read the promotional blog post, honesty compels me to say that OCI License Manager is a first step in this direction. It is worth taking a closer look and making it part of the work systematically. In concrete terms, OCI License Manager analyzes running OCI cloud instances, keeps track of current usage by means of application of the license rules, and translates this into required licenses, provided this instance is of the “BYOL” type. This information is collected and can be displayed at any time or used to create reports, alerts and emails when certain limits are exceeded.
The above is not limited to Oracle software, as ready-made images with other software can also be included. In short, my advice for the OCI administrator is this: turn on OCI License Manager and start measuring. After all, measuring is knowing -definitely in the cloud!
SIA – Eliminate guesswork. Make smart decisions.
To learn more about Oracle SIA, please visit Oracle.com/goto/SIA