License Migration Expense

[wjoshico]

We are currently in the process of migrating from World A7.3 SP 10 to EnterpriseOne 9.0 / Tools 8.98. The project started back in February 2009 with intentions of going live in February of 2010. Mid April we started discussions with Oracle to validate our EnterpriseOne product line up as well as our User licensing from our current 28 concurrent users to 100 total active users. We ran into issues upon issues and had quotes rolling in from $12 million for Enterprise Wide Licensing to $80K for named user licensing and we still do not have a final amount which we can submit to the budget directors office.
The project has come to a screeching halt until the “Migration License Issue” gets resolved. We converted our World Licensing over to One world back in 2003 and going forward all of our documentation told us “that all it would cost us to migrate is if we wanted to add users or add new products”. What we are getting hit with are migration Fees and Incremental License Fees…..This issue is in result to the price change Oracle has started to implement but the biggest issues are the organization as a whole has no clue on what is going on. Is there anyone else out there who is trying to migrate and has run into this specific issue?

Thanks
Wischal

 

[altquark]

You need to talk to the licensing department at Oracle. You should have gotten all the licensing in place before you started the migration. If you have Oracle consultants on site, then kick them out - the client manager will freak out and get your licensing issues resolved.

There is no concurrent user licensing model anymore - but there is a formula that converts your existing concurrent licenses to named user licenses. Oracle should be able to disclose that formula - and if your actual named user number is a little higher than the number of converted users, there will be a price difference. The $80k sounds about right for a conversion difference of a handful of users.

Enterprise wide licensing is completely different licensing model, and is based on the revenue of your company as well as the % of usage of the application in your company. Enterprise licensing works if you are using a lot of the product suite amongst a large number of users - but $12m is totally unrealistic. The highest enterprise license I've ever heard of was substantially lower than that figure, and was for a $10b company with more than 2000 concurrent users. It is very unlikely that you received an official enterprise license quote from JDE for that amount.

Secondly, because you're upgrading from World to E1 9.0, JDE/Oracle is a "free" upgrade providing you're current on maintenance. There should not be any software costs related to E1 unless you're planning on implementing new functionality you're not already licensed for.

What IS apparent from your email, though, is that choosing Oracle to do your upgrade doesn't provide any ease in getting your licensing worked out, any more than getting any other company to perform your upgrade. It is also apparent that your client manager (who is supposed to ensure that licensing is correctly set up) isn't doing their job, and nor is your sales representative.

You need to talk to your regional sales manager. Wherever you're based, call Oracle up, tell them who you are and why you're calling, and if you can't get anywhere with the sales department - then talk to the Pricing department in Denver. Certainly someone should be able to get you an accurate price for the difference in user numbers so you can get your project started.

If you're located in the US, maybe you should be looking at an independent consulting organization or business partner to help with your migration (ahem...)

 

[ssolberg]

We went through this process a couple years back and it was PAINFUL. Yes, there was an expense to change the licensing model but to come to an agreeable # of current users, then the concurrent to named (I think we got it to 2.8:1 conversion ratio) fight, then the whole adding of some new modules was frightful. Lots of calls and visits from Oracle until it was settled. Nearly went to court about it. Be ready to prove your current licensing/usage and question any findings they come up with. Make them prove their numbers. Also have any and all contracts from years gone by at your finger tips. They did NOT have much of our old paperwork and we did so they had to honor some things that if we didn't have it, may have added some $$$ to the total.

Once that was all done, then we hit them with "and now we want to buy some licenses that we can put on the shelf (knew we would need them in coming future) and we want it for cheap". And actually got a pretty good deal because I think we had finally worn them down. It took a LONG time, much longer than expected, but it didn't affect our migration.

 

[wjoshico]

Unfortunately we are 5 months into the process or trying to iron everything out. We have dropped several modules which we were licensed for in World but will no longer need in EnterpriseOne and we are still being blown out of the water with high $$ figures. The Ratio of 2:1 of providing concurrent users to named users is very unfair for the size of our organization. We are already taking a hit for the HR/Payroll License Migration (Per Employee) .
Back in 2002 we converted to the One-World Licensing Matrix because we wanted to eventually migrate to One –World and all communication from then on by Oracle has them stating that the only expense to us when we do migrate to One-world / XE/ EnterpriseOne is if we wanted to add Product or add users which was about $4K per additional user, so you can see when we started our initial planning phase we got beamed. The biggest issue has been the communication within Oracle between the Sales Reps the “Migration Pricing Team” and other higher ups within the organization.

 

[Larry_Jones]

Not going to share details of our recent battle with Oracle on this but it did accomplish one thing - changed my attitude toward Oracle as a long-term business partner (its hard to feel good about attempted rape). We need them now, but in the future . . .