Concurrent vs Named User

All, I have been working with a client that is preparing to upgrade their world to the latest cume and also add a few modules. They're currently in the financial suite and want to add the distribution. They're being told that although they're currently on concurrent licensing, they MUST go to named user licensing if they purchase/implement a new module. Has anyone out here heard of this? Experienced it with a client?

Sure, this is not unusual. It really depends on how the original contract was written. Unless there was some sort of clause putting in price protection for new modules, increase in concurrent users, etc. then this is a new purchase and negotiation.

JDE sold concurrent users as an option but never coded to enforce it. PeopleSoft like named users with a revenue tier factor applied to the pricing. Oracle has picked up that same model. Except in the area of self-service modules where there is an unlimited users pricing based on internal or external use and the revenue tier of the licensee.

Can anyone explain how the named user licence works? Do the users have
to be named to PeopleSoft, or just to the software. How is it handled
when personnel change? What if a company has 168 users all called Fred
Bloggs?

I can tell you what I know through my experience with a few license audits.

Named users are those in the User Profile master. The audit tool that JDE and then PeopleSoft used examined the major transaction tables and counted the distinct number of users in the audit fields across those tables. The sample of data examined was over a relatively short period of time. I can't recall for sure but I don't think it was longer than a quarter of a year. (The narrow time window minimized the impact of staff turnover on license usage.)

Even if you had 50 Fred Bloggs and 20 Joe Bloggs in your company using E1 there would have to be 70 distinct user ids or named users. Now if you are willing to share a generic user id this audit approach is open for abuse. I am not sure if the audit tool applied some intelligence around transaction volumes over a given period of time per user to catch the sharing of generic ids.

As for Oracle's policy I don't believe you must furnish them with a named user list but I believe you must be able to produce accurate internal documentation in the case of a license audit. A lot of this is dealt with during the initial contract. You have to disclose your head count and the head count that would apply to each module. In the case of Oracle e-Business suite I believe they had some rule that stated you had to license at least 20% of your head count.

You got me curious I had a poke around the Oracle site. I found some official information at: http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/index.html
and http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/sig.html

I couldn't find a specific discussion of the JDE license model however.

This does not surprise me and we are going through a similar "crisis". I posted my "rant" on the other World forum under "Oracle Audit". We just recently went through an audit and they are telling us we need to by bunches of users (read that as big $$$) and we are contesting their results. We also had to go through and do some major clean up of users because we did still have a few folks in there that we not even using the system anymore but they still counted them even though they would have had NO transactions anywhere in the system.

As for them forcing you to the Named structure (even though World has no way of enforcing it), they are doing the same to us. We actually wanted to buy a few more licenses (under our current contract) for one of our companies that is growing a bit and we CAN'T. They say we have to changes things over to named and do an entire new contract (we have multiple iSeries and environments and we only wanted to buy some new licenses for one of the boxes). And again... send us a big 'ol check while you are at it.

We are still negotiating but thankfully I don't have to deal with Oracle, only my boss! Good luck and try to hold your ground as much as possible?