While it may be back to school for some, we never stop learning. Oracle is constantly evolving, growing, acquiring and looking for ways to make their systems and methodologies more complex. Why would they do these things you might ask? The answer is simple – revenue – they want to be able to see as much as they can about your installs, environments, systems and configurations as possible and in a way that only they can decipher. Not only harder to decipher but they are taking what used to be scripts that an IT team could verify before running against their environment and turning those into CLI’s and even JavaScript coding that invokes several different interrogation tools that not only scan by network port, but will interrogate every server in the environment.
Recently a client of our was running the latest tools provided by Oracle LMS as part of an audit and discovered that at a minimum they could see that the outputs were providing every detail about their servers including configurations, storage configurations and even a list of installed programs. They will also tell you that you are not allowed to share your outputs that give away all of YOUR information with anyone but them.. and of course when you have trouble executing these tools, they are so helpful and so willing to support you and even will offer to come onsite to do it for you so your team doesn’t have to worry about it. They are so nice and so willing to help.. aren’t they? This was another thing I heard from a client recently, they were completely deceived that the LMS team exists for one reason and that is to get as much revenue as possible. They are evolving and we are taking notes.
Sales is no different in that they are always looking for new ways to get into more accounts and more sales so they can make the customer feel like they have no choice and that this is just the way it has to be. They will use fear of an audit to get sales, they will make promises, and they will even make concessions to get a sale and put you in a position of non-compliance. When they are being your buddy and taking you out to lunch or to a game, they are asking you how you are doing and what is new at work. They want you to boast about the new virtual environment you were just able to get approved and installed and how it has improved things at your organization. They will ask you about your disaster recovery plans and pat you on the back for being to awesome but all the while they are taking notes because they know what you own and what was sold to you. Don’t be surprised if not long after you receive an audit notice or they mention a possible audit if you don’t get compliant. When you receive the notice, the salesperson may act shocked and when you receive a huge compliance finding the sales person will come in and be your “best advocate” and get you an order for a fraction of the finding and everyone walks away happy right? Again, this was planned.. learn from these things.
SLC has been customers every day for over 15 years so trust me, we have seen everything, we have heard everything and we make note of any changes we see so that we will always be the best at helping companies take control of their Oracle licensing and relationship. No matter how good you may feel about your licensing or relationship, it can always be improved and we know this from seeing how things are done and thousands of companies – you don’t know what you don’t know and there is always room to learn. School is now in session!
