Very often implementations of the Oracle ‘Plugin’ are unsuccessful, and those who succeed find out that the tools do not give the correct conclusions about the usage of some Database Options and Management Packs.

Database Administrators are exposed to all (new) functionality commencing version upgrades. With the lack of any warning from Oracle, a simple administrative task can trigger enormous license costs. Oracle is widely known to claim compliance fees for un-intended and historical use. With License Audit this can be prevented. Period.

While the data collected here shows part of the picture, it should not be used for license compliancy purposes. It is illustrated by the fact that during compliance audits Oracle will extract a lot more data from the Oracle system tables than the DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS.

The use of Oracle Enterprise Management Packs is sometimes not detectable with ‘hard’ evidence. In many cases it is circumstantial, based upon the mere possibility to use them rather than evidence about such use. Like many Database Options, it is difficult and often impossible to un-install them or make them inaccessible.

Once an improperly configured Oracle database is cloned to other places and audited by Oracle it can be very difficult to proof the source of such evidence. Clients often find themselves negotiating about alleged feature use whilst lying on their back. License Audit prevents this from occurring. Ever. Again.

Oracle users who are taken off-guard by large compliance claims quite often learn that a different deployment of the same Oracle database software could have eliminated the claim or even incur a support saving.
In the absence of transparency, clients have no control mechanism in place. When re-drawing the infrastructure such information is key: Without it, informed decisions are out of reach.