Adecco – Hybrid Oracle Support Strategy Saves €12M Over 3 Years for Global HR Leader
Background
Adecco, a global professional services company headquartered in France, is one of the world’s largest HR solutions providers, with over 80,000 full-time employees and operations in more than 60 countries.
Its core business—temporary staffing, permanent placement, workforce consulting, and training—relies heavily on stable, integrated backend systems powered by Oracle technology.
Several years earlier, Adecco had entered into an Oracle Unlimited License Agreement (ULA), which allowed for the widespread deployment of Oracle Database, WebLogic, and supporting middleware components across its global infrastructure.
After a successful ULA certification, Adecco retained perpetual rights to its Oracle footprint—but the company was still locked into a €6 million annual Oracle support stream.
With much of the Oracle environment stable and no longer actively evolving, Adecco wanted to rethink its support model.
They engaged Redress Compliance to explore how to reduce costs, retain control, and align future Oracle strategy with broader IT modernization goals.
Read how to move to Oracle third-party support.
Challenges
Adecco faced the common post-ULA dilemma: perpetual Oracle licenses secured, but support costs rising year after year—without corresponding value.
Specific challenges included:
- Static Workloads with Premium Costs: Many of the certified Oracle deployments were stable and hadn’t required critical patches or vendor intervention in years. Yet Oracle charged full support based on list price.
- Rigid Support Model: Oracle allowed no flexibility in support pricing. Even unused or underutilized products couldn’t be removed from the support contract.
- Unclear Path Forward: While parts of Adecco’s IT roadmap pointed toward cloud adoption, others involved retaining core systems on-premise. Oracle pushed for a bundled cloud renewal with aggressive sales tactics and vague ROI claims.
- Internal Misalignment: IT wanted agility. Finance wanted savings. Procurement wanted to avoid risk. A common strategy was needed to balance cost, continuity, and future readiness.
- Contractual Complexity: Oracle’s licensing and support terms are notoriously opaque. Adecco required expert interpretation to determine the available options without risking non-compliance.
The key question: how could Adecco reduce Oracle support costs without undermining license rights, business continuity, or future cloud plans?
How Redress Compliance Helped
Redress Compliance launched a tailored advisory engagement focused on supporting cost reduction and aligning long-term Oracle strategy.
1. Oracle License & Usage Optimization
Redress began with a comprehensive review of Adecco’s certified Oracle licenses across its estate. This included:
- Mapping deployments to actual business usage
- Identifying redundant, unused, or shelfware licenses still under support
- Isolating products that hadn’t received patches, upgrades, or SRs in years
We identified significant opportunities for streamlining support across multiple business units.
2. Contractual and Strategic Review
Our team conducted a comprehensive analysis of Adecco’s Oracle contracts, encompassing past ULA agreements, current support clauses, and Oracle Cloud pricing models.
We clarified:
- What Oracle could and couldn’t enforce
- Where Adecco had room to negotiate
- The long-term implications of switching from on-premise support to Oracle Cloud or third-party providers
This analysis served as the foundation for stakeholder discussions on risk, cost, and roadmap alignment.
3. Stakeholder Workshops and Scenario Planning
Redress facilitated multiple cross-functional workshops with stakeholders from procurement, IT, finance, and security to:
- Educate teams on Oracle’s support cost structure
- Present viable support reduction scenarios
- Align around operational vs. financial trade-offs
Three key paths were evaluated:
- Renew Oracle support as-is
- Fully shift to third-party support
- Adopt a hybrid model using Oracle Cloud for strategic workloads and third-party support for stable legacy systems.
Adecco chose option 3.
4. Hybrid Support Transition Roadmap
Redress designed and helped implement a phased hybrid support strategy:
- Migrated select Oracle Database workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), where bundled support costs were lower
- Moved remaining stable workloads to a vetted third-party support provider, offering 50–60% cost reduction
- Established governance processes to maintain license compliance and monitor evolving usage
Redress provided commercial negotiation support, compliance documentation, and ongoing advisory services during rollout.
Outcome and Impact
The strategy paid off:
- €4M saved in Year 1, split between lower Oracle Cloud support bundling and reduced third-party support pricing
- €12M in cumulative savings over 3 years, with zero business disruption
- Improved vendor flexibility, enabling Adecco to avoid all-or-nothing Oracle renewals
- Cloud alignment without vendor lock-in, giving IT the freedom to migrate on their own terms
- No compliance or audit issues, with licenses fully documented and entitlements retained
By combining the best of both worlds—Oracle Cloud’s strategic footprint and third-party support’s cost efficiency—Adecco built a sustainable support model.
Client Quote
“Redress Compliance helped us ask the right questions and find the right balance. Oracle made it seem like we had no choice—but Redress showed us a smarter hybrid path that cut support costs by €12 million while supporting our future cloud strategy. Their expertise gave us both savings and confidence.”
— Director of IT Procurement, Adecco Group
Call-to-Action
Still paying full Oracle support on static systems? Redress Compliance can help you assess third-party support, cloud options, and hybrid strategies—tailored to your licensing rights.
Book a free support optimization consultation today.
Read about our Oracle Third Party Support Advisory Service.
Read our other Oracle Support Reduction Case Studies.
