How Redress Compliance helped Adecco — with 80,000+ employees in 60+ countries — save €12M over three years by designing a hybrid Oracle support strategy that combined OCI cloud migration for strategic workloads with third-party support for stable legacy systems.
Adecco, 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.
Oracle Database, WebLogic, and supporting middleware components deployed globally under a certified ULA
Successfully certified — perpetual licence rights locked in across the full Oracle footprint
€6M per year to Oracle for support — rising annually despite a largely stable environment
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 modernisation goals.
For an overview of post-ULA support options, see Third-Party Oracle Support: Savings or a Trap?
Adecco faced the common post-ULA dilemma: perpetual Oracle licences secured, but support costs rising year after year without corresponding value.
Many certified deployments were stable and hadn’t required critical patches or vendor intervention in years. Yet Oracle charged full support based on list price.
Oracle allowed no flexibility in support pricing. Even unused or underutilised products couldn’t be removed from the support contract without losing all entitlements.
Parts of the IT roadmap pointed toward cloud adoption; others required retaining core systems on-premise. Oracle pushed a bundled cloud renewal with aggressive sales tactics and vague ROI claims.
IT wanted agility. Finance wanted savings. Procurement wanted to avoid risk. A common strategy was needed to balance cost, continuity, and future readiness.
Oracle’s licensing and support terms are notoriously opaque. Adecco required expert interpretation to determine available options without risking non-compliance.
Redress began with a comprehensive review of Adecco’s certified Oracle licences across the entire estate — mapping deployments to actual business usage, identifying redundant or shelfware licences still under support, and isolating products that hadn’t received patches or SRs in years.
The team conducted a deep analysis of Adecco’s Oracle contracts — past ULA agreements, current support clauses, and Oracle Cloud pricing models. This clarified what Oracle could and couldn’t enforce, where Adecco had room to negotiate, and the long-term implications of each support pathway.
Redress facilitated cross-functional workshops with procurement, IT, finance, and security to educate teams on Oracle’s support cost structure and evaluate three key paths:
€6M/year to Oracle — simple but expensive, with no cost improvement
50–60% savings but loses all Oracle direct support and update access
OCI for strategic workloads + third-party support for stable legacy — the winning path
Redress designed and helped implement a phased hybrid strategy:
Migrated select Oracle Database workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), where bundled support costs were lower and aligned with Adecco’s cloud roadmap.
Moved remaining stable workloads to a vetted third-party provider offering 50–60% cost reduction with equivalent SLAs.
Established processes to maintain licence compliance, monitor evolving usage, and document entitlements for any future Oracle enquiries.
For a detailed walkthrough of support transitions, see our Oracle Third-Party Support Advisory Service.
Split between lower Oracle Cloud support bundling for strategic workloads and reduced third-party support pricing for stable legacy systems.
Cumulative savings with zero business disruption. Support costs now aligned to actual business need rather than Oracle’s list-price model.
Adecco avoided all-or-nothing Oracle renewals. The hybrid model allows them to shift workloads between OCI and third-party support as needs evolve.
IT has the freedom to migrate on their own terms. No compliance or audit issues, with licences fully documented and entitlements retained.
“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
A hybrid approach splits your Oracle estate between two support models: Oracle direct support (or OCI bundled support) for workloads that genuinely need it — typically strategic systems being actively developed or migrated to cloud — and third-party support for stable, legacy workloads that no longer require Oracle patches or upgrades. This gives you the cost savings of third-party (50–60% reduction) on the bulk of your estate while retaining Oracle’s direct involvement where it adds genuine value.
Yes. Oracle Cloud subscriptions include support for the cloud-hosted workloads as part of the subscription fee. Your on-premise systems are separate — you can choose third-party support for those independently. The key is ensuring your licence entitlements are clearly documented so there’s no ambiguity about which systems are covered by which support model.
Not directly. Your perpetual licences remain valid regardless of your support provider. However, if you want to use Oracle’s BYOL (Bring Your Own Licence) programme for OCI, you’ll need active Oracle support on those specific licences. This is why the hybrid model works well — you keep Oracle support on workloads destined for OCI while saving on everything else.
The key is documentation. Before transitioning, create a comprehensive inventory of all licences, their support status, and which systems they cover. Ensure usage stays within certified entitlements. Redress typically builds a compliance documentation package that can be presented to Oracle if any enquiry arises, demonstrating that all licence rights are properly maintained.
Full third-party support typically saves 50–60% across the entire estate. A hybrid approach saves somewhat less on a blended basis (30–50% overall) because you retain Oracle pricing on strategic workloads. However, the hybrid model preserves access to Oracle updates, BYOL eligibility, and cloud migration flexibility — making it the better choice for organisations with active cloud roadmaps. Adecco achieved €12M over 3 years with this balanced approach.
Redress Compliance can help you assess third-party support, cloud options, and hybrid strategies — tailored to your licensing rights.
This case study is part of our Oracle Third-Party Support Guide pillar. Explore related case studies and guides: