New Look. Oracle licensing assessment delivers material saving.

New Look is a UK fashion retailer with roughly ten thousand employees. Its Oracle estate covers Database Enterprise Edition, Real Application Clusters and the Diagnostics Pack.

Retail has the sharpest version of the Oracle capacity problem. You provision for the peak trading weeks and you licence that provisioning all year, including the many months when it sits largely idle.

The assessment optimised the position by separating capacity that genuinely serves peak trading from capacity that had simply never been reviewed.

The customer profile

Around ten thousand employees across UK operations, running store systems, ecommerce, merchandising and supply chain on an Oracle foundation.

Trading is heavily seasonal. Peak weeks around Black Friday and Christmas generate transaction volumes several times the annual average, and the estate is built to survive them.

That is sound engineering and expensive licensing, because Oracle prices the capacity you provision rather than the capacity you use.

The opening position

Oracle's position priced peak provisioned capacity across the estate, with options carried at the same processor count.

Peak provisioning is legitimate. The question nobody had asked was how much of it was genuinely required for peak trading and how much was simply headroom that had accumulated over successive years.

The approach

We measured actual load through a full trading year, including the peak weeks, and compared it against provisioned capacity server by server.

That distinction is the whole exercise. Capacity required for the December peak is a genuine cost of doing business. Capacity added years ago for a peak that never materialised is not.

We then checked which systems genuinely needed Real Application Clusters, and reconciled the Diagnostics Pack against instances where it was actually used rather than merely enabled.

The eleven moves

1. Recount processors on the correct core basis. Physical cores multiplied by the core factor, per server, rounded up.
2. Audit enabled options instance by instance. Especially the Diagnostics and Tuning packs.
3. Separate options in use from options merely enabled. The two are rarely the same set.
4. Match Real Application Clusters to the tier that needs it. Not to the whole estate.
5. Reconcile support against live capacity. Decommissioned hardware should not carry maintenance.
6. Test Enterprise Edition against Standard Edition 2. Where the socket and feature limits allow it.
7. Compare processor licensing against Named User Plus. Applying the minimums honestly.
8. Check entity and territory scope. Especially where the group spans jurisdictions.
9. Negotiate the discount across the whole stack. Licence, options and support together.
10. Fix price protection before you need it. Support compounds for the life of the estate.
11. Re measure quarterly. Provisioning drifts faster than annual reviews can track.

The commercial outcome

• Position optimised. Peak trading capacity separated from accumulated headroom.
• Measurement. Load assessed across a full trading year including the peak weeks.
• Options. Diagnostics Pack reconciled to genuine use.
• Processor count. Rebuilt on the correct core factor basis.
• Support. Aligned to capacity that is live rather than historic.

For any seasonal business, the transferable point is to measure across a full cycle. A peak you cannot evidence is headroom, and headroom is licensed at exactly the same rate as capacity you use.

How we engage

• Oracle scoping. A six week engagement that recounts processors on the correct core basis, audits enabled options instance by instance, and aligns support to live capacity. Oracle services practice.
• Oracle negotiation. We run the commercial conversation across the licence, the options and the support line. Oracle contract negotiation service.
• Oracle audit defense. Position and evidence if Oracle opens a review. Oracle audit services.
• Vendor Shield. Always on cover across Oracle and the wider software estate. Vendor Shield.
• Run the numbers. The software spend assessment sizes your Oracle position against what is actually deployed.