Sixt. Four million dollars saved on Oracle licensing assessment.

Sixt is a German vehicle rental and mobility services group with roughly seven thousand employees and operations in more than one hundred countries. Its Oracle estate covers Database Enterprise Edition, Real Application Clusters and the Diagnostics Pack.

Rental is a booking business, and booking businesses provision for peak. Summer, holidays and major events drive volumes far above the annual average, and the estate is built to absorb them.

The assessment took four million dollars out of the position by separating genuine peak capacity from headroom that had accumulated.

The customer profile

Seven thousand employees across more than a hundred countries, running fleet management, booking and customer systems that must stay available during peak demand.

Booking systems are the availability critical tier. Fleet and back office systems generally are not, though they frequently share the same standard build and therefore the same options.

Operating in a hundred countries also spreads entitlement across many entities, with the usual consequences for record keeping.

The opening position

Oracle priced peak provisioned capacity across the estate, with Real Application Clusters and the Diagnostics Pack carried at the same processor count.

Peak provisioning is legitimate for booking systems. Carrying it across systems that never see peak load is not, and the two had never been separated.

The approach

We measured actual load across a full year, including the peak periods, server by server.

That separated three groups: booking systems that genuinely need peak capacity and clustering, systems that need capacity but not clustering, and systems that needed considerably less of both.

We then recounted processors on the correct core basis, audited the Diagnostics Pack against real use, and reconciled support to live capacity.

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 in groups spanning many countries.
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

Sixt reduced its Oracle position by four million dollars across the contracted term.

• Peak capacity. Separated from accumulated headroom by measuring across a full year.
• Real Application Clusters. Matched to the booking tier that genuinely requires it.
• Diagnostics Pack. Reconciled to instances where it was actually used.
• Processor count. Rebuilt on the correct core factor basis across countries.
• Support. Aligned to live capacity rather than historic purchases.

In any peak driven business, measure across a full cycle. A peak you cannot evidence is headroom, and Oracle prices headroom exactly like 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.