The most powerful of all Oracle enterpries agreements became even more powerful. Oracle PULA is the latest of Oracle enterprise software agreements. In 2015 Oracle started to offer this primarily to customers that already had an Oracle ULA and called the Perpetual unlimited license agreement – an upgrade agreement. It is an unlimited license agreement that provides an Oracle customer the right to have unlimited deployment right for a specific product set. This is an unlimited contract that never expires and you will be locked into paying Oracle technical support as any suspension in payments will equal a breach of the licensing agreement.
If you are an Oracle customer and are considering signing a new Oracle PULA or renewing an existing one, the chances are good that you will be offered three options
What is the big difference between a Oracle ULA and an PULA except that that it never ends?
In an ordinary Oracle ULA , you are certifying/exiting after your agreement ends and the contract is changed into a volume-based agreement.
While in a PULA , the “unlimited deployment period” never ends which makes your PULA agreement different from a normal Oracle ULA.
If you have manage your properly Oracle ULA, but deploying Oracle software during the Oracle ULA term, by keeping track of your deployments and optimizing infrastructure deployments such as IBM LPARs and VMware you can exit your Oracle ULA with many thousands of CPUs.
We come across clients who have only deployed a 100-200 Oracle Database Enterprise Edition CPUs, while other customers who have deployed 2000 CPUs. Guess who got more value out of their Oracle ULA.
Client A had previously signed an Oracle ULA for net license 1, 8 m $ the Oracle ULA term was for 3 years and included Oracle DB EE and four database options.
This client did not have a plan on how to rollout their Oracle SW or how to take advantage of the unlimited deployment right. They certified 3 years later and they had managed to deploy approx. 127 Oracle Database EE CPUs, that had a list price value of 6 million $ (excluding options) That equals a discount of 70%.
Client B, who signed a similar Oracle ULA same price but only for 2 years. They had a well thought out plan on how to roll out as much Oracle SW as possible, deploy in virtualized environments. Once their certification was complete, they ended up with 3100 CPUs. Which has a list price value of 147 million $ and effective discount was 98.8%.
I help companies like Client B, if you want to know more you can contact me here
We believe that client B is very unlikely of having to buy any further Oracle SW. What they undertook soon after the Oracle ULA was complete, was an optimization project.
As they have over-deployed with Oracle and using more capacity (CPUs) than what they actually needed. In the year after Oracle ULA certification, they had created a license buffer of 800 Oracle Database Enterprise CPUs.
Benefit of doing so is that, while exiting their Oracle ULA (saving money, by not paying Oracle millions more in license fees) but also making sure that they have a large license buffert protecting them against license gaps in the future.
Yes, but it depends on your existing PULA contract.
If you want to exit your PULA contract, you can contact us to discuss how we can support you in exiting the agreement, because the certification includes an Oracle audit.
How should I certify the Oracle Perpetual Unlimited License Agreement?
Oracle has put restrictions on how an Oracle ULA and PULA contract works with merger and acquisitions. Oracle usually allows you to add an entity with a maximum of 10% of your revenue or employee size to your Oracle ULA or PULA.
What it means for you: If your company has plans to be engaged in merger and acquisitions, you should carefully consider if the PULA is the right contract for you.
With an Oracle ULA you can remove/add products every timey the contract is up for renewal.
With an Oracle PULA that is not possible, you can only add products to the contract, not remove.
What it means for you: If you want flexibility, the PULA may not be the appropriate agreement for your company.
Oracle ULA you will lock in all existing support contracts for the products that are part of the Oracle ULA. For example, all database contracts will become 1 support contract. If you had 50 different support contracts pre-Oracle ULA, you could partially terminate them as you needed. But once you enter the Oracle ULA, you give away that right and you cannot partially terminate unused software and licenses in the future due to Oracle repricing rule.
The difference with PULA is that Oracle wants to lock in support contracts that are not included in the PULA preventing you from reducing support and licenses on non PULA products.
What it means for you: The perpetual unlimited license agreement has more restrictive language on technical support and prevent you from terminating unused software and licenses.
Oracle ULA vs Oracle PULA difference in price? There is no price list for either agreement. Oracle usually prices the PULA 30-50% higher than a normal Oracle ULA. Oracle see that if a customer signs an the agreement the customer receives more value from the agreement, as there is only a one-time license fee. If you enter an Oracle ULA and you renew, you will pay a new additional license fee every time you renew.
What it means for you: Oracle ULA customers need to evaluate if the length of the contract is the most important criteria for the unlimited period. The longer the projected need for the unlimited period is, the higher is the value you will get from choosing the Oracle Perpetual unlimited license agreement.
Read more about Oracle ULA
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