Oracle Support Rewards Explained
Oracle Support Rewards is a program that rewards Oracle Cloud (OCI) usage with credits to reduce on-premises support fees.
This overview demonstrates how enterprise CIOs and CTOs can utilize OCI spending to offset expensive Oracle support bills, thereby converting cloud investment into direct maintenance savings.
What Are Oracle Support Rewards?
Oracle Support Rewards provides credits for on-premises support fees based on your OCI spending.
In simple terms, for every dollar spent on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you earn a credit (typically $0.25 per $1) that you can apply toward your Oracle support bills. Customers with an Unlimited License Agreement (ULA) get an even higher rate ($0.33 per $1).
By moving more workloads to OCI, an enterprise can substantially reduce – or even eliminate – its Oracle support costs. For example, a $400,000 OCI spend would earn roughly $100 in credits – enough to offset a $100,000 support bill.
Read Negotiating OCI Enterprise Agreements.
How the Support Rewards Program Works
To use Support Rewards, you must enroll via an OCI Universal Credits agreement.
As you consume OCI services, you accrue rewards monthly at the specified rate (25% or 33% of your OCI spend).
These credits can then be applied to any open Oracle support invoice for eligible products.
Key program conditions include:
- Eligible Costs: Only on-premise Oracle technology license support fees qualify (for example, databases or middleware). Support for Oracle applications (ERP, CRM) and Oracle SaaS subscriptions is not covered.
- Enrollment: The program isn’t enabled by default – you need to have Oracle’s Universal Cloud Credits contract (annual or multi-year) that includes Support Rewards terms. Pay-as-you-go cloud accounts are not eligible.
- Accrual & Expiry: Rewards accrue monthly and expire 12 months after being earned. Unused credits are forfeited after one year, so timing their use is important.
- Combining Incentives: Support Rewards can stack with other Oracle incentives (e.g., “Customer to Cloud” migration credits).
Typically, credits are applied to your next support billing. It’s crucial to track OCI consumption and earned credits via Oracle’s dashboard to maximize usage before expiration and align cloud activity to offset support charges effectively.
Why Did Oracle Introduce Support Rewards?
Oracle launched Support Rewards as a strategic move to drive cloud adoption amid stiff competition from AWS and Azure.
The program offers a trade-off: Oracle forgoes a portion of its high-margin support revenue in exchange for customers committing to OCI.
By tying support savings to OCI usage, Oracle aims to retain existing customers (enticing them to stay in Oracle’s ecosystem) and encourage new cloud projects on OCI instead of rival platforms.
Oracle is betting that any short-term loss in support fees will be outweighed by long-term OCI growth and deeper customer lock-in.
Enterprise Benefits of Support Rewards
The appeal of Support Rewards lies in its tangible budget impact:
- Direct Savings: It’s essentially a 25–33% rebate on your OCI spend, returned as reduced support costs. With enough cloud usage, some organizations can even offset their eligible on-prem support fees entirely.
- Better Cloud ROI: Money saved on support directly lowers the true cost of your cloud projects, improving your overall return on investment in OCI.
- Migration Relief: The program mitigates the “double-spend” during migrations (paying for cloud resources and on-premises support simultaneously) by subsidizing the transition period.
Overall, Support Rewards lets CIOs redirect funds from maintenance to innovation.
Dollars that would have gone into support fees can instead fuel new projects, making a stronger business case for Oracle Cloud where it fits the enterprise’s needs.
Key Considerations and Challenges
Before banking on Support Rewards, keep in mind a few limitations:
- Credit Expiration: Rewards expire 12 months after they are accrued. Align OCI usage with support renewal cycles to ensure credits are available and utilized before they lapse.
- Program Enrollment: This benefit isn’t automatic – you must have Support Rewards explicitly written into your OCI contract.
- ULA Trade-Off: If you have an Unlimited License Agreement, you generally cannot use the older “ULA2PaaS” cloud credit option at the same time as Support Rewards. Deciding between them requires analysis of which provides greater value for your situation.
Savings scale with OCI commitment – if cloud adoption slows, support offsets shrink accordingly. Treat Support Rewards as one tool in a broader Oracle cost management strategy, not the sole reason to move a workload to OCI.
Recommendations
To maximize the benefits of Oracle Support Rewards, enterprise leaders should take action on several fronts:
- Quantify Support Costs: Calculate your annual Oracle tech support spend to gauge the maximum potential savings.
- Identify OCI Candidates: Evaluate which on-prem systems are good candidates for OCI. Prioritize migrations that make technical and business sense, using Support Rewards as a tiebreaker in Oracle’s favor (not as the sole reason to choose OCI).
- Model the ROI: Run scenarios of OCI usage versus support savings. For example, if you plan $1 million in OCI spend, expect roughly $ 250,000 (or $ 330,000 with ULA) in credits and include that in your business case.
- Secure Contract Terms: Ensure that Support Rewards (and your eligible accrual rate) are explicitly outlined in your Oracle cloud agreement to avoid any surprises later.
- Monitor Usage & Credits: Track OCI consumption and reward accrual monthly via Oracle’s dashboard. Verify that credits are accruing and plan to use them before they expire.
- Align with Renewals: Time cloud spending so you have credits on hand for major support renewal invoices. Coordinate with Oracle on applying rewards toward upcoming support bills for maximum impact.
- Weigh ULA vs. Rewards: If you’re under a ULA, weigh the 33% Support Reward benefit versus your ULA’s cloud entitlements; determine which path yields better long-term savings and flexibility.
By integrating Support Rewards into your Oracle strategy, you can simultaneously reduce costs and fund cloud growth. The key is to align the program with genuine cloud needs and carefully manage its terms and timing to achieve full benefit.
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