Oracle charges 22% of net licence fees annually for support — for software many organisations are not actively upgrading. Independent Oracle third-party support advisory helps you evaluate the alternative, plan the transition, and save $1M or more per year without putting your licence position at risk.
You are paying Oracle 22% of your original licence fees every year for support on software that has not had a major version upgrade in four years. Your Oracle account manager has told you this is standard, that switching would put your licence rights at risk, and that only Oracle can provide compliant tax and regulatory updates. All three statements are either misleading or simply incorrect. This page explains what Oracle third-party support actually is, what it covers, what it does not cover, and how Redress manages the transition in a way that protects your licence position and your compliance posture.
Oracle third-party support is an alternative to Oracle's own annual maintenance product. Independent providers — Rimini Street and Spinnaker Support are the market leaders — deliver break-fix support, regulatory and tax updates, interoperability patches, and custom code support, typically at 10–12% of your original net licence fees. Oracle's equivalent service costs 22%, with an automatic 3–5% annual uplift on top.
For organisations running Oracle Database, EBS, JDE, Siebel, or Middleware on stable versions with no near-term upgrade plans, the financial case for third-party support is material. On a $5M Oracle support contract, moving to a third-party provider at 50% of Oracle's rate saves $2.5M per year — $12.5M over five years before you account for the removal of Oracle's annual uplift.
What third-party support does not include is access to new Oracle product features, major version patches, or Oracle's product development roadmap. For organisations that need to upgrade to Oracle Fusion or a new Database major version, third-party support is not the right answer. For organisations running stable, mature environments where the upgrade roadmap is three or more years away, it frequently is.
The second benefit — and one that many organisations overlook — is using third-party support as a negotiation tool rather than actually switching. Oracle will often reduce support pricing by 20–35% when they believe a well-prepared third-party support evaluation is genuinely underway. Our Oracle contract negotiation service integrates third-party support analysis as a standard commercial lever in all relevant renewal negotiations.
Before recommending a transition, we assess whether third-party support is genuinely right for your environment. We review your Oracle product versions, upgrade roadmap, regulatory patch requirements, and current Oracle support usage. We also complete an Oracle licence compliance assessment to identify and close any entitlement gaps before you exit Oracle support — protecting you from the audit activity Oracle typically initiates following a support termination.
We are independent of Rimini Street, Spinnaker, and every other third-party support provider. We evaluate providers against your specific requirements — product coverage, regulatory update capability, custom code support depth, and financial stability — and negotiate their commercial terms on your behalf. We do not receive referral fees from any provider. On a recent engagement for a European manufacturing group, our provider negotiation delivered a further 12% reduction on top of Rimini Street's opening proposal.
Oracle's account team will respond to a support termination notice with a combination of commercial concessions, legal warnings, and audit announcements. We prepare you for each of these. We document your entitlement position before you give notice, prepare the compliance evidence Oracle will request if they initiate a review, and use our Oracle audit defence service to respond immediately if Oracle escalates.
We manage the Oracle support termination notice, coordinate provider onboarding, and ensure there is no gap in support coverage during the transition window. We remain available through the first six months post-transition to address any Oracle communications and to support the provider relationship through the initial ticket handling period. Use our Oracle assessment tools to begin building your business case before the formal engagement starts.
Oracle third-party support is an alternative to Oracle's own annual maintenance product. Independent providers such as Rimini Street and Spinnaker deliver break-fix support, regulatory updates, and interoperability patches at 10–12% of your original licence fees — versus Oracle's standard 22% annual rate. Organisations switching typically save 50–80% on their annual Oracle support line.
Redress offers advisory on a fixed-fee basis and under our Pay When We Save contingency model, where you pay only on verified savings. Most clients see a 5-to-15x return on advisory costs in the first year alone.
The full process from initial assessment to transition completion typically takes eight to sixteen weeks. The compliance assessment and provider selection phases take four to six weeks. Oracle termination and provider onboarding run concurrently and are typically complete within a further eight weeks.
We need your current Oracle support schedule, your software version list, your upgrade roadmap for the next three years, and a summary of current Oracle support ticket activity. We can begin the assessment with just the support schedule if that is all that is immediately available.
Yes. Oracle support can be terminated mid-contract with appropriate notice. We advise on the termination notice period, manage the compliance documentation before you exit, and coordinate provider onboarding so there is no gap in support coverage. We also advise clients who want to use third-party support as leverage in a mid-term renegotiation with Oracle without actually switching.
Oracle does increase audit activity for organisations that exit Oracle support — this is a known commercial tactic. Redress addresses this directly: we complete a full Oracle licence compliance assessment before you switch, close any entitlement gaps, and prepare your audit response documentation. If Oracle initiates a review after the transition, our audit defence team responds immediately.
Immediate response when Oracle initiates a licence review post-transition.
Use TPS as leverage to achieve 15–28% savings on your Oracle renewal.
Establish a clean Oracle licence position before giving termination notice.
Independent ULA exit planning and certification strategy.
14 commercial checks before signing any Oracle renewal or support agreement.
Zero upfront cost advisory. Pay only on verified Oracle savings.