Every Oracle customer that wants to purchase anything from Oracle needs to have an active Oracle Master Agreement, also referred to as the OMA. This includes software, cloud and hardware. The Oracle OMA is usually valid for 5 years, but can be extended. In this video we give you the basic overview of Oracle Master Agreement (OMA or previously SLSA/OLSA). The OMA replaced the OLSA, which typically was a transactional agreement where a customer would sign a new agreement for each purchase. However, there is still a transactional version of the OMA, also known as the TOMA.
Any product bought in Oracle will be referencing an OMA agreement. The OMA describes the general terms for the products or services you purchased. Each product or service is governed by a specific schedule in the OMA. Schedule P is for program or software, Schedule H is for Hardware and so on. Mapping of Oracle’s different services and how they relate to the OMA schedules can be found here. Every Oracle Software, cloud or hardware requires an active OMA, this covers Oracle ULA as well.
We have listed some of the most commonly used schedules below, but if you purchase from a new product category a new schedule will be added to the OMA.
Every purchase, meaning every Ordering Document, is placed under an OMA. Oracle rarely makes changes to the master agreement, which means that any special terms you might have negotiated usually will be referenced in the ordering document. As such, the special terms will only apply for that specific order. It is Oracle’s way to simplify and manage their contractual comments to you and avoid giving too much away. As standard, anything written at an ordering documents level, will take precedence over terms and conditions in the OMA.
One of the most important contractual definitions for Oracle software is listed in the OMA under schedule P for programs or what we in general refer to as software. One example is where Oracle specifies that you may only use Oracle software for your “internal business Operations”. It also states that your agents, contractors and outsourcers are allowed to have access to your software as part of your daily operations. However, you are responsible for their compliance with the general terms listed in the OMA.
In summary, you cannot share your Oracle software with with another company, or allow other companies to use your Oracle software through hosting or by building any other type of service on top of the software – you would need special contractual rights for that. You are on the other hand allowed to have external people (contractor, agents and outsourcers) to work with your Oracle software to maintain your business operations.
OMA general terms – overview
The limitations of use might seem straight forward in the master agreement, but it is an area where customers to Oracle often go wrong.
Other important areas of interest are trial usage of Oracle software, everything related to your support such as support policies and the annual support increase, some of which includes dynamic links to documents external to your contact – these are links that can change at any point in time without notice.
The audit clause is also in the OMA. It is – to some extend – detailing the terms and conditions of the Oracle audit, but besides a few points it is very open to interpretation and gives nothing away on the actual audit process.
What else – OMA
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If you need help to negotiate or understand an Oracle Master Agreement, reach out to discuss in detail how we can help you.
