Optimising an Oracle renewal saves £5.8m

project results

• £5.8m saved (£1m tangible savings & £4.8m cost avoidance)
• Detailed analysis of the Oracle licensing position & contracts
• Determine the optimal BoM for an upcoming renewal
• Support development of the client’s cloud migration strategy

the challenge

Mergers of companies or departments are often seen as a way to consolidate functions under a single remit and roof. The assumption is that this leads to cost savings through economies of scale and easier dissemination of data. However, after a merger, the software licensing situation can be difficult to pin down, with knock-on effects on infrastructure and visibility of assets.

how we engaged

After rigorously reviewing potential ITAM partners in the market, the client chose and approached Synyega to conduct a forensic review of its Oracle estate and contracts. The goal was to provide detailed analysis of the Oracle licensing position. This would be used to support and determine the requirements for an upcoming renewal and to also feed into a cloud migration strategy.

our solution

Synyega was brought onboard after the merger to review the Oracle deployment and, in particular, the use of enterprise management packs and options. The estate itself was held on multiple licensing agreements and the programs were being managed by multiple third-party system integrators. This meant that when our team of experts began to examine the estate to build a view on current usage, the integrators were reporting with different mechanisms, so there was no easy way to get a clear view of the estate.

The client knew what they had pre-merger, but lacked concrete and real-time visibility after the event. Rather than look at the estate in the siloed view, our team decided to analyse the licence grant being applied across the whole application suite.

working with the client

Our experts worked closely with key stakeholders in the client’s organisation, employing a fully aligned approach that ensured maximum efficiencies, especially as they were working with a disparate set of reporting documents. Our experts deployed a bespoke reporting template to collate the varied data in one place. This consolidated our view on usage and on entitlement data and built a true image of the estate.

From here, it was a simple task to identify and allocate financial costs to the areas of potential risk. This in turn enabled our team to make recommendations on how to best mitigate those areas of concern in an effective way.

client benefits

The review and recommendations meant the client avoided £4.8m in unnecessary licensing costs. Synyega’s Discover and Optimise service also identified five separate opportunities to reduce Oracle support costs by cancelling licences that were no longer required, providing a further £1m saving in support costs.

Because the client now had a clear understanding of its licence estate, and how it was being used, we were able to identify a number of spare licences that could be used for future cloud migration negotiation, or for the expansion of digital footprint.