Unfortunately, many customers are prevented from realizing these benefits because of widespread confusion and uncertainty around the implications of licensing Oracle in VMware environments. This webinar was focused on Oracle database licensing in VMware environments and provided insights as to how best structure virtual environments to reduce costs while ensuring compliance and providing maximum ROI.

This webinar was aimed at Professionals working in:

• Software Asset Management
• IT Asset Management
• Procurement
• IT Management
• IT Operations
• Anyone who needs practical guidance on maximizing ROI from implementing Oracle in virtual environments.

For those who couldn’t attend this webinar life, please check out the slides below.

Enterprise organizations are well aware of the many benefits virtualization can bring, however, many organizations are concerned about the impact virtualization can have to the costs of licensing software from vendors such as Oracle. At IOUG Collaborate 2012 in Las Vegas,  specialists from iQuate and VMware will be on hand to show customers how to definitively address concerns around licensing Oracle products in a virtualized environment.

iQuate and VMware are hosting a reception for key partners and Oracle customers during Collaborate 2012 on Monday 23rd April. iQuate and VMware will demonstrate how customers can streamline license costs and eliminate risks related to licensing Oracle in virtualized environments by leveraging  relevant and accurate inventory data, and how iQSonar from iQuate can provide that data.

“iQSonar has been engineered to work in large, complex environments that really benefit from Virtualization”, comments Jason Keogh, CTO iQuate “Our ability to fully understand VMware and Oracle to the level needed to make the right licensing decisions, means that we can deliver real ROI to VMware customers through maximizing the benefits of their VMware investment, while at the same time optimizing spending on Oracle licenses by having the right information available when they need it”

Maximize ROI from your Oracle ULA

Oracle ULA (Unlimited License Agreements) can offer many real benefits, but need to be closely managed if the customer is to derive maximum benefits from them.

This webinar is aimed at Procurement, Software Asset Management, IT operations, Vendor Management and IT Management Professionals and will give practical insight on:

• How to be prepared for ULA negotiations
• What you need to do to ensure compliance during the lifetime of your ULA
• The data you need before you renegotiate your ULA

Click here to view

Microsoft’s introduction of SQL Server 2012 at the start of April, also brought with it the introduction of core based licensing. This requires customers to have access to detailed hardware related data for the servers on which SQL Server is installed.

This metric will be new to many Microsoft customers and will present many challenges to those organizations unused to collecting and measuring the information which this metric now requires. Without an accurate and up-to-date source of this data, they will be unable to definitively manage their license exposure and therefore be at risk of falling into non-compliance, or of over purchasing.

To address this problem, iQuate partner COMPAREX has launched a unique SQL Server optimization service in the Netherlands, with a view to expanding into other European countries. This service will enable the COMPAREX Microsoft licensing specialists to apply their specialist knowledge to the detailed inventory and deployment data returned by iQSonar, to ensure that customers are licensed appropriately at the lowest cost.

“This new licensing metric may be confusing for some of our customers – and that could result in inadvertent under or over licensing”, explains Manuel Middendorp, Solution Advisor Microsoft at COMPAREX, The Netherlands. “Luckily for our customers, together COMPAREX and iQuate can provide insight in even the most complex environments to ensure the optimal licensing situation for our customers.”

“COMPAREX already uses iQSonar to power their Oracle Licence Optimization Service and I am very pleased to be repeating that success with this new SQL Server optimization service”, adds Ragnar Dantuma, European Territory Manager, iQuate. “We are also excited by the reaction from COMPAREX offices in other countries and look forward to helping them roll this out across Europe.”

More information on COMPAREX Microsoft Licensing Services, can be found HERE
About COMPAREX
The COMPAREX Group is a manufacturer-independent IT service provider with international reach. Drawing on more than 30 years’ experience in planning and executing server and client infrastructures, COMPAREX has established itself as a partner to SMEs, public-sector bodies, industrial enterprises and global corporations from various segments of the economy. Alongside software procurement and licence management, the Group’s portfolio includes an extensive cross-vendor consulting and services package from a single source.

Inventory – way too important to be left to humans

Modern enterprise IT environments with their mix of physical, virtual and cloud-based technologies pose many challenges for those targeted with managing software usage & deployment, and ensuring license compliance.

Traditional manual methods of gathering inventory data are no longer appropriate for such environments as they are error prone, time-consuming and disruptive with no guarantee of consistency or accuracy.

Aimed at Software Asset management, Procurement, IT Management and IT Operations Professionals, this webinar will describe:

• The reasons why accurate inventory is important
• The difficulties in gathering accurate and appropriate data in these complex envrionments
• Why Manual inventory is not up to the job
• The benefits of automating the discovery and inventory process
• How iQSonar delivers these benefits

Click here to view

How to Optimize Oracle licensing in VMware environments

Hosted by:

Jason Keogh – Founder and CTO, iQuate

Will Monin – Alliances Director, VMware

Click here to view the recording

Virtualizing server environments carelessly can  lead to significant, unexpected costs in relation to software licenses from vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM.

However, done correctly, Virtualization can actually significantly reduce software license costs while improving performance, scalability and reliability of enterprise applications.

Unfortunately, many customers are prevented from realizing these benefits because of widespread confusion and uncertainty around the implications of licensing Oracle in VMware environments.

This webinar will be jointly hosted by iQuate and VMware and is  focused on Oracle database licensing. It will provide insights as to how best structure virtual environments to reduce costs while ensuring compliance and providing maximum ROI.

Intended Audience:

Professionals working in:

• Software Asset Management
• IT Asset Management
• Procurement
• IT Management
• IT Operations
• Anyone who needs practical guidance on maximizing ROI from implementing Oracle in virtual environments.

VMware Webinar

Click here to view recording

iQuate, the leading IT inventory and discovery specialist unveils Mediro ICT as its latest partner. Focusing on the South African market, Mediro ICT is a fast growing specialist provider of niche focused IT services and solutions.

Mediro Business Service Management will use iQSonar – iQuate’s automated agentless inventory and discovery technology – in a range of innovative solutions designed to meet the growing demand amongst South African business for ensuring software license compliance.

“We have seen the main enterprise software vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle increase their audit activity in South Africa in recent years”, comments Neil Richardson, Managing Director Mediro Business Service Management, “and this, along with imminent legislation, has seen large enterprise software customers take this more seriously as they realise that the cost of not doing so is likely to result in significant, unbudgeted costs.  iQSonar, combined with our team of experts, provide the accuracy and clarity that customers need to finally get control of their software licensing”.

“Partnering is a critical part of iQuate’s business strategy – but only with the right partners.” adds Pat Durkin, EVP International, iQuate,” Mediro are a perfect fit for iQuate as their team can offer a full, locally–based solution that delivers the highest levels of technical, project and subject matter support. I look forward to working with Mediro to deliver world-class solutions to the South African market.”

For more information on Mediro, click here 

Software Asset Management tools  (such as HP Asset Manager, IBM TAMIT, and various tools from Flexera, Snow, CA, BMC, etc.) generally try to encapsulate processes – some have a wider scope than others and all have various strengths and weaknesses, different areas of focus, etc.

Software Asset Management goes well beyond License Management and compliance and encompasses everything from asset acquisition (procurement) through to asset disposal (retirement). However License Management is a key focus of SAM at the moment because it provides real benefits to the organization, including:

• Cost savings (in the form of license optimization)
• Reduced risks associated with vendor audits, whether it be before, during or after the audit process
• Accurate information relevant to regulatory compliance

License Management depends on two key inputs – entitlement information (What have I bought, what licenses do I HAVE?) and deployment information (What is out there, what licenses do I NEED?).

Software deployed on servers in the data center make up the majority of your total software spend (depending on industry specifics mid to large size enterprises typically spend 70-80% of their software budget on big ticket items from Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, etc.). This same software often has license metrics which are based on intangible and difficult to ascertain data points – for example:

• Low level CPU data relating to cores and hyper-threading
• Virtual server configuration (CPU and memory pool allocations, pinning, etc.)
• Clustering (at application or OS level, Veritas Clusters, Windows Clusters, RAC Clusters, etc.)
• Application specific configuration (Oracle database option usage, WebLogic components, WebSphere JDBC connections, etc.)

“SAM Solutions” fail to deliver this level of detail about the environment. The “Discovery” elements of these product sets simply don’t get to the level of detail required. It is irrelevant how big a solution’s “library” or “catalogue” is – it cannot provide the really important information that actually determines if licenses are required or not – e.g. If Partitioning is in use within a given Oracle Enterprise Edition database and if it has been configured in such a way that impacts licensing or which servers are in what clusters and what resources are being maintained by those clusters, etc..

Now that really is a problem! That is something that needs a solution and iQSonar is that solution. iQSonar is focused specifically on gathering the low level details required to ascertain license details for enterprise level datacenter focused products from vendors such as Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Symantec, VMware, etc. We focus on gathering the low level details required to support complete and accurate identification of license requirements in complex environments.

iQuate won’t sell you a “SAM solution” – as I said SAM is a process, not a problem. iQSonar enables accurate SAM by providing a real solution to the real problem – not knowing what you have deployed and  where it is deployed in sufficient detail to ascertain your assets and liabilities. This in turn can plug into pretty much any pre-existing “SAM solution” – it’s likely that whatever tools you already have in place are sufficient for the job of maintaining an accurate asset register and compliance position, they’re just missing the details of what is out there that they need to do an effective job.

Many tasks go into delivering a successful SAM project, but they should not be left solely to the SAM Project Team. Others in the organization are also critical in having useful input to the project.

So who else should be involved in a SAM project and what might they contribute?

Procurement & Legal
This is the primary source for entitlement records.  These teams will have records of all purchases and more importantly the contract details.  This is particularly useful when there are no electronic records, complex ULAs or older and non-standard contracts.

Accounts
This team will have records of the annual support that is being paid. These could provide clues on entitlement and what is still valid.  They will also have details of the support paid per vendor and this simple fact can be quite valuable in establishing the priority for what should be audited.  In addition, the Accounts team will also be able to drive license consolidation and SAM process improvement by having the details of all license purchases. All of this information will be important, but it may not be pretty!

Department Heads
The managers of the various divisions will be able to tell you what systems they use, what might interface to them and the total number of employees.  They should also be able to tell you how many are using a particular application or system at any one time and how critical that is to them operationally. This will assist in establishing a concurrent user metric, a measure of multiplexing and where double counting might be occurring.

IT Services & Service Desk
These teams should be able to assist in telling you what the IT estate is by providing details of numbers of servers, cores, virtual and physical servers, etc.  Where change management and a CMDB is maintained they should also have deployment details.  This information will give you an indication of actual usage. If the people supporting users of the IT estate do not know what is being used, you are unlikely to find it anywhere else in your organization.

There are likely to be other teams who can help in a SAM project – IT security, capacity management, outsourcers and even vendors.  The important thing is to get assistance from all stakeholders to ensure your project findings are based on the most comprehensive set of information available.

How Accurate Inventory puts you back in control

In this webinar, iQuate CTO Jason Keogh, will demonstrate how accurate inventory puts IT organizations back in control. Having a readily available source of accurate inventory data allows you to really discover what is being used and by whom. This understanding will finally give you the ability to optimize your IT assets while saving costs and reducing risks.

Click here to view