The Challenge
To negotiate a new Unlimited License Agreement (ULA), CAIH wanted to offer to its member hospitals an analysis of their Oracle licensing estate, giving a local compliance view so each hospital could decide their individual Oracle ULA renewal.
The Solution
For each instituation that subscribed to this offer, the USU team did an internal Oracle audit, set up a global compliance reporting, and helped to communicate the requirements between CAIH and its members.
The Results
The USU team found the Oracle compliance position for each hospital, and uncovered millions of Euros in accidental non-compliance, notably due to the deployment of products not covered by their Oracle ULA.
At a glance
Customer
Centrale d‘Achats Informatiques des Hôpitaux (CAIH)
Industry
Healthcare, Public Sector in France
Project Specs
Oracle Unlimited License Agreement (ULA)
Solution
The USU services for our various member healthcare institutions were very appreciated. The professionalism of the consultants and the accuracy of their tools allowed everyone to have, on one hand, an inventory of Oracle product usage in line with the contract rights of use, and on the other hand, experienced advice to stay in compliance.
Vincent Deleau, Chief of Operations
Challenge: Evaluate global and local ULA
The public sector must evolve rapidly to support government modernization. To successfully meet this challenge, digital transformation, security, web services, and process automation require increased control over software assets, as well as the ability to optimize costs.
CAIH supports the general IT strategy of many hospitals and health institutions in France, negotiating contracts with vendors and suppliers of IT solutions and services. Each member of the CAIH network is able to subscribe to these contracts.
Regarding Oracle software, CAIH needed to identify each members’ interest in renegotiating its Unlimited License Agreement (ULA). The members are bound to this global agreement, but they can decide individually on their participation in the renewal.
CAIH came to USU with two challenges:
Challenge 1:
CAIH wanted a global view of the Oracle license compliance for each of its member hospitals’. This would give concrete information for CAIH to define a ULA renewal strategy and negotiate the best possible contract with Oracle on behalf of their members.
Challenge 2:
The IT team of each hospital in the ULA had to understand how Oracle software is used in order to define their own medium-term strategy for the vendor, which then helped CAIH refine its overall strategy and prepare negotiations with the vendor.
This project took place during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the hospitals under immediate pressure to modernize their IT systems, while USU was required to work remotely. These challenges were successfully handled without any impact on the services that we provided.
Did you know? How the ULA works
CAIH had to be careful when deciding their ULA renewal. Under this three- to five-year agreement, the customer can deploy as much software as they want – thus, the term "unlimited." However, if you do not renew, then Oracle has the right to audit the customer’s usage to determine if they have used software not covered by the agreement or gone beyond the allowed amount; Oracle can then charge for that non-compliant usage.Solution: Analyze license inventory and compliance
USU helped the hospitals to better understand their needs and position themselves in the overall ULA renewal strategy. For the institutions that used USU’s services, CAIH was informed about how they use their Oracle licenses, as well as any problems encountered, in order to facilitate negotiations.
At the request of each hospital involved, USU performed an Oracle license compliance analysis using their USU Software Asset Management solution (formerly Aspera LicenseControl for Oracle). This analysis is offered as a managed service and is performed for the customer automatically, without purchasing any tools.
The USU team did an inventory of the database usage, deployment, options and packages, and explained the issues of enabling database options and VMWare usage.
At the request of CAIH, USU gave recommendations for negotiating the new ULA contract with Oracle, enabling each hospital to optimize its Oracle software assets and costs.
Results: Detailed reporting for informed decisions
Whether or not they renewed their ULA agreement with Oracle, each member hospital in the CAIH network took advantage of USU’s services for Oracle asset management.
The USU team enabled some hospitals to establish an accurate inventory of their available software assets, as well as optimize their Oracle software and licenses. Each has gained greater visibility into their Oracle software assets.
Our detailed reporting system allowed CAIH to better understand the decisions to make in negotiations, and supported the development of its ULA renewal strategy.
As healthcare and other public sectors continue to modernize, having business processes in place increases user confidence. For Software Asset Management, it is critical to collect the right data, make sure it’s not out of date or redundant, and enrich it with information from other sources. This approach lets people feel confident about using the data and making relevant, cost optimizing decisions based on data.
