April 28, 2014 - Blog

Oracle E-Business Suite Customisations

 
Blog post by Jennie Brown, Version 1 Senior Data Analyst
 

Understanding Oracle licensing, the contractual arrangements and potential impacts of change demands a great deal of time and resource, particularly if you have a large, complex and growing license estate. In our experience, organisations can often find themselves non-compliant by carrying out changes to their Oracle E-Business Suite products without realising the potential licensing impacts this creates. One area where you may unwittingly generate a non-compliance scenario is with customisations and changes to your Oracle E-Business Suite configuration.

Along with the purchase of any E-Business Suite licenses, Oracle also provides a defined set of underpinning technology and middleware products. These products are, however provided subject to a rigid set of usage restrictions. It’s not uncommon for organisations using E-Business Suite to find that over a prolonged period of time these restrictions are often breached. Depending upon the nature and extent of the breach, some or all of the underpinning technology and middleware then becomes separately licensable leading to a compliance issue – not a good situation to be in. These breaches can be caused by:

  • Customisation of tables, views, schemas, etc.
  • Running additional options on the database
  • Using provided options outside their permitted remit e.g. OLAP, Spatial & Partitioning, etc.
 

There may be a genuine business case for some or all of the implemented customisations and changes although all too often we find that unforeseen situations arise leading to compliance issues. Typical scenarios might include:

  • Temporary or permanent changes made as a result of a one-off import or export of data which historically required modification
  • A development or test install which has used additional features which have inadvertently become part of a production system
  • Pre-defined company standard database builds which may include Diagnostics Pack, Tuning Pack etc.
 

The potential licensing exposure can be significant when it is factored across all the servers with E-Business Suite installs including development and testing installs. Over our 12 year history, we have undertaken numerous E-Business Suite reviews on behalf of our customers and in 2012, we received an Oracle User Group Partner award for E-Business Suite Partner of the year, as voted by our clients.

Our reviews have enabled our customers to identify potential issues caused by the scenarios identified above, enabling them to formulate remedial strategies for dealing with any resulting compliance issues. Hopefully, you are one of the fortunate few who have successfully managed to navigate the minefield of day to day changes and customisations and remain compliant. Our key message is that many clients, with the best intentions and practice still fall foul of the rigid set of usage restrictions which can lead to unexpected expenditure to regain compliance. As experts in Oracle license management, we can help you to identify and manages such risks.

If you have any questions relating to Oracle E-Business Suite customisations and changes, then feel free to contact us and a member of our expert team will be happy to help.