My understanding is you pay the company eg Rimini street and they stockpile
the patches while you have the "Oracle Support" licence. When you forgo
your support licence with Oracle you still have the ability to apply the
patches that they have downloaded for you.
It is seen as a "cost saving" but I guess you are stuck at a particular
version and can never move forward.
It all seems a bit murky in a legal sense.
Stojan
www.stojanveselinovski.com/blog
On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 12:38 PM Tim Gorman <tim@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It used to be that support cost 22% of the full retail license price,
leading to a situation where some entities with more than a 78% discount
pay far more for support than licenses.
But if I recall correctly, 15% was for the ability to use "
support.oracle.com" and 7% was for upgrades and patches, or maybe it was
the other way around?
On 5/26/15 20:22, Hans Forbrich wrote:
On 26/05/2015 7:00 PM, Stojan Veselinovski wrote:
Hi All,
Recently I've had discussions and know of companies that have decided to
not pay the Oracle support licence and do it via a third party.
Anyone know the ins and outs of this?
Are you able to receive patches via the third party seeing you are not
paying support?
Regards,
Stojan
www.stojanveselinovski.com/blog
One needs to realize that part of the Support offering is the access to
patches and upgrades that are only available through Oracle Support
system. Anyone offering to distribute these is [likely] violating a bunch
of agreements, unless they have cut a sweetheart deal with Oracle -
unlikely as it undermines Oracle's significant revenue stream.
At one time, Oracle offered a 2-tier support deal - support only (access
to metalink and analyst assistance) and patches. Seems that may have
disappeared.
There are a couple of interesting articles on the topic - not favourable
for the support provider
-
http://www.informationweek.com/applications/oracle-wins-case-against-third-party-support-provider/d/d-id/1110405
-
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2033683/oracles-mark-hurd-users-weigh-in-on-thirdparty-software-maintenance.html
On the other hand, some organizations are properly and successfully
providing a support contract that effectively resembles remote DBA
services. Some companies that do this are actually very good at it and I
would encourage considering using those services - if appropriate.
/Hans
