Oracle ULA Exit & Product Rationalization for a Telecom Leader
(How we simplified a 700-SKU Oracle estate and guided a clean, risk-free ULA exit)
Context:
One of India’s largest telecom enterprises had been living under an Oracle Unlimited License Agreement for years. Over time, the portfolio had ballooned into more than 700 Oracle products — many redundant, some never deployed. Renewal season was approaching, and Oracle’s sales team was pushing aggressively. The CTO wanted out, but with defensible data. Aatxe was brought in to clean up the licensing mess, build a certification baseline, and ensure a safe, audit-proof exit.
Challenge:
- Over 700 Oracle SKUs accumulated across EBS, Database, Sibel, Hyperion, Middleware etc.
- Legacy entitlements from old mergers still active in Oracle contracts.
- No consolidated deployment view across on-prem, DR, and cloud.
- Unclear definitions of what qualified for certification under the ULA.
- Contractual overlaps and outdated support SKUs.
- ULA certification deadline looming with incomplete data.
Aatxe Analytics Approach:
- Conducted an exhaustive contract-lineage mapping to trace every Oracle order, amendment, and support renewal.
- Extracted environment data from CMDB, ITSM, and existing SAM discovery tools.
- Deployed Oracle discovery scripts across database clusters to confirm version and feature usage.
- Normalized data into an entitlement-vs-deployment matrix.
- Rationalized the product inventory from 700+ SKUs down to ~300 active entitlements.
- Built a certification pack aligned to Oracle’s legal and technical certification templates.
- Facilitated internal validation sessions with IT, procurement, and legal.
- Created a post-ULA governance roadmap ensuring entitlement hygiene and change control.
- Coached the client’s SAM team to handle Oracle correspondence directly and confidently.
Results & Impact:
- Oracle ULA negotiated with less financial exposure.
- Simplified Oracle product portfolio by 50%.
- Avoided multi-crore renewal obligation.
- Oracle footprint now clean, measurable, and manageable.
- Post-ULA governance plan operationalized for ongoing SAM health.
Closing Reflection:
We turned a renewal pressure point into a control point. What was once a tangle of SKUs became a transparent licensing model. The client now treats Oracle as a predictable cost center, not a perpetual negotiation.