Due to the complex nature of the Oracle environment and licensing terms it is very easy to unwittingly find yourself non-compliant and liable for additional license costs as well as potential fines. In the first of 2 blog articles, we have outlined some of the most common reasons for this.

Misunderstanding licensing terminology and agreements

This is obviously a non-technical issue and stems from the complexity of the Oracle environment. Oracle license agreements are regularly tailored for individual customers. While this can provide flexibility at the outset, it can cause problems going forward, as changes to your IT estate can unwittingly leave you in licensing compliance breach.

Another recurring area of misunderstanding concerns the interpretation of cores and processors. It is tempting to consider these two as the same, but they are not. A processor can consist of one or more cores and as you need to multiply the total number of cores of the processor by a core processor licensing factor (specified on the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table) to calculate the number of licenses you require for Oracle technology products, making a mistake here can prove very costly.

SOURCE: certero.com