Java Licensing Costs Skyrocket: How to Plan Your Oracle Engagement and Avoid Overpaying

Oracle’s License changes increases costs and make Java very expensive. Users need to plan their budgets and their engagement with Oracle to save money and reduce license compliance risks.

Introduction: Java Licensing Changes Increases Costs

Oracle Java license change has made Java very expensive for users. However, there are a number of things that users can do to plan for these changes and save money on their Java licenses. By understanding their Java usage, evaluating their licensing options, and negotiating with Oracle, users can reduce the impact of the licensing changes. Additionally, users can reduce their license compliance risks by keeping their software inventory up to date, auditing their Java usage regularly, having a license compliance policy in place, and training their employees on license compliance.

What should you do?

Users should look at Java as any other software application and understand it’s value to the organization.  Some of the steps to be followed are:

1. Analyze your Java usage.
2. Remediate and Rebalance Java deployments.
3. Consider alternatives to Oracle Java License.
4. Create a value-based cost estimation.
5. Negotiate with Oracle with data in hand.

We will now look at each one of them. The details are also depicted in the image below.

1. Analyze your Java Licensing usage

The first step is to understand how you are using Java within your organization. This includes:

• Discovering and identifying all the Java installations and files in your servers and endpoints.
• Once you have gathered information about each Java installation, you need to normalize the data. This involves converting all of the data to a consistent format and classifying them correctly by different vendors and license agreements.
• Analyzing the entitlements of Java. A very crucial step because Java can be used basis multiple products and third-party agreements.

2. Remediate and Rebalance Java Deployments

Taking corrective action is the key to reducing licensing risks for any installed software product. This is very much the case with Java too.

With Java, you will need to look at two aspects of remediation:

• Security and
• Cost / Licensing Terms

The cost of Java depends on the licensing terms – this is because Java can be free or not free. The decision to remediate also depends on the patches needed to fix vulnerabilities. You can use Oracle and non-Oracle Java versions to remediate.

3. Consider alternatives to Oracle Java License

There are many alternatives to Oracle Java. The key to decision making regarding alternatives are:

• Compatibility with current applications
• Migration costs (if any)

4. Create a Value Based Cost Estimation

Understanding the value that you are expecting and obtaining from your Oracle Java installations is extremely crucial. This is because Oracle’s licensing metric for Java does not allow you to negotiate based on usage or the value you are getting from their Java JDKs.

5. Negotiate with Oracle

You now have the deployment data and value-based cost estimate to be able to negotiate with Oracle. But, here, there is still one piece of the needs to be fixed: