How a Canadian Health Insurer Reduced Their Oracle Audit Bill by 70% After Negotiations Had Turned Hostile

When the Director of Infrastructure & Operations at a leading insurer initially decided to handle an Oracle audit independently, the situation escalated into hostile negotiations with a $10 million demand. However, this customer made a vital pivot when Oracle attempted to run its audit playbook, prompting the engagement of LicenseFortress. Their expert intervention reduced the bill to $3 million—a $72,000 engagement that provided a 9,722% ROI—and led to further savings exceeding $2 million by certifying their ULA. Today, the insurer continues to benefit from ongoing compliance and protection under ArxProtect.

The insurer's IT infrastructure was complex and included Oracle databases, Oracle Fusion Middleware, WebLogic servers, and a virtualized VMware environment, including numerous VMware clusters. This insurer faced many challenges along the way, including:

• Large audit bill findings after cooperating with Oracle on their own
• Hostile negotiations after the audit dealings had gone sour between Oracle and the customer
• VMware Exception Rule
• Determining the customer's contractual obligations from vendor policies

Audit

Oracle stated that the insurer owed $400-500 million in unpaid license fees. After several months of negotiations, the insurer realized it could not negotiate a reasonable settlement with Oracle independently.

Bargain

Oracle then offered the insurer a bargain price of $10 million to settle the audit and make the insurer compliant. Oracle also introduced the VMware exception clause into the contract, positioning the clause as an advantage for the insurer.

Close

The relationships between the insurer and Oracle started to turn hostile as the insurer was unwilling to pay the $10 million. Instead, the insurer engaged LicenseFortress to represent its interests and continue negotiations going forward.

LicenseFortress first reviewed the Oracle contract and discussed some of the subtleties that had huge implications on how the contract was interpreted. While the insurer's law firm consisted of excellent lawyers, they had little experience dealing with the nuances of Oracle's contracts and audit policies.

Once the contract review was completed, LicenseFortress performed a complete audit of the insurer's IT infrastructure and determined that it owed $700,000 in back-license fees. The difference is, when it comes to licensing on VMware clusters, Oracle's policy is that if you have five nodes running in a cluster and Oracle is running on only one node, you still pay Oracle licenses for five. Following this policy can add up if you have multiple, complex VMware clusters.

$10M Audit Bill Reduced to $3M—A 70% Savings

At this point in the audit, both sides were eager to reach an agreement. Early in the process, the customer made a few missteps acting in good faith and exposed additional compliance issues not covered in the original scope of the audit. As a result, the customer had to concede on some negotiation points, including the VMware exception. LicenseFortress rarely recommends customers accept these amendments, as it has the potential to create issues for organizations with growing and evolving business needs—however, in this case, it was a strategic compromise to move towards a resolution.

LicenseFortress was able to reduce the $10 million audit bill down to $3 million—a savings of 70 percent. Had LicenseFortress been brought in earlier in the audit discussions, an additional $2.3 million in fees could have been mitigated. This project cost the customer approximately $72,000, resulting in a 9,722% ROI.

After the audit, the insurer engaged LicenseFortress to perform a ULA review to evaluate if they should renew or certify their Unlimited Licensing Agreement (ULA). After reviewing their requirements, the LicenseFortress team developed four scenarios of reconfiguring two large environments into smaller clusters to reduce licensing—some of which were more complex than others, but each resulted in cost savings. Ultimately, this exercise helped the insurer decide that certifying the ULA was the best option—resulting in a reduction of support costs moving forward, totaling over $2M and counting.

Today, they are an ArxProtect customer. This ensures they are always in compliance and will be protected from the moment they receive an audit notice.