Technology • North America
A Second Opinion Saves Software Company from $8M ULA Mistake
A third-party software license consultant firm concluded that the software company was out of compliance and owed $57 million.
Project Cost
Total Savings
Return
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Industry
Technology
Region
North America
Publishers
Oracle
Challenges
ULA
Solutions
Audit Defense
Executive Summary
A global leader in cloud-based administration software, with over 1,000 employees, was under audit by Oracle and turned to a third-party SAM provider for support, hoping to gain an advantage. Instead, they were hit with a staggering $57 million compliance gap after the provider applied Oracle's Partitioning Policy, recommending an $8 million ULA to resolve the issue. Unwilling to accept this daunting outcome, the Senior Vice President of IT sought a second opinion from LicenseFortress. Through expert analysis, LicenseFortress uncovered only $200,000 in actual compliance gaps, helping the company avoid the $8 million ULA mistake and secure a much better outcome.
Challenges
The software company had six VMware clusters. One cluster to support middleware, another to support the Oracle database, and a third cluster for all non-Oracle software. It also had the same cluster configuration to support Disaster Recovery (DR). They kept their Oracle workloads restricted to those six environments in both the production and DR environments.
Naturally, the terms of the Partitioning Policy are overwhelmingly lucrative for Oracle. Following Oracle's virtualizing licensing policy: They would need to count all the physical ESXi hosts' physical cores in all the vCenter Server Instances, even if your organization is not running Oracle across the entire VMware environment. Based on this position, the software company's total core count was 306.
The third-party firm concluded that the software company was out of compliance and owed $57 million in back licenses and fines. It recommended they settle with Oracle by purchasing an Unlimited License Agreement (ULA) for $8 million.
Solution
Before making any payments, the software company's board directed its executives to engage another consulting firm and contacted LicenseFortress for a second opinion. LicenseFortress analyzed the same scripts that the previous consulting firm had analyzed. And on the contrary, no issue was found with the VMware configuration that the software company had set up.
Lastly, LicenseFortress found two minor compliance gaps totaling $200k:
- Unlicensed usage of the Tuning Pack
- DR environment was not licensed for WebLogic
Results
$8M ULA Mistake Avoided—Settled for $200K Instead
Ultimately, the software company decided to bring in an outside consultant and not rely on an Oracle audit. Unfortunately, the company learned that "all consulting firms are not equal."
However, they settled their compliance issue for $200,000, avoiding an $8 million ULA mistake and its 22% annual support costs.
What Disruption Could Look Like
Illustration using assumed hours and rates — not a documented outcome of this case
Vendor's Audit Claim
Documented in this case study
Plus illustrative internal labor cost (assumed)
IT / Technical Time
1,500 assumed active work hrs × $150/hr (illustrative)
Legal Review & Escalation
250 assumed active work hrs × $450/hr (illustrative)
Management Oversight
400 assumed active work hrs × $250/hr (illustrative)
Executive (C-Suite) Time
200 assumed active work hrs × $500/hr (illustrative)
Illustrative internal labor cost
$538KIllustrative Total Exposure
Vendor claim + assumed internal labor cost. Illustration, not a documented outcome.
What LicenseFortress saved in this engagement
Actual outcome documented in this case study
* Illustration only. The labor-cost approach is informed by the 2025 Software Audit Survey's staffing and duration findings, discussed in “Software Audits: Costing More Than You Think.” This widget's active-work hours by complexity tier and hourly rates are modeling assumptions, not survey-reported role breakdowns, cost benchmarks or documented labor costs of this case. Hours are assumed person-hours of active work, not elapsed audit duration. Delay costs are not included. The vendor claim and savings figures are documented in this case study. Read the survey-informed rationale.
Not Satisfied with the Advice You've Received? It's Not Too Late to Get a Second Opinion.
Just because someone said you owe millions doesn't mean it's your only option. At LicenseFortress, we specialize in digging deeper to uncover the real story behind your software licensing situation. Contact us today to explore how our expert team can help you achieve a better outcome and avoid unnecessary costs.