Optimize Your Oracle Software Investments: VSAM Partner Program

Jeremy Sayler:

Hi, everyone. Jeremy Saylor here, I’m the director of the Oracle Service Delivery Group here at Anglepoint. Very happy to be here. So, obviously, the topic of the day is what is the Oracle VSAM program?

We’ll walk you through that program step by step, and before we turn it over to Felicia to talk about VSAM I just wanted to identify that this program, it’s been a long time coming. We’ve been talking about this with Oracle for a number of years. Felicia has been working on this diligently.

And Anglepoint’s recognition in this program is really the culmination of significant amount of effort. We’ve gone through rigorous training and testing from Oracle to be recognized as one of their SAM partners. I am very excited about this program. We’re really looking forward to offering this to our clients.

But one note on logistics here. The VSAM program, as you’re going to hear it from Felicia, this is a global program perhaps with the exception of Latin America. Anglepoint is currently recognized to provide this service in North America. We will be adding Europe very shortly, but there’s various hoops and things to jump through to be recognized as a SAM provider in these different regions.

So currently we’re recognized in North America. Very soon we’ll be offering this in Europe. And without further ado, why don’t we turn it over to Felicia and let’s talk about the VSAM program.

Felicia Parilo:

Sure. Yeah. Thank you, Jeremy.

My name is Felicia Parilo. I work within the Oracle Global Licensing and Advisory Service. I’ve been here for 14 years, so similar to Jeremy, have lots of fun experience within the software world as well as the partner community.

I’m really focusing on that advisory. So, I have the VSAM program, which we’re going to talk about today. And I’m excited for you all to learn about some opportunities with Anglepoint.

We equally are excited that Anglepoint is now officially a VSAM partner. So, if you hear me say that it’s a verified software asset management partner and being able to expand on the partnership and really have that collaboration for what we can do more for of course, you all as customers of Oracle and of course, clients of Anglepoint.

So, if I get with just a little quick overview of the program last June is when we officially announced and launched this program for the VSAM program. As Jeremy mentioned, we’ve been working on it for the last couple of years, but it finally went into execution style, which is amazing.

The driver for that is Oracle’s transition to being customer centric, right? This flows down to the partner network and really OPN and other services that now partners have been offering to Oracle’s customers for year over year. And so this program is here to provide an opportunity really for customers to work with a verified SAM partner like Anglepoint to understand their overall Oracle investments.

So, the VSAM partner you’re here today, Anglepoint will be working directly with you as a client on various advisory services to help you understand your Oracle investments and in truth, it helps understand working with Oracle better, right? So, redefining the SAM conversations while building that relationship is key for this program.

And as you hear Jeremy go over more of the logistics of the process this program encompasses all different existing SAM services. Anglepoint has been in this space for a very long time. Treat this program like we’ve created an umbrella or a container around it to be able to provide all those services.

So, everything from consolidation to optimization to reviewing what part of your journey to cloud that you’re on, taking a look at an existing ULA, and being able to decide on if it makes sense to continue to renew that, or move into a perpetual ULA, you name it, whatever the topic is it’s working on those data points with VSAM partner, Anglepoint, as well as you as the customer.

Whatever your strategy is for that optimization. And streamlining it is really the goals for this program, um, within Oracle and the broader marketplace. Of course, we also are maintaining a global consistency Anglepoint’s going to be in 2 out of the various regions within there.

Expected that’s to grow too based on all of the success that they have as well. A key point that I wanted to bring up is that this program is an opt in for both partners and customers. As Jeremy said that it was an extensive qualifications to get into this program.

Some focus on that to meet all the qualifications that we had, and they succeeded and moved forward, which was great. And then it’s also from you as a customer side that you opt in. You can opt in at any time for this program. And once you opt in, you are going to work with the VSAM partner, Anglepoint, to maintain that trust and that collaboration on all the different types of services.

The last piece is that the VSAM program encompasses expertise for the database, right?

Middleware, which is fusion middleware and then E-Business suite. However, we all know working in the SAM space and best SAM practices is to be encouraged to have a clear understanding of all the Oracle programs, right? Not just the ones that are listed.

So look at it as a full picture of all Oracle investments for you to have more confidence in.

I wanted to focus and highlight on some of the different benefits besides some of the other ones that I mentioned earlier. But because of this opt in approach and being able to opt in at any time, the VSAM partner can then provide any of those services directly with you as the client or the customer, and you’ll be working together on that optimization to understand their investments.

So once all these services, whatever that service looks like whether it’s the full scope or more limited into maybe a merger and acquisition or something to that effect, then you as a customer can be offered additional services. So it’s continuing to know more and more as your business expands.

After all the services completed, then the Oracle customer, meaning you all as the clients are eligible for the audit reprieve. So conceptually, we have executive management support from Oracle to provide audit reprieve for the appropriate programs for 12 months.

However, as you can imagine, I work for a large company. I do have to seek that official approval for you as a specific customer. So conceptually, it has been supported. We just have to actually get that actual language for you as being part of this program. So as a reminder, it’s conceptually approved, but we do need to seek that official approval.

And so that way we can actually deliver it to you as the customer. With this whole understanding of understanding better confidence and knowing your Oracle investments you’re aligning to Anglepoint as a visa and partner for your business strategy. So whether it’s reviewing the data centers, looking at the full deployment, going through a specific data center or looking at a merger, the UL A purchase. If you’re on phase two out of phase 10 of your journey to cloud, are you looking at a hybrid approach? Any of these are examples, and I’m sure that there’s more that we all can think about for each of our businesses. You’re working with Jeremy and his team for those solutions to come across, and they have lots of creativity.

They have lots of optimization and opportunities for your strategy to help have a better understanding of your Oracle footprint.

After any of the different services are provided, they are ankle point as some expectations of the program. Do provide you different deliverables. One on here is the annual baseline. There’s other ones as well, too, but think of these as a living point in time for you to understand at that point. And then when the next question comes up, then that is an extension of the same services.

And Jeremy, I’ll turn it over back to you.

Jeremy Sayler:

Thanks. Felicia. Yeah. Let’s look at the overview of the program as Felicia mentioned. This is an opt in program, so we’ll be speaking to our all of our existing clients.

If you’re not an Anglepoint client today. We can speak with you as well about getting enrolled in our managed service and then discuss this opt in program. Essentially, all it is is identifying that you want to be part of this program. Then what programs as Felicia noted, it’s. Today it’s database middleware and e business suite.

So those you could pick one or all three of those programs. It’s completely up to you. It’s an opt in program. What we would do when you identify that you want to be part of this program is fill out a quick enrollment form. And essentially it’s identifying the entity, any of your affiliate subsidiaries that you want to include in the program.

And then those programs that we want included in the VSAM program. Program. What documentation is required that is one of them, but that’s just simply a form that goes to Oracle. And then this 3rd bullet is really the only document that will need to be signed by all 3 parties.

And that’s a confidentiality agreement. And what this means is that we can share information. So Oracle can share information with angle point. And 1 of those key items is going to be a license inventory, right? If you’ve had trouble in the past, identifying what entitlements you own. We can work with Oracle to collect that information.

AnGlePoint will also sign off on this and in at Oracle’s request, provide any kind of consumption or baseline information. However, Oracle has articulated that’s not required, and we’ll get into that in more detail soon. But again, the third bullet here is a confidentiality agreement to make sure that all three of our entities can share information.

If you look at the next several bullets this is really the meat of AnglePoint’s managed service. So this is what we’re doing today if you’re an existing client. So we collect that entitlement information, collect your usage data. We work to analyze that and determine a end user license position.

And then we work on remediation if that’s necessary. Is there a, deficit that we need to look at and either remediate, optimize, figure out what the approach would be. And that’s still very much part of this program. The goal of this program is to maintain a compliant state. And so we have the ability to work with you within this process to remediate any of those issues that we see.

As we continue on in this path, the end user would then implement that strategy, whatever our remediation or optimization approach will be. And at the end of that Englepoint will communicate that strategy back to Oracle. And that’s when they can solicit the audit reprieve. As Felicia noted, she has to go up and get an approval for that.

But that’s the end of the process with that baseline and completed remediation if necessary. What I wanted to highlight here is notice that Oracle is at the front and at the end of this process, it really has no change or impact on the managed service on the ongoing license consumption analysis that we do for our clients.

Today, this is really just a a wrapper around our existing. Managed service for our clients. So again, very excited about this. The obvious benefit here is that audit exemption which I know is of primary interest to probably everyone on this call,

 What I’m really excited about with this program is how it fits so almost seamlessly into what IncoPoint is doing with our managed service clients today. If you’re an existing client, again, the only change would be enrolling in this program, signing that confidentiality agreement, and then we’re back to our status quo of.

ongoing managed services, license consumption analysis. Again, if you’re a new client, we just need you to enroll in our managed service. And then we can similarly get you enrolled in the VSAN program. If you look at the right hand side of the screen here, this shows our managed service kind of life cycle.

That step one through six is really the Steps that go into what we call a baseline or an effective license position. So we’ll go through evaluate contracts deployments, marry those up into a consumption analysis and deliver that final effective license position, which is essentially. Your licensed products and entitlements versus your consumption, where we identify whether there’s a deficit or a surplus.

That 6th step and rolling into the 7th is really where angle point differentiates itself from other providers. And we get into a, what we call a risk and opportunity assessment report. So we’re analyzing those findings and making recommendations. For you as the end user, things that you can do to optimize that, that license of state, uh, then moving from step 8 and up to 11 is more of the maintenance in between those baselines where we’re checking consumption, tracking any changes to renewals assisting with negotiation if that’s required and then moving back into that next baseline.

A couple of important things to remember about this program. Oracle requires an annual baseline to stay in this program. Our managed services are often doing semiannual baselines. We like to do that more than once per year. We think that’s a best practice to keep a good handle on your consumption. But again, Oracle’s requirement for this program is a single annual baseline to stay in that program.

anD then again um, Oracle is saying that consumption reporting is not required. Englepoint has gone through this extensive training from Oracle. They have trusted us. As a partner in this program, they have validated that we understand Oracle licensing, and they’re putting us in this position to assist the clients without their involvement.

We are really controlling this relationship. There’s really no change to how you deal with us today. We do have the ability to share information with Oracle if requested. We have seen what they are referring to as a baseline template, which if you are one of our existing clients, it looks a lot like our ELP summary.

So a list of products, those license entitlements, and then that consumption number. But again, this is not required, but may be requested.

Felicia Parilo: So really should go to the broader group. The spirit of this program is to focus on helping all of Oracle’s customers know their different data points.

So as Jeremy mentioned, there’s a baseline type exercise. I’ve mentioned various different examples and really the goal is to get to knowing what that data points are between angle point and you as the clients. There is information in the agreement that says that we may request it, but it’s not required on a every single service.

We are also not expecting to request it because the goal and the spirit of this is to build and foster those relationships because you’re choosing and selecting a vSAN partner that already is basically an extension of Oracle. Because they’ve already showed us the process of how they review the data, gather the data, analyze the data and provide solutions.

And so at the end of the day, we have that confidence already built, hence why they go through such extensive qualifications. So that way you can work directly with them instead of directly with us as the Oracle vendor.

 It’s all about customer choice for this program and to be able to select or choose AnglePoint or other vSAN partners that will be announced as well, too.

Jeremy Sayler: Really quickly for anyone who’s not familiar with AnglePoint, we’ve got a wealth of experience, both in Oracle and other software publishers.

We are in that Gartner Magic Quadrant, the leader in that Gartner Magic Quadrant over the last four years, very proud of that. Just a couple of things about my Oracle team, which I’m very proud of. We’ve got an average of about 10 years of experience for each of my consultants. Uh, There’s about over 60 percent that speak a language other than English and we also have multi publisher experience. Again, over 60 percent of that. Uh, About three quarters of my team have previously worked at Oracle and therefore also have that audit experience.

So very knowledgeable people.

 I think uh, again, there’s probably maybe some skepticism around the room with Oracle and their intentions here. Everything that I’ve seen in working with Felicia and her team this is a collaborative SAM effort. Oracle is moving away from this audit mentality. This SAM program is really focused on proactive software asset management, which is what AnglePoint has been doing for 15 years.

So we’re very excited about it. I understand there could be some concerns, perhaps, but again, if you remember the relationship with AnglePoint is really unchanged. We keep going through that managed service. There’s no reporting requirement to Oracle, and you can get a benefit at the end, of course, with that audit exception.

Felicia Parilo: we’re equally excited because the goal of this program is to focus on long term existing SAM partners that are in that true partnership fashion and really an extension of Oracle. So I see a lot of growth potential and opportunities while working with Jeremy and the broader team.

And we’re really excited to have lots of these SAM partners so that way more of you customers feel more confident and confident. About working with Oracle instead of Oracle directly as well, too. Please know that if you have any questions, reach out to me directly, and I’m more than happy to broker that conversation as I just want the data and the truth to be out there and you all decide on what you would like to do moving forward.

Jeremy Sayler: Thank you everyone. Thank you.