Client Profile
The client is one of the world's largest human resources solutions companies, operating in more than 60 countries with a workforce exceeding 80,000 full-time employees. The organisation provides a wide range of workforce management, staffing, and HR technology services to enterprise clients across Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. Its Oracle estate had been built over more than a decade to support global finance, payroll, supply chain, and employee management functions, and included Oracle Database, E-Business Suite, Middleware, and several Oracle Applications products.
The engagement with Redress Compliance followed the successful certification of a multi-year Unlimited Licence Agreement (ULA). The ULA had served its purpose — the organisation had deployed Oracle technology broadly during a period of rapid expansion — but the post-certification support obligation was now a significant and growing cost with diminishing strategic value.
The Challenge
Following ULA certification, the client retained perpetual licence rights to its Oracle footprint but remained committed to an annual Oracle support contract valued at approximately €6 million. This support stream covered Oracle Database licences across both on-premises and hybrid environments, E-Business Suite applications, Middleware products, and a portfolio of Oracle Database Options that had been licensed during the ULA period but were no longer actively deployed.
The fundamental problem was misalignment between the support cost structure and the technology reality. The Oracle environment was largely stable. No major Oracle version upgrades were planned. Development activity was minimal. The core use case for Oracle support — access to patches, product updates, and Oracle technical assistance — was being consumed at a fraction of the level implied by the contract cost. The IT leadership team described the situation as "paying Oracle's premium rate for a service we use at a fraction of its capacity."
A straightforward request to Oracle to reduce support fees had been declined. Oracle's contractual terms do not permit selective support reduction on components within a single licence set without terminating the entire set — a provision that makes targeted support reduction within Oracle's own framework commercially complex. The client's procurement team recognised that an external advisory engagement was needed to structure a solution that Oracle's standard mechanisms could not provide.
The Approach
Redress Compliance conducted a structured analysis of the client's Oracle estate, categorising licences into three groups: active production workloads with ongoing development requirements (Group A), stable production workloads with no active development (Group B), and deployed licences covering products no longer in use (Group C). This categorisation was the analytical foundation for the hybrid support recommendation.
For Group A workloads — accounting for approximately 30% of the licence estate by value — the recommendation was to retain Oracle primary support. These workloads involved active development, upcoming version migrations, and product families where Oracle's patch currency was a genuine operational requirement. Reducing support on these licences would have created unacceptable technical debt.
For Group B workloads — the largest segment by value, representing approximately 55% of the estate — the recommendation was to migrate to a vetted third-party support provider. The selected provider offered 50–60% cost reduction versus Oracle's 22% annual support rate, along with contractual commitments on response time and technical competence. Critically, third-party support providers are not bound by Oracle's contractual restrictions on partial support coverage, making it possible to support a selected subset of the licence estate independently.
For Group C workloads — unused licences covering approximately 15% of the estate — the recommendation was to formally terminate Oracle support and in relevant cases to terminate the licences themselves, eliminating the support obligation entirely. This required careful sequencing to avoid Oracle repricing the remaining support base at a higher unit rate — a risk that Redress Compliance navigated through structured negotiation with Oracle's commercial team.
In parallel with the third-party support transition, the client accelerated migration of three Oracle Database workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). On OCI, support costs are bundled into the cloud subscription, eliminating the separate on-premises support line for those workloads and providing Oracle with a commercially acceptable justification for reducing the on-premises support obligation.
The Outcome
The hybrid model was implemented over a seven-month transition period. Oracle support for Group A workloads was retained unchanged. Group B workloads were transitioned to the third-party support provider, reducing the support cost on those licences by 56% — a saving of approximately €2.1M in Year 1. Group C licences were terminated, eliminating an additional €0.8M in annual support fees. OCI migration of three database workloads removed a further €1.1M in on-premises support cost, offset partially by OCI subscription costs, for a net Year 1 benefit of approximately €0.5M on that component.
Combined, Year 1 savings totalled €4M against the pre-engagement €6M annual support baseline — a 67% cost reduction. The savings profile improved in Years 2 and 3 as Oracle's annual support price increase (typically 5–8% per year) continued to apply to the retained Group A contracts while the third-party support and OCI components were governed by fixed-rate and capped-increase terms respectively. Cumulative three-year savings reached €12M.
No audit findings were raised by Oracle during or after the transition. The third-party support provider's engagement was structured to comply with Oracle's licence terms — the client continued to own its perpetual licences and moved only the support contract, which is permissible under Oracle's licence agreements. Oracle has no contractual right to require customers to purchase its support services.
Key Takeaways
This case illustrates several principles that apply broadly to Oracle-intensive organisations managing large, mature technology estates. First, the hybrid support model is a legitimate and commercially proven approach. Third-party Oracle support is used by thousands of enterprise organisations globally, and recent legal developments — including the 2025 settlement between Oracle and Rimini Street — have further clarified the permissible scope of independent support services.
Second, the sequencing of licence termination requires specialist guidance. Oracle's commercial terms create repricing risks when support is partially reduced, and the correct structuring of termination — particularly where multiple products share a licence set — requires detailed contractual analysis. Errors in this sequencing can result in Oracle repricing remaining support at rates that eliminate anticipated savings.
Third, cloud migration and support reduction are complementary, not competing, strategies. Moving specific workloads to OCI provides Oracle with a commercial narrative that makes support reduction on remaining on-premises licences more commercially acceptable. This framing is strategically useful in managing the Oracle relationship through the transition.
Fourth, preparation time is critical. The seven-month transition window in this engagement was driven by a contract renewal date that limited flexibility. Organisations approaching similar engagements with 12–18 months of preparation time have consistently achieved better outcomes — both in commercial terms and in the quality of the third-party support provider selection process.
Independent analysis. Buyer-side only. We help enterprise organisations reduce Oracle support costs through structured hybrid strategies.