We identify every Java installation across your estate — including the ones Oracle will find before you do — quantify your financial exposure under Oracle's per-employee SE subscription model, and build your remediation plan before a formal audit notice lands. 300+ reviews completed. Average exposure identified per engagement: $2.8M.
We have no commercial relationship with Oracle. We do not resell Oracle software, participate in Oracle's partner programme, or receive referral fees from any vendor. This is not a marketing statement — it is the structural foundation of how we operate. Everything we find in your review is your proprietary work product. None of it goes to Oracle.
Tell us about your Java estate. A former Oracle insider responds within one business day with a candid assessment of your risk and next steps.
No commitment. No sales pitch. 30 minutes with a former Oracle insider who has reviewed 300+ enterprise Java estates.
Oracle's January 2023 Java SE subscription shift from named-user and processor licensing to a per-employee model fundamentally changed the financial exposure landscape for every enterprise running Java. Under the old model, an organisation with 5,000 Java users might owe Oracle for 5,000 licences. Under the new model, Oracle counts every employee in the organisation — regardless of whether they touch Java.
The result: enterprises that believed they had contained or manageable Java costs suddenly face theoretical exposure measured in millions of dollars — based on total headcount, not actual Java usage. A 10,000-employee organisation running a handful of Java applications may owe Oracle many times what they have historically paid for software support.
The gap between what most enterprises believe they owe and what Oracle's methodology actually calculates is the single largest source of unrecognised software licensing risk in enterprise IT today. Until you conduct a structured independent review, you are operating blind against an organisation that audits enterprises for a living.
In one recent engagement, a global logistics company with 15,000 employees completed a Java licensing review with Redress. We identified $2.8M in potential exposure they were unaware of — and restructured their subscription to eliminate the risk for $340,000 annually, 88% less than Oracle's initial ask.
Standard IT asset management tools and internal reviews consistently miss the Java installations that generate the largest Oracle claims. Our 300+ reviews have identified the same pattern repeatedly: the discovered estate is on average 9x larger than the internally reported position.
A 12,000-employee pharmaceutical group engaged us after receiving an Oracle "licensing inquiry" letter. Our review found 47,000 Java installations, including 12,000 running Oracle Java SE against a declared position of approximately 5,000. The exposure under Oracle's per-employee model was $3.2M. Through a structured migration of 38,000 installations to OpenJDK and a targeted SE subscription covering the remaining 9,000 business-critical deployments, the position was resolved for $180,000 before Oracle issued a formal audit notice.
A bank with 28,000 employees had assumed their Java position was manageable based on a SAM tool report showing approximately 2,000 Oracle Java users. Our independent review discovered 89,000 Java instances across 400+ servers, including embedded Java in middleware and trading infrastructure that the SAM tool had not catalogued. Oracle's per-employee calculation for a 28,000-headcount organisation would have produced a $6.7M claim. Pre-audit remediation completed within six weeks reduced the actual licensing obligation to $340,000.
A 45,000-employee retail group conducted our review as a strategic exercise ahead of a planned cloud migration. The review identified $4.1M in potential Oracle Java SE exposure from legacy on-premises installations, cloud lift-and-shift workloads running unmodified Java SE, and containerised environments with embedded Oracle JDK. By restructuring the cloud migration specifically to eliminate the Oracle Java obligation — completing OpenJDK migration alongside the cloud transition — the group entered their cloud environment with zero Java licensing exposure and no Oracle audit risk.
Not ready to call? Download our Oracle Java Licensing Guide first.
84 pages covering SE subscription mechanics, per-employee counting rules, OpenJDK migration strategy, and Oracle audit response — written by former Oracle insiders who built the methodology.Every Java licensing review follows a structured five-phase methodology developed across 300+ engagements. You receive a complete picture of your estate, a quantified risk position, and a prioritised remediation roadmap — all under NDA and entirely independent of Oracle.
We work with your IT and procurement teams to define the review scope, including on-premises servers, cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI), containers (Kubernetes, Docker), CI/CD pipelines, and any third-party software that may embed Java. We agree the discovery methodology and data collection approach upfront with no Oracle involvement.
Days 1–3 • Kickoff and scopingUsing our proprietary discovery methodology — independent of Oracle's LMS scripts — we identify every Java installation across your estate. This includes Oracle JDK, Oracle Java SE, embedded Java in middleware and application servers, OpenJDK distributions that may trigger licensing obligations, and cloud-hosted Java workloads. We find what Oracle's team would find, before they do.
Days 3–10 • Comprehensive discoveryWe apply Oracle's current licensing rules — including the 2023 per-employee SE subscription metric, cloud processor calculation methodologies, container and virtualisation counting rules, and any applicable legacy named-user or processor entitlements — to produce an accurate picture of your licensing obligation under Oracle's rules. This is not Oracle's calculation. It is our independent expert interpretation of what Oracle can legitimately claim.
Days 8–14 • Obligation analysisWe produce a structured financial risk report showing your current contractual position, the exposure Oracle could claim under maximum interpretation of its licensing rules, the defensible position our analysis supports, and the cost of resolving any gap before Oracle initiates a formal audit process. This gives your CFO and legal team the numbers they need to make informed, defensible decisions.
Days 12–16 • Risk reportWe deliver a prioritised remediation plan covering all cost-effective paths to eliminate or reduce your Oracle Java exposure, including OpenJDK migration for qualifying workloads, SE subscription rightsizing for business-critical deployments, cloud architecture adjustments to reduce processor counts, and contractual strategies for existing Oracle relationships. You decide which path fits your timeline and risk tolerance.
Days 14–20 • Remediation roadmapNot every Java licensing advisor has Oracle insider experience. Many have vendor relationships that compromise their advice. Here is what makes Redress structurally different.
Our advisors formerly operated Oracle's LMS audit methodology and Oracle licensing strategy from the inside. We built the scripts Oracle uses. We know exactly where Oracle's counting methodology produces inflated claims, where it can be legally challenged, and how Oracle values and settles Java disputes. This is why our review findings are defensible when Oracle arrives.
We do not resell Oracle software. We do not participate in Oracle's partner programme. We have never received a referral fee from Oracle or any software vendor. This structural independence is not a marketing claim — it is the reason we can tell you the truth about your position, even when that truth involves recommending you move away from Oracle Java entirely.
Our methodology is refined across 300+ completed Java licensing reviews across every major industry, geography, and estate complexity. We know what Oracle finds in pharmaceutical environments, what triggers escalations in financial services, and how retail and manufacturing estates generate hidden container and embedded Java exposure. Our benchmarks mean your findings are calibrated against real outcomes, not theory.
Every Redress engagement is delivered by senior advisors with 20+ years of Oracle licensing experience. There are no project managers between you and the expert, and no junior analysts interpreting complex rules they have not operated from the inside. The person who leads your briefing is the person who conducts your review and presents your findings.
Eight real questions from CIOs, CPOs, and General Counsels who have engaged us for Java licensing reviews — answered directly.
You can also explore our Java Knowledge Hub for 200+ articles on Java SE licensing mechanics, per-employee counting, cloud deployment rules, and OpenJDK migration strategy.
95% of enterprises have unknown Java exposure under Oracle's 2023 per-employee pricing model. Most discover it when Oracle issues a formal audit notice, at which point the negotiating leverage shifts entirely to Oracle. A proactive Java licensing review puts the control back with you.
Our reviews typically identify $1.5M–$6M in potential exposure per engagement and resolve it for a fraction of that cost through structured remediation before Oracle makes contact. The best time to conduct a Java licensing review is before Oracle asks. The second-best time is now.
Engagements are structured as fixed-fee advisory retainers or success-based arrangements where our fee is contingent on documented savings. We explain fee structures on the first call with no obligation.
No commitment. No sales pitch. A 30-minute call with a former Oracle insider who has reviewed 300+ enterprise Java estates globally.
No commitment. No sales pitch. 30 minutes with a former Oracle insider who has managed 300+ Java licensing reviews across 50+ countries.