Eight Oracle Licensing Predictions and Trends for 2025

Oracle's licensing and cloud landscape in 2025 presents challenges and opportunities. Key trends include intensifying Java audits driven by Oracle's profitability strategies, such as the "employee metric" model, which requires licensing the entire workforce. Oracle's Verified SAM program, aimed at compliance management, is also skeptical due to its limited benefits.

The pressure to renew Unlimited License Agreements (ULAs) is increasing, with Oracle employing stricter certification audits to uncover compliance gaps. Additionally, support costs continue to rise at an annual 8%, prompting many organizations to explore cost-saving measures like third-party support.

Audit strategies are shifting focus from databases to applications such as Oracle EBS and JD Edwards, emphasizing the need for independent compliance assessments. The adoption of Oracle Cloud at Customer (Exa CC) is growing among large organizations, primarily to reduce on-premises support costs. However, Oracle's Database Cloud services on AWS, Azure, and GCP see limited adoption as businesses prioritize migrating off Oracle databases altogether.

Actionable Steps: To optimize costs and mitigate risks, conduct annual licensing reviews, block Java downloads, evaluate third-party support, and carefully manage ULA renewals.

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