All posts by Fabian Schneider

Oracle Lifetime Support

Oracle Lifetime Support Policy

With Oracle Support, you know up front and with certainty how long your Oracle products are supported. The Lifetime Support Policy provides access to technical experts for as long as you license your Oracle products and consists of three support stages:

  • Premier Support provides you with maintenance and support for your Oracle Database products for five years from their general availability date.
  • Extended Support provides you with an extra three years of support for specific Oracle releases for an additional fee.
  • Sustaining Support: When Premier Support expires, if you choose not to purchase Extended Support, or when Extended Support expires, Sustaining Support will be available for as long as you license your Oracle products.

Oracle recently published an updated version of the Lifetime Support Policy, Coverage for Oracle Technology Products with the respective end dates for the three support stages.

Please find below some favorite Oracle products that will go out of support in the upcoming months:

Oracle Database

Release 11.2                     Extended Support ends December 2020

Release 12.2.0.1             Premier Support ends November 30, 2020 with a Limited Error Correction Period from December 1, 2020 to March 31, 2022

Release 18c                       Premier Support ends June 2021

 

Oracle MySQL Database

Release 5.7                         Premier Support ends October 2020

 

For more information on Oracle Lifetime Support, please refer to: https://www.oracle.com/support/lifetime-support/.

For the detailed list, please refer to: https://www.oracle.com/support/lifetime-support/resources.html.

 

 

 

Oracle On-Premise

Oracle to eliminate on-premise term licenses

Effective September 1, 2020, Oracle will no longer offer on-premise term licenses (1- to 5-year terms), except for key Oracle Technology products that will retain purchasable 1-year term licenses. End users will no longer have the option to buy a 2- to 5-year term license for these programs.

With customers’ focus directed toward the cloud, and the on-premise customers moving more toward perpetual licenses, Oracle made a strategic decision to eliminate on-premise term licenses, providing slimmer product and licensing selections when placing on-premise orders.

However, perpetual licenses are not affected by this announcement. Also, existing customers paying support on their term licenses will remain supported through the end of their term. Furthermore, Oracle Application Specific Full Use (ASFU) term licenses distributed in August 2020 can be reported until September 20, 2020.

What impact is there on license migrations?

  • Term upgrades to longer term licenses are discontinued (e.g., migrating a 2-year term to a 5-year term).
  • Term upgrades to perpetual licenses remain (e.g., migrating from a 4-year term license to a perpetual license). However, migrations from 1-year term to perpetual license are discontinued.

Please contact us for further details.

Kofax

Kofax Power PDF 4 available

Effective August 18, 2020, Kofax Power PDF 4, formerly Nuance, is available for Windows and Mac. Kofax Power PDF 4 provides powerful PDF management that’s built for business users. It works like Office desktop products for fast learning, meets simple to complex needs and provides strong security. This new release takes a huge leap forward in search and redaction accuracy, integration with Microsoft OneDrive and Kofax SignDoc and expanded accessibility.

For further information on Kofax Power PDF 4, please find the announcement here: https://www.kofax.com/blog/kofax-power-pdf-4-is-here and you may visit: https://www.kofax.com/Products/power-pdf.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 F1 User Mailbox Use Rights

Effective September 2020, Microsoft 365 F1 does not include rights to a Microsoft Exchange mailbox. In order to enable a full Microsoft Teams experience, Microsoft 365 F1 licenses may come with an additional Microsoft Exchange Online Kiosk (K1) license. Although the Microsoft Exchange Online K1 license will provision a mailbox for the user, it is important to notice, that Microsoft 365 F1 users are not entitled to use the mailbox. Microsoft recommends disabling Microsoft Outlook on the web via these steps: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/recipients-in-exchange-online/manage-user-mailboxes/enable-or-disable-outlook-web-app and asking affected users not to access the Microsoft Exchange mailbox via any other methods.

For further information on Microsoft 365 F1 User Mailbox Use Rights, please find the Microsoft Product Terms here: https://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/Downloader.aspx?documenttype=PT&lang=English.

Oracle Cloud

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution – The Oracle & VMware partnership

Effective August 6, 2020, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is available in all global regions and the Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud. Oracle Cloud VMware Solution provides a customer managed, native VMware-based cloud environment, installed within a customer’s tenancy. It offers complete control using familiar VMware tools and allows the customer to move or extend VMware-based workloads to the cloud without rearchitecting applications or retooling operations.

For an overview of Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, please visit: https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/VMware/Concepts/ocvsoverview.htm and find the announcement here: https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/oracle-cloud-vmware-solution-080620.html.

Promotions, VMware

VMware Cloud Foundation Express Promotion available

Effective August 6, 2020 to January 22, 2021, the promotion for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Express is available. VCF is a hybrid cloud platform for modernizing data centers and deploying modern apps. It is built on VMware vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and vRealize Suite, providing a complete set of software-defined services for compute, storage, networking, security, and cloud management to run enterprise apps across hybrid clouds. Existing VMware vSphere customers can purchase VCF with new vSphere or bring existing licenses to the cluster.
The VCF Express promotion offers a 25% discount off the list price of VCF Standard.

For further information on the VMware Cloud Foundation Express promotion, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2020/08/06/vcf-express-hci-kit-promotions/ and have a look at the Stock Keeping Units (SKU) List: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/vmw-vcf-express-promo-sku-list-two.pdf.

Promotions, VMware

VMware vRealize Suite Standard and VMware vCloud Suite Standard promotions available

Effective September 1, 2020 to January 31, 2021, promotions on VMware vRealize Suite Standard and VMware vCloud Suite Standard are available. VMware vRealize offers unified visibility, capacity planning, performance, cost optimization and speedy troubleshooting.

These promotions offer a 50% discount off license list prices.

For further information on the promotions for VMware vRealize Suite Standard and VMware vCloud Suite Standard, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/08/vrealize-vcloud-suite-promo.html.

Promotions, VMware

VMware Hyperconverged Infrastructure Kit promotion available

Effective August 6, 2020 to July 23, 2021, the promotion for VMware Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) Kit is available. VMware HCI Kits are designed to easily adopt HCI and provide customers with the foundational building blocks of the hybrid cloud: VMware Cloud Foundation. VMware vSAN is the only hyperconverged infrastructure solution that is natively integrated with industry leading virtualization platform, VMware vSphere.
VMware HCI Kits offer a simple way for customers to purchase VMware vSphere and VMware vSAN licenses together while still offering flexibility for independent deployment and upgrades.
The VMware HCI Kit promotion offers a 25% discount off license list prices for select HCI Kits including: HCI Kit Standard, HCI Kit Advanced, HCI Kit Operations Management, HCI Kit ROBO Advanced.

For further information on the VMware HCI Kit promotion, please visit: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2020/08/06/vcf-express-hci-kit-promotions.
For more information, please visit: https://www.vmware.com/products/hyper-converged-infrastructure.html.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Advanced Communications for Microsoft Teams available

Effective August 1, 2020, Microsoft Advanced Communications for Microsoft Teams is available. This add-on to any paid Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscription provides a new set of capabilities for large meetings up to 20,000 participants, communication policies, and integrations, in addition to advanced tools for IT management. Microsoft Advanced Communications is only available through the Enterprise Agreement (EA), Enterprise Subscription Agreement (EAS), Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES) and Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA).

For further information on Microsoft Advanced Communications, please visit: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/08/03/take-communnext-level-microsoft-teams/ and you may also check out: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-add-on-licensing/advanced-communications.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure Hybrid Benefit with SQL Server expanded use rights

Effective August 1, 2020, Microsoft expands use rights for the Microsoft Azure Hybrid Benefit with SQL Server giving additional flexibility in using Microsoft SQL Server Standard and Enterprise Core licenses. This creates chances for cost reduction and enables access to a larger bandwidth of features.
Microsoft SQL Server Standard Core licenses may now be used for Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise virtual machines with 4 Core licenses required for each virtual core, and Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Core licenses may now be used for Microsoft SQL Server Standard virtual machines with 1 Core license covering 4 virtual cores.
There are similar changes for the license requirements for the Microsoft Azure Data Factory SQL Server Integration Services Standard/Enterprise, and Microsoft SQL Server Standard Core licenses may now also be used for Microsoft Azure SQL Database Business Critical solutions with a requirement of 4 Core licenses to cover a virtual core.
For the announcement of expanded use rights for Microsoft Azure Hybrid Benefit with SQL Server, please visit: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/expanded-ahb-rights-for-microsoft-sql-server and have a look at the official documentation on pages 54/55 of the August 2020 Product Terms document: https://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/Downloader.aspx?documenttype=PT&lang=English.
For more information, please visit: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/hybrid-benefit/faq/.