Oracle Support Advice: Top 5 Routes to Effective Oracle Support
Effective Oracle Support depends on a number of factors. Both the Oracle Support providers and the organisation receiving the Oracle Support can both influence the quality and value of Oracle Support. Please read on for our Top 5 Routes to Better Oracle Support. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but may prove useful for organisations looking to engage with a third party for Oracle Support.
As an Oracle Support provider, Xynomix understand the importance of certain factors in their contribution to a successful external Oracle support arrangement. When we win contracts from our competitors, we always take time to understand the effective aspects of the previous Oracle Support contract and also endeavour to understand the factors that drove them to change providers. For this reason, we also have a good understanding of the ways in which outsourced Oracle support contracts can fail to meet expectations and organisational requirements and eventually turn sour.
We hope that our 5 top tips for an effective external Oracle support arrangement can help your organisation to evaluate the performance of your incumbent Oracle Support provider if you have one. If you are in the market for external Oracle Support, we hope to help you decide how to choose an Oracle support provider and the most appropriate support level for your systems. We will also map out some guidelines of what you can and should expect from an Oracle support provider.
1) Achieve a Good Organisational Fit
Before looking outward to understand the services that Oracle Support providers can offer you, it is a good idea to perform an internal assessment of your organisational culture and Oracle database systems.
Ask the following questions:
- Will your systems be high maintenance?
- Do you have 24×7 support requirements?
- Do you tend to treat support contracts as investments for a progressive approach to system management, or are you a more reactive organisation, dealing with problems in a break/fix manner?
- Do you prefer to develop strong personal relationships with third party providers, or keep it strictly functional business?
- If your organisation is fast-paced, how quickly will you require a reaction to reactive support calls?
- Does size matter? For example, if you are a large organisation, do you need to use a larger Oracle support provider in line with your projected corporate image?
- What proportion of you Oracle Support provider’s resources would you expect to be dedicated to your systems?
- How progressive is your organisation? Are there big IT projects on the horizon, or are your investment in IT fairly static?
- What is your maximum budget for Oracle Support?
- Would you rather pay an all inclusive one-off fee for all aspects of support, or ‘pay as you go’ when support is required?
- If you have an Oracle Support contract already in place, what aspects have you found ineffective and which would you like a new provider to deliver?
- Who will manage the new relationship and what are their priorities?
Your answers to these questions will provide an outline of your true organisational requirements and objectives in terms of an external Oracle Support arrangement. Your answers will help you to generate a short list of providers that can match your requirements in terms of company size, proactivity, resource level, etc.
Other organisational requirements that surface as a result of these questions can usually be matched through a personal meeting with a prospective new provider. For example:
- Do your requirements seem to be fully understood by the third party support provider’s representative?
- Does their pricing structure mould to fit your requirement?
- How quickly will they be able to respond to your support needs?
- Are they specifically geared up to deliver the level of support that you need?
More often than not, Oracle Support is a critical element of IT management and overall business function. A good fit between your organisation and your chosen Oracle Support provider is vital. If your IT management strategy is incredibly proactive, make sure that your Oracle Support company has service delivery principles that are strongly geared towards proactivity. If you prefer a reactive approach, make sure that your Oracle Support provider understands your requirements and does not try to push you down a route that does not fit with your database management strategy.
If you understand your long-term organisational goals, you can focus on finding an Oracle Support provider that can fit them, rather than being pushed in to a mould that fits the Oracle Support provider’s own approach to managing Oracle. In many cases, there is an ideal balance to be found between the intimacy and familiarity of the relationship with your Oracle Support provider and the available resources that they have in-house to successfully support your Oracle systems. It is worth considering that, whilst larger organisations have more visibility as a result of heavy marketing spend, the quality of relationship management and the speed and quality of support delivery can often be compromised. Would you rather have your Oracle systems supported by a sales and marketing-focused organisation, or an organisation that invests the bulk of their available cash in to improved Oracle Support technologies and personnel?
2) Make sure your Oracle Support requirements are truly understood before committing to a support arrangement
Your organisation’s systems are wholly unique. There has never been the same database technology arrangement accompanied by the same business priorities and requirements as yours. With this in mind, does it really make sense for your third party Oracle Support provider to deliver Oracle Support in an A, B, C, Gold, Silver, Bronze, etc. package?
Packages are a simple way for Oracle Support providers to market and sell their services, but complex database system requirements rarely slot neatly into a particular series of tick boxes. It may be easier for the Oracle Support provider to deliver a support package, but surely their job is to make your life easier, rather than the other way around?
You may find an Oracle Support package that suits your requirements exactly. However, it is important to remember that, in many cases, requirements that fall outside the boundaries of your particular package are chargeable. It may also be useful to remember that your systems will progress and your support requirements will need to flex to accommodate that.
When you approach potential Oracle Support providers, have your requirements in mind and do not be convinced to compromise on those. Unless you find an exact fit with a package and have no plans to change requirements for the duration of the support contract, a proposal and contract should be drawn up that meets each of your requirements specifically.
The Oracle Support provider in contention for your business should address necessary SLAs, hours of availability, response times, pledges for progression, levels of proactivity and so on, all in line with your requirements. If you need 24×7 30 minute response times, or two on-site consultancy days per month as part of the contract, these should be addressed at a fair and competitive price regardless of what is ‘usually’ sold.
If you take the time to review your Oracle Support proposals with your initial support requirements in mind, it should be clear whether or not each proposal meets these requirements. Provided the Oracle Support provider delivers on the promises described in the proposal, you should receive the level of Oracle Support that your systems require to your exact specifications.
3) Do not get caught out by the pricing structure of your Oracle Support contract
Traditionally, there are three ways that Oracle Support providers charge for Oracle Support: All-Inclusive Fully Managed Services Contracts; Basic Managed Services with chargeable extras; or ‘Pay as you Go’.
All are legitimate pricing structures, but it is important to understand exactly what you are being offered in a proposal document. Basic Managed Services contracts may seem cheap, but chargeable extras such as consultancy, patching and system upgrades can mean that the cost soon mounts up.
If your systems are fairly static and there are no real plans for progressive development, Basic Managed Services can certainly fit the bill. The same goes for ‘Pay as you Go’ Oracle Support, although ‘PAYG’ support tends to move organisations towards a more reactive rather than proactive approach to Oracle management and database systems can suffer.
If your technology roadmap for the next few years incorporates plans for system upgrades, virtualisation, migrations or Oracle RAC implementation, for example, you will probably be drawing on your Oracle Support providers skills a fair amount. In this case, Basic Managed Services and ‘Pay as you Go’ options can be expensive, or worse can prohibit the development of database systems in line with organisational objectives. Returns on IT investments can drop off significantly, as can performance.
Fully Managed Services are designed to be all-inclusive. One annual payment [or payments spread throughout the year] should cover everything, from basic administration, to DBA skills transfer, to proactive system improvements. Beware of Oracle Support providers that quote for a Fully Managed Service but charge for extras: you will inevitably need these extras. Again, this may be the pricing model that fits your needs best, but it is important that you are not caught by surprise by the small print in the middle of a crisis!
Fully Managed Services arrangements should include pro-active monitoring of the database systems, up to 24×7 if you need it. Proactive monitoring is not an included feature of every Fully Managed Service and, of course, SLAs for response times change from company to company. If these are important factors for your organisation, you should clarify whether or not they are included and what level of service the Oracle Support company is able to offer.
The basic message is: Make sure you know the level and type of support that you require then make sure that the consequent discussions and proposals delivered address your exact requirements and present a cost-effective solution. If you know exactly what is included in each proposal, you will be able to choose the most appropriate Oracle Support provider and there will be no unexpected costs at critical moments.
4) Make sure that your Oracle Support provider has a wide enough breadth of experience and technical knowledge to cope with your systems now and in the future
Oracle Support for core Oracle database systems is a fairly straight forward requirement. If your Oracle Support provider really knows Oracle and has an effective service delivery process in place, the chances are that they will be able to monitor and react to any issues in your systems as they arise.
However, the true value of Oracle Support, particularly Fully Managed Services, comes from the more pro-active aspect of Oracle system management. Be it Virtualisation or Clustering technology, Storage or Licensing…without an overall grasp of where and how Oracle sits within a business’s entire IT infrastructure, how could a considered, insightful and progressive roadmap ever be plotted and cost-savings put in to place?
A really good Oracle Support provider will have a breadth of knowledge that spans wider than the usual Oracle database suspects. They will be able to deliver that knowledge to you in the context of your aims for system progression to meet business needs on an ongoing basis.
So, how can you tell if an Oracle Support provider has the skills and experience that you need?
- Sit down and talk to them. One of the best ways to understand whether or not a potential Oracle Support provider is good enough for your needs is simply to ask the right questions about the company’s origins and areas of speciality. You will soon get a feel for their business focus and competence.
- Grill them about the existing qualifications of the current in-house technical team. Take the time to learn about the DBAs that will be looking after your systems – what particular Oracle technologies are they interested in? Do they have plans to ‘skill up’ in specific areas? Do they have a mandatory Oracle training program in place? What Oracle versions do they have experience supporting?
- Ask for reference sites and case studies. Xynomix often ask existing clients to hold telephone conversations with prospective new clients. We find that it is the best way for our prospective clients to truly understand the skills we have, how well we deal with clients and what value we bring to the organisation’s Oracle database systems. Your prospective Oracle Support provider should not drag their heels finding a suitable reference site for you.
Will they have the skills to support you in the future?
Over time, your IT systems will evolve to incorporate newly available Oracle technologies that fulfil business functions more effectively. It is important to know that your Oracle Support provider has the skills and dedication to DBA training that is necessary to consistently support Oracle database environments incorporating new technologies.
Are they confident enough in their abilities to offer you strict SLAs that are in line with your requirements?
There is nothing wrong with asking your Oracle Support provider to put their money where their mouth is. If they fail to meet a service level agreement that has been put in place to meet your needs, it is important to understand what they will do about it. Check the small print for any caveats that protect them from slip ups. Ask what they will do for you if SLAs aren’t met. Most importantly, ask about contract cancellation clauses.
5) Ensure that you will be happy with the level of access and service that you receive from the support desk of your Oracle Support provider
There are few key questions that need to be asked around the actual service delivery process that your Oracle Support provider has in place:
Could your Oracle Support provider offer Support 24x7x365?
If you take out a fully managed services support contract, you may decide that 24×7 support coverage is not a priority. However, if 24×7 support or out of hours support escalation may become a consideration, it is comforting to know that your incumbent provider could take care of it. It is certainly worth checking what your Oracle Support provider or potential Oracle Support provider would charge for 24×7 or out of hours support even if it is not high on your current list of priorities.
How quickly will an Oracle DBA respond to your support call or system issue?
Response times vary from company to company. Xynomix place a maximum 30 minute response time on all SLAs. However, in reality, support and system issues are addressed within five to ten minutes. Whilst we cannot guarantee a fix within this time frame, our customers are always comfortable that we are working to diagnose the problem and work towards a fix almost as soon as it occurs.
Ask your existing or potential Oracle Support provider what their actual average response time is. If they have statistics to back their answers up, that is great. If they can provide a reference as mentioned above that you can check with personally to verify the response time, that is even better.
Who will deal with your Oracle support issue?
In office hours, Xynomix customers have direct access to a named DBA that gets to know their systems. Far more often than not, the DBA that picks up the support call will know the customer’s systems inside out, as well as knowing the customer themselves. For 24×7 cover support calls, one of a handful of allocated DBAs will deal with the call. Again, customers will know these DBAs and can be sure that they know how best to approach a system fix.
Ask your existing or potential Oracle Support provider if your systems will have a named DBA allocated to them.
Xynomix are entirely UK-based. We never place support callers in a queue. Our DBAs are simply available at the other end of the phone on 0845 222 9600 when customers need them. If these factors are important to you, remember to add them to your list of requirements!
We hope that you have found these tips useful. Naturally, Xynomix believe that the Oracle Support services that we deliver and how we deliver those Oracle Support services sets us apart from the competition. However, Oracle Support is largely subjective. There are obviously ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Oracle Support providers in terms of the way that the service is delivered, levels of response, Oracle skills, etc. Beyond that, however, effective Oracle Support can only be judged on how well it meets your specific requirements. This should be the most important consideration for your incumbent and/or prospective Oracle Support providers: not ‘how can we draw more money from a contract?’, or ‘which Oracle Support package should I fit this customer in to?’, but ‘are we consistently meeting our customer’s specific requirements and evolving to make their needs?’
