What You Should Know About Java Audits: A Podcast with Palisade’s Craig Guarente

In this edition of the Early Adopter Podcast, Dan Woods speaks with Palisade’s CEO Craig Guarente about Java audits. It is the first podcast in the “Escape Hatch from Oracle” series. Oracle has focused its innovation as much or more on licensing and audit practices as it has on technology. Oracle has created a lot of quality technology, but now it seems much of the company’s energy is focused on maximizing the amount of money it gets from customers through licenses. The latest case of this involves the Java language which Oracle acquired in its acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Java has a run time that is widely available and used for free most of the time powering many software programs. Oracle also sells a licensed version of the runtime with enhanced support and security patches. Oracle has long been in the business of using its leverage on software audits to encourage customers to buy more products. And it’s now starting to do audits aimed at promoting sales of its Java premium version.

Guarente offers his perspective on these practices. His company, Palisade Compliance, is a consultancy that helps companies navigate licensing audits and negotiations with Oracle. Their conversation covers the following:

* 3:00 – How Oracle uses audits to box in customers
* 9:00 – How audits are a huge revenue source for Oracle
* 11:30 – How Oracle supports Java for only a limited time
* 14:10 – Java audits could become a serious problem for Oracle customers
* 15:40 – How companies can reduce their risk of an Oracle audit

Listen to the podcast here or read a Q&A of the conversation here: