The Enterprise Support Glossary

A

Audit clause

A contractual right granted to the software publisher to inspect licence consumption. Standard clauses permit an annual audit with 30–90 days' notice. Aggressive clauses can compress that window or waive notice during specific commercial events. See audit defence.

Audit defence

The structured process of responding to a vendor audit — scoping, evidence production, position papers, escalation handling, and commercial negotiation — to minimise exposure and protect buyer leverage. Independent advisors typically produce a better outcome than self-defence.

Assignment (licence assignment)

The allocation of a licence to a specific user, device, or server. Tracking assignment is required to prove compliance under most enterprise metrics.

B

Baseline

The reconciled starting point for a cost, consumption, or entitlement number. A defensible third-party support baseline is taken from an active renewal quote or the last paid invoice — never from list price. See our methodology.

BYOL (Bring Your Own Licence)

A cloud commercial construct where the customer reuses existing perpetual licences in a public-cloud deployment. BYOL terms are vendor-specific and often restrict which hyperscalers or instance types are eligible.

Break/fix

The component of support covering diagnosis and resolution of production incidents on existing code. Third-party support providers deliver break/fix at all severity tiers.

C

Cloud At Customer (Oracle CC)

Oracle engineered-system hardware placed in the customer's data centre but contractually treated as a cloud subscription. Support and licensing rules differ from on-premise deployments.

Compliance position

The documented gap — if any — between licences owned and licences deployed. A negative position creates audit risk; a positive position creates renegotiation leverage.

Core factor

Oracle's multiplier applied to processor cores when calculating Oracle Database licences on non-Oracle hardware. Different processor families carry different core factors (for example, x86 = 0.5; some SPARC = 0.75).

Custom-code support

Support coverage extending to client-specific modifications — ABAP enhancements in SAP, PL/SQL packages in Oracle, custom WebSphere code in IBM estates. Vendor-direct support typically excludes custom code; third-party support typically includes it.

D

Deployment metric

The unit of licence measurement — named user, processor, PVU (IBM), session, device, or module-based entity. Auditable compliance is inseparable from the correct metric.

Discount uplift

The vendor practice of quoting a large list-price discount while raising maintenance fees, so that apparent savings mask real increases in the total cost of ownership. See why enterprises switch.

E

Effective licence position (ELP)

The formal reconciliation of licences owned against licences deployed, segmented by product, metric, and contract. The foundational document for any audit defence or renegotiation, and a prerequisite for a credible third-party support business case.

End-of-life (EOL)

The date after which a software vendor withdraws all support tiers for a named product version. For many clients it is the trigger for independent support — see end-of-life support.

Extended Support

A middle support tier offered by Oracle and others after Premier Support lapses — more expensive, fewer inclusions, and only available for a finite window. Often serves as the bridge year before switching to third-party support.

Enterprise Agreement (EA)

A multi-year, multi-product commercial construct in which the customer commits to volume in exchange for simplified licensing and nominal discount. EAs carry implicit lock-in; exit planning is non-trivial.

I

Indexation

The contractual clause allowing annual fee uplift. Vendor contracts typically specify 4–8% per year; independent-support contracts cap uplift materially lower. Over a five-year horizon, indexation is often the largest single savings driver — not year-one percentage.

Indirect access (SAP)

SAP's doctrine that non-SAP systems which read from or write to an SAP database indirectly consume SAP licences. A long-running source of audit exposure; largely superseded by Digital Access commercial terms but still present in older contracts.

Interoperability

Support activity ensuring an application remains usable against new infrastructure, OS versions, browsers, or third-party dependencies. Independent providers maintain interoperability on perpetual licences even when the vendor has stopped certifying new environments.

L

License Management Services (LMS)

Oracle's audit-delivery arm. An LMS engagement is the formal compliance review; scope, evidence, and commercial outcomes are all negotiable — but only with the right preparation.

Licence optimisation

The discipline of reducing licence footprint without reducing functional coverage — through metric conversion, consolidation, architectural change, or renegotiation. See licence optimisation.

M

Maintenance fee

Used interchangeably with "support fee" in enterprise software contracts. Typically 20–22% of the list licence value per year, with contractual indexation. See our support cost calculator.

Matching Service Levels (Oracle)

Oracle's rule that all licences of a given product within a "licence set" must be supported at the same tier. Selective drop of support on a subset is, under this rule, not permitted. Independent support circumvents the issue by providing support outside the Oracle contract entirely.

Metric conversion

A negotiated change from one licensing metric to another — for example, from PVU to VPC (IBM) or from named user to processor (Oracle). Often a significant lever during renewal or audit settlement.

N

Named user plus (NUP)

Oracle's per-user licensing metric. A named individual or identifiable device authorised to access the software, regardless of whether they actually do. Minimums apply per-processor.

Net present value (NPV)

A discounted cash-flow comparison across multiple years, used to evaluate long-term commercial decisions. Single-year support savings understate the picture; five-year NPV is the defensible way to present a third-party support business case.

P

Perpetual licence

A software licence granting the right to use a specific version of software in perpetuity. Maintenance and support are sold separately and can be dropped without terminating the licence. The legal foundation of third-party support. See is it legal?.

Premier Support (Oracle)

Oracle's headline support tier — full patching, security, regulatory updates, and new-version entitlement — available for a finite period from first general release of a major product.

Processor licence

A licensing metric based on the number of processor cores on which the software runs, moderated by core factors. Used heavily by Oracle and, in modified form, by IBM (PVU) and Broadcom.

PVU (Processor Value Unit)

IBM's processor-licensing metric. Each processor core carries a PVU rating; licences are sold per PVU. Virtualisation rules govern how PVU consumption is calculated in VMware-based estates.

R

Regulatory updates

Payroll tax, country-specific statutory reporting, and similar content delivered by the support provider. Must be kept current for SAP payroll, Oracle E-Business Suite, and similar back-office workloads. Independent providers deliver regulatory updates globally on in-scope products.

Repricing

The vendor tactic of increasing maintenance charges on the remaining products when the client drops a subset of support, on the ground that volume discounts no longer apply. Priced into every realistic support-reduction business case.

S

S&S (Software & Subscription)

IBM's annual maintenance fee on perpetual licences. Functionally equivalent to Oracle's Premier Support or SAP's Enterprise Support.

S/4HANA

SAP's next-generation ERP platform on the HANA in-memory database. End of ECC mainstream maintenance drives the migration conversation for many clients — but not all migrations are on SAP's preferred timeline.

Security patch

A vendor- or third-party-supplied code change addressing a disclosed vulnerability. Independent providers deliver equivalent protection through virtual patching, configuration hardening, and targeted code fixes.

Severity tier

The classification of an incident by business impact — Sev-1 (production down) through Sev-4 (non-urgent). GoVendorFree's Sev-1 response SLA is 15 minutes.

SLA (Service Level Agreement)

The contractual commitment on response time, resolution time, and availability. Independent-support SLAs are typically tighter than vendor-direct equivalents because they are named in the master services agreement rather than an appendix.

Sustaining Support

Oracle's reduced support tier available indefinitely after Premier and Extended Support expire. No new patches, no tax updates, no certification of new platforms. Usually the trigger for the third-party support business case.

Support shelving

The tactic of dropping vendor support on a subset of licences. Often blocked by Matching Service Levels (Oracle) or bundled pricing (SAP). Independent support avoids the restriction by sitting outside the vendor contract entirely.

T

Third-party support

Software maintenance and support delivered by a provider other than the original software publisher. Covers break/fix, performance tuning, tax and regulatory updates, interoperability, and custom-code support. The client retains all perpetual licence rights. See Oracle, SAP, VMware/Broadcom, and IBM.

TOMA

Technical and Organisational Measures — the documented safeguards a provider uses to protect intellectual property and client environments. Typically appended to European data-processing agreements and audited under ISO 27001.

Total cost of ownership (TCO)

The fully loaded, multi-year cost of running a system — licence, support, infrastructure, staff, upgrade, and compliance — evaluated against the value it delivers. The correct frame for every support-related decision.

True-up

A contractual event where licence consumption is measured and reconciled against entitlement. Annual in most enterprise agreements; quarterly or real-time in subscription contracts. A poorly managed true-up is a budget event.

U

ULA (Unlimited Licensing Agreement)

An Oracle commercial construct granting unlimited deployment of named products for a fixed term (typically three years). At the end of the term the client certifies the installed base and those quantities become the perpetual entitlement. Exit planning is critical — a bad certification locks in a weak position for the next decade.

V

VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation)

Broadcom's bundled stack — vSphere, vSAN, NSX, Aria — sold as the primary commercial construct after the Broadcom acquisition. See the VCF cost analysis white paper.

Vendor-direct maintenance

The annual support contract sold by the software publisher (Oracle, SAP, Broadcom, IBM). Typically 20–22% of list licence value per year, with annual uplift. The alternative to independent support.

Virtualisation licensing

The vendor rules governing how licences are counted when software runs on shared virtual infrastructure. Oracle's partitioning policy, IBM's sub-capacity rules, and Broadcom's VCF bundling all materially affect licence costs in virtualised estates.

Related reading

• Is third-party software support legal?
• Why enterprises switch from vendor support
• GoVendorFree vs. Rimini Street
• Our savings methodology
• Case studies