Tarim Consulting
Helping Oracle Customers Resolve Cost Reduction and Risk Mitigation Challenges

Reducing costs, getting the most ROI from the investment, mitigating risks, and maintaining a healthy, productive relationship with Oracle are the key challenges faced by CIOs who rely on Oracle to meet business needs. Meeting and overcoming these challenges are Tarim Consulting’s specialties.

CEO Max Ablimit has a unique perspective on these challenges as a six year veteran of Oracle’s License Management Services (LMS). “When I was with Oracle, I saw how much Oracle personnel can complain about the customer. After leaving Oracle and working with Oracle customers, I heard an equal amount of complaints from them about Oracle,” relates Ablimit. “A recurring pattern is that the customer’s frustration and unnecessary costs result from a lack of understanding.” Addressing this lack of understanding influenced Tarim Consulting’s founding. “Tarim acts as a bridge between the client and Oracle to help create a win-win situation for both parties.”

“The Tarim Approach” was developed to help address clients’ key Oracle challenges. Oracle can be a company’s largest IT asset and form a significant part of its IT infrastructure. Thus, a company’s Oracle environment needs a periodic checkup, just like having a medical checkup. Tarim conducts an Oracle Health Check to diagnose a client’s Oracle footprint. This allows Tarim to identify areas of risk, potential cost reduction, and opportunity. Next, Tarim develops strategies to address the client’s Oracle challenges.

Recently, Tarim helped an architectural and engineering firm with an $86 million Oracle footprint with a complicated license migration. This involved evaluating and verifying the migration and pricing proposals from Oracle. With an understanding of the client’s affected Oracle products and through consultations with them, Tarim presented the options of pursuing a transactional purchase or entering into a ULA. After the client selected an option, Tarim helped them negotiate a $17 million reduction in list license fees, a 94 percent discount for the entire deal. As expressed by the CIO in an email, Tarim “did a super job”.

The success of this engagement can be attributed to two key factors that set Tarim apart:

I strongly believe that collaboration is more effective than non-cooperation. By adopting this approach and working with Oracle instead of against Oracle, Tarim has been able to provide tremendously more effective value to our clients

First, Tarim’s model is twofold, focusing on both the consulting aspect of an engagement and on the execution aspect, ensuring that the client is covered from the beginning all the way through to the end. Other providers by contrast may be able to handle the consulting aspect, but cannot go beyond to help the client execute recommendations and need to bring in third party resources to assist, such as resellers. This setup ends up costing the client in additional fees by bringing other parties into the equation.

Second, Tarim adopts a collaborative, but firm approach in dealing with Oracle by going for the win-win scenario. What some consulting companies do is adopt an adversarial, combative approach in their Oracle dealings, which does not take into account the possible adverse, long term consequences of souring the client’s Oracle relationship. Tarim acknowledges that there are times when it is necessary to draw a firm line and take a stand to properly support the client and manage the Oracle relationship correctly. This bridges the gap and enables the client and Oracle to mutually benefit from a positive relationship.

Looking ahead, Tarim is expanding its cost reduction and risk mitigation capabilities to include cloud licensing. Ablimit elaborates, “With Oracle bolstering its cloud offerings, it is not enough to focus exclusively on the traditional on-premise products and solutions. By doing so, Tarim expands the scope of its service offering and can serve a wider client base.” Tarim launched a European office in Dublin, Ireland in May of this year and plans to expand into Asia.