1. Toad For Oracle Trial License Key Free

Introduction

Since the early 2000s software audits have proved to be a profitable revenue stream for software publishers. A study conducted by Flexera shows that 75% of companies are found to be out of compliance with their contractual obligations, and 20% of them end up paying $1 million or more in license true-ups. Undoubtedly this brings additional revenue in the software publishers’ accounts and leaves the companies asking themselves what they can do to prevent such situations in the future.

A license key or Authorization key will need to be inputted; along with its Site Message string. These two pieces of information will enable and authorize most applications, like Toad for Oracle and Toad. Oct 11, 2007 - Toad for Oracle Trial has 3 inventory records, 0 Questions, 0 Blogs and 0 links. Your Quest-issued license key message (site message).

Typically, in most audit engagements the software vendors are seen as the bad guys. Software vendors’ selection process, tactics, procedures and even timing for software audits have gained a somewhat bad reputation over the years. However, the truth is that they have legal rights to verify if their customers are following the agreed-upon contractual usage terms.

As a result, the Software Asset Management (SAM) market has seen a steady growth, valued at 1.16 billion USD in 2017 and estimated to grow to 2.32 billion by 2022. The frequent changes in licensing rules coupled with difficult to understand license metric definitions and software contracts are just some of the key complexity factors which make SAM an expert service. Implementing SAM processes can effectively mitigate the financial risk associated to inappropriate use of software and reduce up to 25% of the cost associated to software licensing.

About Quest Software

Quest Software is a software company founded in 1987, with headquarters in California and 53 branch offices in 24 countries. Quest is best known for their database management and administration product, Toad. Other offerings include software as a service, security, cloud backup and recovery and offerings for AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud management.

In 2012 Quest was acquired by Dell. Four years later Francisco Partners and Elliott Management Corporation acquired Quest Software together with Dell Software and relaunched the two entities as Quest Software.

Since its acquisition, Quest’s compliance program is in motion with a notable increase in volume of audit campaigns. Francisco Partners, former owner of Attachmate Corporation, is notoriously known for their aggressive compliance practices with rapid legal escalations. Word on the street has it that their involvement in Quest has had a similar effect, take the Nike lawsuit as an example.

In the following sections we will go through the key points that will help you minimize possible challenges for your organization. We will look at the Most common criteria for audit nominations, the Types of Quest audits and the Audit phases, which will help you understand the problem better. These sections will be followed by a dive into the Most common causes for Quest compliance issues and Best practices, that will help you proactively improve your IT strategy.

Most common criteria for audit nominations

Major software publishers like Quest have a huge client base. Because audit campaigns are seen as revenue generators, vendors choose to nominate the companies they wish to audit based on the probability of non-compliance. Profitable audit campaigns are based on a high rate of non-compliance from the list of nominees.

Toad For Oracle Trial License Key Free

Most commonly, software vendors look at three important markers:

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A)

When companies merge, assimilate or acquire other companies, there is a high probability of becoming non-compliant. Software licensing is an aspect that is often overlooked during M&As. This can result in insufficient licenses to cover the usage of the newly formed entities.

Growing number of employees

Companies that experience growth in the number of employees will be on the audit list if at contract renewal declarations there is no increase in the number of licenses. Quest might consider that the company is most likely out of compliance.

Declared financial data and purchasing behavior

Organizations that experience an increase in their fiscal value might be targeted if they don’t reflect this growth in their licensing needs.

Types of Quest audits

Quest uses different types of audits to verify whether their end users are licensed correctly. The audit types vary depending on the type of the engagement and party responsible for carrying it out. These audits can be self-audits, audits led by Quest’s own license compliance department, third party led typically by one of Big 4 (Deloitte, PWC, EY or KPMG) or a combination. The level of inquiry, effort and time spent is set by the audit model.

Self-Audit

This is the friendliest audit type which implies a certain level of trust between the parties involved. It requires companies to verify whether they are compliant with Quest’s licenses, which involves doing their own data collection and license verification. The data and related results are then analyzed by Quest or Quest representatives in order to establish an official license position.

The internal cost of a Self-Audit may vary depending on the size of the organization and the amount of data that needs to be collected. Unless the target organization is fully compliant, the cost of the audit will probably still be considerably lower than paying large fees if found non-compliant during the other audit types.

Quest Audit

Over the last six years Quest has rapidly grown within the software compliance audit space. Within the last two years Quest Software has built its own team of dedicated software license auditors which are now well known for their aggressive approach.

Although more thorough and invasive one of the key advantages of an audit led by Quest is that they provide you with the necessary instructions, tools and scripts to collect the required information. Any technical issues related to the data collection process are supported by Quest’s team. Also, Quest is flexible and willing to leverage whatever discovery or inventory tools the customer may already have implemented in-house in order to capture complete and accurate data.

Big 4 Audit

Big 4 audits follow a similar approach to Quest’s own compliance team. Our research indicates that Deloittemight be the preferred (but not limited to) audit party for Quest, with over 5 years’ experience working together. Both parties employ a similar or even the same methodology and collection tools and/or scripts.

In some cases, we see a combined effort between Quest and Deloitte. Deloitte being responsible for gathering complete and accurate deployment data, thus establishing a deployment snapshot in time. The reconciliation process is then carried out by Quest’s own team.

Audit phases

Independent of the model, Quest audits typically include four major phases. All phases have an equal weight in determining the final outcome of the audit.

1. Kick-off & Audit Scope

The Kick-off & Audit Scope phase determines how invasive the audit will be. It generally is the first sit-down with the auditors and decides the tone of the entire audit. It determines the reach of the audit, from headquarters to subsidiaries to servers and workstations potentially making use of the software.

Quest agreements are typically transactional, it is important that you agree on the audit clause(s) used to invoke the audit and use them to your advantage. It is critical to get a clear understanding of what is required and mandatory by rule of law. Any information shared outside of your contractual obligations may have negative repercussions on your organization.

The auditing party and the customer will agree on the scope of the audit in terms of Organizational Departments and/or Legal Entities, Platforms, Products, Duration and Effort. In general, all Organizational Departments and/or Legal Entities are included. However, you always have to check your contracts and verify if the auditor has the right to audit global entities and locations.

The product scope typically encompasses all Quest software products. However, emphasis will be mostly on TOAD and SQL Navigator installations. Below, an example overview of the product families in scope.

*In the following section we will explain the relevance of the Environment Deployed and Metric in the Data Collection process.

If possible, try to reduce the scope of the product list to only relevant products. Quest’s product portfolio includes hundreds of products. We recommend you to focus only on the relevant products to avoid wasted time and effort.

2. Data Collection

The Data Collection phase is usually the most time consuming and resource intensive phase for your organization. If not already in place, SAM responsibilities need to be assigned within the team. The terms and conditions set in the Kick-off & Audit Scope phase need to be clearly understood and reflected in the Data Collection process. Bhabi ji ghar hai serial episode 12. All collected data should pass an internal quality control filter which should ensure that it includes all required information and that no information outside of the scope is shared with the auditor.

2.1. Entitlement Data Collection

It is crucial to have an accurate baseline. For that you have to inventory both deployment as well as entitlement data. We advise to do this internally as well as request it from Quest and then crosscheck the information. Quest doesn’t have any interest in having this clear in the early stages of the audit, but you as a customer want everything as clear as possible. Having a confirmation of entitlements as early as possible in the process is helpful.

Software licensing is a very complex subject. As a result, software publishers sometimes make mistakes in relation to license edition / version categorization which can result in an inaccurate license exposure. For example, licenses with multiple editions like Toad (Base / Pro / Xpert / Developer / DBA) may be inaccurately represented due to their inherit complexity. You need to be extra diligent when reviewing the entitlement report provided by Quest against your own records.

Vendors can make mistakes in recording the correct entitlements (especially since Quest has had several mergers and acquisitions over the past years) but at the same time you also might miss a document or two. By consolidating this information, you ensure that nothing is lost.

2.2. Deployment Data Collection

The coverage of your SAM tool should be at least 90% for workstations and 100% for servers. If it’s lower, Quest would work with you to address the gap in some way. Our research indicates that the preferred tools for the data collection are Active Directory and SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager), for which Quest will provide their own SQL queries which would collect the required data.

However, Quest is open to use additional tools to address the gaps that can’t be inventoried by SCCM. Customers have had success with other tools, including but not limited to:

• Service Now
• Altiris
• LANDesk
• SNOW
• BigFix
• Flexera

The SAM tool scans should include the following criteria:

• Keyword search results from Windows Add & Remove Programs (which must include associated Device Name, Last User, Publisher, Product Name, Product Version).
• Keyword search results for Quest executables and key files (which must include associated Device Name, Product Name, Product Version, File Name, Complete File Path, File Size, Last Modified Date).
• A hardware overview of machines inventoried (which must include associated Device Name, Operating System, Last Software Scan Date, Last Hardware Scan Date).

The products licensed by Seat metric can be deployed both on workstations and servers. For these products license key information will be collected via scripts. We recommend that your technical team reviews the scripts provided by Quest and their related outputs in order to ensure that they do not collect additional information than what is strictly required.

Non-Seat products require console screenshots and/or commands that will pull back the deployment counts per their metric.

3. Reporting & Reconciliation

Once all the relevant data has been collected and handed over to the auditor, the Reporting & Reconciliation phase will commence. The auditor will analyze the data provided in accordance with your license agreement, contracts and respective licensing rules and metric definitions for the products in scope. The deployment data will be reconciled against the entitlement data thus resulting in a report which will serve as basis for the discussions in the Settlement phase.

We recommend that you review the findings by looking at the raw data (line by line if necessary) and ensure that there are no errors and / or inconsistencies. It is common practice for auditors to use assumptions or extrapolate where data is missing. First of all, make sure that all assumptions and extrapolations are well documented and explained in the findings report. Secondly, you need to verify whether these assumptions / extrapolations are correctly interpreted. To make this practice more sustainable and reliable for your organization we recommend working together with SAM experts.

If you happen to find areas which you do not agree with, be diligent in analyzing the issue both from a technical as well as contractual point of view. You first need to build a strong case to back up your claim before you can directly challenge Quest.

4. Settlement

At this point in the process, the auditor already provided you with a report of the software used, the software entitled and the delta between the two. Before accepting any of the conclusions derived from this report, make sure you have a clear understanding of it. This is of fundamental importance when reviewing it and spotting any inconsistencies. Make sure to support any claims with clear evidence.

When a Big 4 auditor is involved, make sure to have a final report you agree upon before it will be shared with Quest. For this, a Confidentiality Agreement can be put in place.

If found non-compliant with your contractual limitations, Quest may apply various fees, penalties and / or extra charges. You must ensure that the additional cost on your bill is consistent with your contracts and product terms from a historical point of view. Don’t be pressured, as Quest may want to settle the audit swiftly. Negotiating the financial findings is much harder to accomplish at this stage in the process, however you can still win your case with precise contractual and / or technical arguments.

In addition, this is a good moment for you to negotiate your future terms. By learning from the past, you can potentially negotiate more favorable future terms and conditions as part of your new settlement. We have created a shortlist of things you can potentially adjust in your favor:

• Trial / Evaluation license use rights
• Indirect access
• Multiplexing
• 3rd party service provider terms and conditions
• License transfer
• Contractual language
• Enterprise Agreement options

Most common causes of Quest compliance issues

There are many potential causes related to license compliance issues. Some of them are general and touch on the basic principles of a mature Software Asset Management process. Others are more specific and relate only to some vendors in particular. In this section we will look at three of the most common causes of compliance issues specific to Quest Software.

Ambiguous terminology and definitions

Quest Software is well known for ambiguous terminology and definitions which relates to how license consumption should be counted (e.g. CPU, Enabled User, User, Seat etc.).

Unauthorised Users

Similar to other vendors (e.g. Oracle, SAP) one of the key issues raised by Quest relates to how an authorized / unauthorized user is defined and / or counted. In the case of Quest (and more specifically Quest vs Nike case) if a user can potentially access the software then that user requires a license. Even if that particular user has never accessed and / or used the software in question. This begs the question(s), is a user someone who can potentially access the software? Or someone who actually “caused a Quest Software program to be executed so as to perform its intended function”?

Looking at related precedents in the case of Oracle (more precisely Oracle vs Mars case), the issue was settled out of court, with Oracle backing down its claims. So far, this issue has never been ruled on in the US. In Europe, however the hammer has slammed down in favor of the vendor, namely in the case of SAP vs Diageo.

Trial and Pirated license keys

Products licensed on Seat metric for example are tied to unique license keys. Pirate license keys can easily be found on various torrent sites. Your organization will face serious charges if identified using pirated license keys (as seen in the case of Quest vs Nike).

Another interesting thing to mention here is that it seems that some of the Trial keys may actually turn out to be pirate, as one user points out on the ITAM Review Forum:

“Beware trial keys, many turn out to be pirate, and you are only allowed to have one deployment of each product as a trial across the entire licensed org. There is also a maximum of 5 free editions. Also beware any key that does not have your company name in the 'sitemessage' part of the License file. Understandably Quest are pretty aggressive regarding pirate keys.”

Also, the details held by license keys related to products like Toad may be vague as again pointed out on the ITAM Review Forum:

“The details held within the license keys themselves can be inaccurate, a large number just show “Toad for Oracle”, but do not correctly show edition/ add-ons etc.”

Best practices

In order for you to have the best outcome for your company in the event of an audit, we advise that you consider proactively following our best practices recommendations:

Implement a SAM tool

A Software Asset Management tool will provide a good starting point (but will definitely not magically resolve all your issues). Being able to discover all the software installed in your IT estate gives you a first idea or estimate of your current license position in relation to your license entitlements.

There are a number of good SAM tools, both free and paid, that can be implemented:

Free SAM tools:

• Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit is a free tool developed by Microsoft that is designed to scan your Microsoft infrastructure. This tool provides inventory, assessment, and reporting functionalities to simplify the migration planning process, but also discovers installed software and related hardware. You can download this tool directly from Microsoft’s website.
• Spiceworks allows you to easily search all the software you have installed in your environment and automatically or manually track license keys for any piece of software. Additionally, you can tell which software versions are installed on each individual device. You can download this tool from the official Spiceworks website.

Paid tools:

• System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) is another tool developed by Microsoft, and one of the best tools for SAM related discoveries.
• The non-Microsoft alternatives would be either a tool from Flexera Software or a tool from Snow Software. Although costly at first, these tools can help save cost in the long run.

Whichever option you choose (as there are many other good tools out there), the tool should at least be able to include the following functionalities:

• Hardware discovery
• Software discovery (scan each of the machines on your network and tell you what software is installed);
• Discover unlicensed software running on your network;
• Automatically gather license information;
• Generate detailed reports that eliminate the need for manual guesswork.

Ask questions

At all times you need to be in control of the flow of information so that you can be able to

predict exposures. Ask all the necessary questions in order for you to clearly understand the reasons behind all data requests. Only provide the data that is relevant as per your contractual obligations.

Quest’s license metrics, terms and conditions may have been subject to change over time and are often open to interpretation. Quest might have a different interpretation of the terms, conditions and definitions (as seen in the examples above) related to your license obligations which sometimes may be to your disadvantage.

In order to avoid disagreement or legal escalations in the Settlement phase, it is very important that you agree with Quest beforehand on how each license / installation will be counted in the early phases of the process (preferably before the Reporting & Reconciliation phase).

Take your time

Although the Data Collection and Reporting & Reconciliation phases may stretch over multiple months, auditors typically provide a short deadline for you to agree and approve their findings. This is a strategic tactic at play. You need to take all the necessary time to review forensically review the findings in order to ensure that everything is in order.

Make sure you have the right expertise

You can of course invest in staff and building knowledge completely on your own. But you might also want to consider enrolling in a SAM managed services program. In most cases this proves to be the most cost-efficient way for organizations. Consult an expert who understands Quest licensing, and which has a proven track record in software audit support.

Prepare for the next software audit

Audits usually come with only 30 days’ notice giving you a relatively short time to prepare for what’s ahead. It is a good practice to make a special session for “Lessons learned” after each audit and record the information in your knowledge base.

It is recommended to create a recurrent SAM process with designated roles and responsibilities that will keep everything in check for you. Experts, either in-house or 3rd party consultants with license specific knowledge will be invaluable to most organizations. They can play a decisive role in determining your licensing requirements and negotiating the best terms and conditions before non-compliance situations actually occur. They can also help enterprises get Software Asset Management on the right track, automate the process as much as possible and monitor with Self-Audits to ensure a comfort point is maintained.

Conclusion

Although around for quite some time, since its acquisition in 2016, Quest Software has been building up quite a sizable license compliance program. In this relatively short amount of time, due to its aggressive auditing style Quest has gained notoriety among the top software auditors.

Regardless of who’s name is signed on the audit letter, your best defense tactic is to be prepared and educated in the matter so that you don’t allow vendors and auditors dictate the terms of the audit.