We have found that we have licenses for functionality we don’t utilize: Project, Advanced Materials management, Advanced Manufacturing, and several others.
We are considering returning the licenses to reduce operating costs but are asking if the previous existence of the licenses which were activated, will damage the database once they are de-installed.
This wasn’t a problem in previous versions, I did it for many many customers. I also usually only turned on licenses on an as needed basis anyway, but no one every ran into an issue that I am aware of, other than having some excess unused data in the DB taking up some small bits of space. Not sure if anything major has changed in version 10 that would alter this from workign the way it did in 6, 8 and 9 versions.
Thanks for the input. That is our thinking also, there may be some orphaned data but unmounting the license should not destabilize the Db, just make some functions inoperable. We are going to return about 4 of the licences and turn off another 4 because we don’t know if we will need them 2 years out. If we don’t have a need for the functionality, turn the others off.
I’m not sure it will let you disable the modules on the license if it detects that any have been used. BUT, my understanding of the licenses is that they are perpetual - you don’t need to turn them off, you own them.
What you would be saying to Epicor is that you don’t want to pay maintenance and support on them. This will reduce your annual bill for sure. If you do want to activate maintenance on them again in the future, then most software vendors will make you pay for missed years to bring you back up to date. Most software vendors are charging 20% per annum on maintenance/support ,so if you went 4/5 years without paying and then wanted it back you’re talking about paying for it again (5 years @ 20%)
Hi Mark, all good points:
We would receive a new license file with the modules we no longer use eliminated.
We would no longer pay maintenance.
We understand that if needed in the future we would have to either re-purchase or pay back-support charges.
It is unlikely that we will use the stipulated modules in the future, we haven’t used them in 7 years with Epicor, the stable was stuffed with a low acquisition price but the annual maintenance on unused functionality has been burdensome…We bought not only the razor but also the blades, the shaving brush, the shaving soap, and the beard trimmer…just don’t need to keep paying maintenance for things we don’t use.
I’m curious what your CAM says about the extra modules not being used. We asked about getting rid of some of that stuff and ours told us that it was packages that it was included in. Like cable TV mixed with the opacity of medical billing…
My understanding is that the license is all yours. You paid for it already. What you probably need do due is cancel your support on modules. I doubt they are going to return the cost of the license that was bought and paid for already. So you wouldnt need a new file, just a new support agreement. There is a form you have to fill out.
We are currently off maintenance and from lots of length and detailed negotiations to try and get back onto maintenance with Epicor there is zero value in giving up modules. The annual maintenance fee is based on the initial module/licence purchase fee/5 - if you add any modules/licences the same calculation applies for those licences modules form the date of purchase.
As an example the quality module may appear to be 10% of your maintenance fee, but if it was only 3% of the overall purchase price, getting rid of it is only going to knock at most 3% off the maintenance cost - the same goes for licence reduction in modules.
That said you are 7 years in, so you have some scope to renegotiate.
I have not seen where they have agreed to drop maintenance/support on specific modules but let you retain the license for that specific functionality. In the past they would only agree to surrender of the license in this scenario.
I am sure every licensing scenario is negotiated separately so results may vary.
Excellent perspective and analysis. We believe you are correct, the deeper we get into the “negotiation” the less the give-back value becomes. We had intended to turn in 5 modules but after working through the financial impact, we decided that for two of them that the reduction we expected is not what Epicor is saying it’s worth. The result was that for those 2 modules, we are keeping them but in an inactive state.
The full exaction and return of the modules was the design objective. The original question related to what happens to the user interface changes as a result of not having the licence available but more importantly, what becomes of the data that was previously in the Db when the license id dismounted? Is the data still in there? Does the data get erased" Is the data visible in the UI or are all of the screens and forms “disappeared”?
Data should all stay in you database. Nothing would be deleted.
You could maintain a static test instance with the old license in place if you need to review/extract legacy data using the interface. Otherwise custom BAQ or SSRS reports would get the data in your live system
That is our thinking also. In this case the E9 instance will be kept spinning but without the returned licenses. E10 will not include them. The relevant master data to E10 will be DMT’d over and if there is no data receptor in E10 for a particular data element, we will take a look at it, determine it’s importance and if not significant, continue with data migration until done. Once done, the orphans will be tallied and a final decision made on the proposed discontinued licenses.
I believe that the data will be fine. We did not buy the project module, however all of the project tables are created in our db’s and I had a mess about in test and was able to populate and report against them - I just have no access to any of the project module functionality in E10. I believe your data will stay in place and you will be able to access it via sql etc you just won’t be to access the data via the Epicor client - however if you don’t return the licences, just cease maintenance - you have a perpetual licence I can’t see why you can’t access the software - you just have no support and would be unable to upgrade.