Partner sales reps often ask me how they start a conversation with their customers around Oracle.

The first question should be, "are you running an Oracle database?"

Much of what we do at Oracle is intended to optimize our customers' investments in the Oracle database. Many of our acquisitions, new features in existing products, new applications, are often designed to improve the experience of the 400,000 Oracle database customers worldwide. Once you find an Oracle database customer, the next set of questions are much easier, but depend on your expertise: License Management, Upsell, and Services. Let's start with License Management:

• Have there been any changes to your infrastructure since you purchased the database licenses?
• Have you upgraded the servers on which the Oracle database is running?
• Have the number of users or employees increased since the last license purchase?

Yes to any of these questions will lead to investigating correct licensing. The goal is to provide a "soft" license review. Oracle generally does not require any license keys to install our software, so we need to help our customers with compliance. Correct licensing is essential to managing costs, and can provide a great way to efficiently manage IT spend. You might want to contact your local Oracle Channel Manager or VAD for licensing assistance. Or, review the Software Investment Guide.

Naturally, these questions can lead to upsell opportunities. If your customer has invested in Oracle technology to manage their data, that data is essential to running their business. We'll take a look at those upsell questions in a later blog post.