7 Oracle Primavera Frequently Asked Questions Answered

Project management getting a little out of control? You might consider getting Oracle Primavera to help yourself out. Here are answers to seven commonly asked questions about the software.

1. What is Oracle Primavera?

Primavera is a project portfolio management system for the enterprise. It started as a standalone company, Primavera Systems, back in 1983 and was purchased by Oracle in 2008. It is not a single product, but a suite of products that help you manage the project over its entire lifecycle. You can use it to help manage risk versus reward, resourcing, and budget, among many other deliverables.

2. What is the Current Release of Oracle Primavera?

In August 2018, version 18.8 of Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) was released by Oracle.

3. What is the Licensing Model for Primavera?

Primavera uses an Application User License where each unique user requires their own license. There is no license sharing where the number of simultaneous users are counted and no generic logins like planner1 or user2. You can get a 30 day trial license, which tends to work well for testing out the software or if you need a temporary license during a training class. You can also buy a term license which will expire at the end of the 1-5 year term. In addition, you can purchase a perpetual license which will never expire. Hopefully obvious, the term licenses are cheaper than the perpetual ones.

4. Why Use an Application User License Model?

While you might think the obvious answer is to sell more licenses, the better answer is security. By each individual user having their own license, you can make sure each user only has permission to see and do the tasks each is responsible for. You can also audit what is done.

5. Can I use Primavera Contract Management to Manage Contracts?

The name is often confused. It is not a system for managing contracts but more for managing construction projects, where the projects for each team are considered contracts. It helps you track performance, costs, issues, and documents among other elements. It is useful for collaboration between teams.

6. Are Oracle Projects and Primavera P6 the Same Thing?

No. Oracle Projects is part of their Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS). You can use Primavera Gateway to integrate the two, but they have separate purposes and integrate well to offer more complete coordination and analytics.

7. What are the Hardware Requirements for a Basic Setup?

First off, there is really no basic setup. Oracle classifies projects in small (200 projects / 50 users), medium (1,000 projects / 100 users), and large (50,000 projects / 200 users) categories. It is best to read their Performance and Sizing document for hardware and clustering guidelines.

Most questions asked about Primavera happen before you make the purchasing decision. Basically, is the tool right for me, or more specifically, my company? If you just need to manage a handful, probably not. But, once you start hitting the hundreds if not thousands of projects, that’s where something like Primavera starts to shine, and you can get rid of that Excel spreadsheet.