Ken Porowski writes: >Look at licensing costs for Oracle (and other products >licensed per CPU). Last I heard was around $40K per CPU. >If I can replace 4-5 Intel servers with a single IFL >software costs alone generate savings.
Oracle increased its prices recently -- this past June, I think. Oracle Database (Enterprise) is now $47,500 for the license. Annual maintenance is extra. John McKown writes: >That is interesting. But I am wondering about so-called >Oracle Site Licenses. From what I have been told, we have >such a thing. Supposedly, this allows us to have basically >unlimited numbers of Oracle systems running on any number >of "cores" on any platform. That's how we got Oracle on >z/OS. It was "free" with out current license. But I've >been misinformed before. That's probably an Oracle Enterprise License. It's a very common sort of deal from many software vendors, so I'm not trying to criticize Oracle here. But you should understand how such agreements work. In essence, the vendor says, "Run whatever you want for the next couple years for flat price X." And so you do that. Within the contract period, the marginal price for deploying additional licenses is zero. Did you catch what I wrote, "within the contract period"? That gives you a clue what happens next: contract renewal. At contract renewal, the vendor tallies up (formally or by proxy) what you have deployed and renegotiates. And your renewal price is based on, you guessed it, the actual number of licenses you've previously deployed plus the vendor's estimate of your likely growth over the next contract period. And that's now your new price. So are additional license deployments "free"? Only if you cease all use of those extra licenses before the contract renewal date, and only if you ignore every other cost (hardware, network, labor....) And everybody working for your employer understands how this works, right John? :-) Now, there may be a couple advantages to this sort of contract, provided you enter such an arrangement soberly and with proper education for your staff. One advantage is that you don't have much administrative (i.e. counting) burden within the contract period. (Although, as you can see, for financial planning and contract renewal negotiation preparation you really should still count. But you don't *have* to count until just before renewal.) Another possible advantage is that, again within the contract period, your budgeting is stable and predictable. Your mileage will vary in how valuable these advantages are, if at all. Note that, if you do have chargebacks, you should still apply chargebacks even if you have these agreements precisely because of contract renewal. And if you do that, you still have to count. Anyway, the central point here is that enterprise licenses, also sometimes known as "all you can eat" licenses, still mean you should try to achieve greater efficiencies through more virtualization and through other techniques. Such contracts simply postpone the day of reckoning if you aren't efficient. So if your enterprise-licensed company behaves like a teenager holding his/her first credit card, watch out! :-) And remember that software licensing is but one cost ingredient. In many consolidation cases it's not even the most significant one. Hope that background helps. - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan / Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
