Socket Based Licensing for Standard Edition
March 29th, 2007 by The Oracle AlchemistI ran across this article today on Oracle’s new strategy for Standard Edition and Standard Edition One licensing.
As a consultant, there are times when I have to tackle licensing questions, though I usually try to stay away from it and let Oracle’s salespeople do that job.
However, I found this news quite interesting. In order to compete with Microsoft and other database vendors in the small and midsize business market, Oracle has changed their licensing model on Standard Edition and Standard Edition One. Instead of a per-core licensing scheme, licensing for these products is now on a per-socket basis. Not only does this make pricing cheaper on multi-core systems, it also makes things much easier for the accounting department!
Of course, it’s still the same for Enterprise Edition (the article calls it tortuous), but perhaps that will change soon as well. Hey, at least we’re no longer using Power Units!
