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Oracle Businesses Cloud

Oracle Effectively Doubles Licence Fees To Run Its Stuff in AWS (theregister.co.uk) 198

Posted by msmash from the more-money dept.
Oracle has changed the way it charges users to run its software in Amazon Web Services, effectively doubling the cost along the way. From a report: Big Red's previous licensing regime recognised that AWS's virtual CPUs were a single thread of a core that runs two threads. Each virtual CPU therefore counted as half a core. That's changed: Oracle's new cloud licensing policy says an AWS vCPU is now treated as a full core if hyperthreading is not enabled. A user hiring two AWS vCPUS therefore needs to pay full freight for both, effectively doubling the number of Oracle licences required to run Big Red inside AWS. And therefore doubling the cost as well. The new policy also says: "When counting Oracle Processor license requirements in Authorized Cloud Environments, the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table is not applicable." That table says Xeons cores count as half a licence. Making the Table inapplicable to the cloud again doubles the licence count required.
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Oracle Effectively Doubles Licence Fees To Run Its Stuff in AWS More

Oracle Effectively Doubles Licence Fees To Run Its Stuff in AWS

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  • Another yacht for Larry? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @03:27PM (#53768069) Homepage Journal

    Fuck that. He wants an island to moor it to.

  • Oracle worked very hard at making a closed ecosys. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jeff4747 ( 256583 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @03:30PM (#53768085)

    But if you're already planning on rewriting your software to work "in the cloud", migrating to a different database engine is not that much additional work.

    It's nowhere near enough work to make their closed ecosystem an effective deterrent.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 )

      Just get a free copy of SQLITE, job done.

      • Re:Oracle worked very hard at making a closed ecos (Score:5, Informative)

        by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @03:44PM (#53768211) Homepage

        SQLite isn't remotely competitive with Oracle. It's nowhere near in the same league as even PostgreSQL or MySQL.

        SQLite is a toy database with a huge amount of limitations that's found a niche in "I need a RDBMS for something simple, and rarely used". Thus the use for desktops to store things like configuration and music databases. In such cases it works well.

        If you're even thinking at all of multicore performance, SQLite is not the database for you. It's got absolutely dreadful concurrency and will die under anything resembling a serious load.

        • Re:Oracle worked very hard at making a closed ecos (Score:5, Informative)

          by orlanz ( 882574 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @04:34PM (#53768605)

          Although I agree with your general assessment, and I think the grand parent was just joking... I want to clarify somethings about SQLite before your post misinforms some of the visitors to this site.

          SQLite is the most deployed database in the world. Oracle has more of a niche use case than SQLite. The functionality footprint is extremely small. The installation library is smaller than many DB connection drivers! In short, it provides SQL syntax based access to a flat-file in RAM or HD. It is simple and neat; yet provides ACID compliance. Programming environments and languages do not provide SQLite connectivity; they incorporate the entire system as a library.

          It is the storage & decision mechanism for many mobile applications. It is utilized in many embedded & SOC systems. Although the library itself is single threaded, it supports concurrent access. So you can actually write programs to be multithreaded/multiprocessed to scale with the number of cores/CPUs. I personally have written programs that trade CPU counts & RAM for execution time.

          But anyway, the cross section of use cases for Oracle/Postgresql/MSSQL and SQLite are basically non-existent... maybe you see some overlap in Prototyping to Deployment. MySQL and SQLite do appear to have some minor overlap, but its small there too.

          • Yep. FreeSWITCH uses SQLite as its default database and is fine for low to moderate loads. Anything serious requires something like Postgres, which it also handles.

          • SQLite is the most deployed database in the world.

            So? How often do those /databases/ need to be anything more than a JSON or XML doc? How often is said SQLite DB a technologically advanced, elegant, or better solution?

            Just because someone /can/ create a database doesn't mean someone /needs/ a database.

            • In most of these cases, SQLite is a better solution than JSON or XML.

              JSONs negative is that it is basically a direct translation of the internal data structures of a program. This results in an inflexible design that is difficult to reuse across programs and versions. SQL provides a universally recognized, mature, stable interface that is tried & tested. It converts the data structures to and from a well organized standard. SQLite provides that capability at an extremely small footprint.

              XML... is hor

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      This move certainly won't slow down everyone's efforts to move off Oracle. Suddenly it's worth twice as many engineers to end the pain. Hopefully there aren't any Oracle victims left who haven't started on their "move off Oracle" plan - that would be sad, really.

    • Depending on how you're deploying it putting your database system in the AWS cloud doesn't require a software rewrite at all - the whole thing can be transparent to the application (much like just using a virtual server over a physical one already was).

      Changing the database from Oracle to something else isn't quite so simple.

  • Continues onward.

    What is the point in using Oracle software in ANYTHING these days outside of the support contract*

    *Only reason I can think of.

    • Continues onward. What is the point in using Oracle software in ANYTHING these days outside of the support contract* *Only reason I can think of.

      Where I don't disagree with you and fully believe that there usually are fully viable options to replace Oracle in nearly ALL situations with free open source solutions, there ARE reasons to go with Oracle.

      The primary one I can come up with is "the customer demands it". I've worked with customers who believed (right or wrong) that Oracle was their only solution that worked for them. They had the personnel to support it, already had licenses for it and had budgeted support costs from now until forever. W

      • already had licenses for it

        Why is that relevant? If they can't bluff or bully you into accepting changes they'll con you into it.

        • already had licenses for it

          Why is that relevant? If they can't bluff or bully you into accepting changes they'll con you into it.

          They where going to just park our new database tables on their existing servers and then exchange data with the new application using some SQL queries, views and triggers. For them, it made sense not to upset their huge Oracle apple cart for the little sideline business being done by the application we delivered, at least not at first. Of course, eventually the sideline business grew too big for the existing infrastructure and they paid through the nose for upgrading their Oracle licenses so they could m

    • Well there's RAC, but a decent bit of scripting, replication tweaks, and a competent load balancer can pretty much obviate that as well.

    • It turns out this is harder than I would have thought it would be. We determined last year that we needed to move off of Oracle to Postgresql (this is just one database for one website that has been hosted on Oracle since 2001). I have been working full-time since last April to make that happen and the project still isn't done. We mainly decided to switch for monetary reasons, but there have been a lot of benefits. Postgres's documentation is head and shoulders above Oracle's. We've found that many things,

    • What is the point in using Oracle software in ANYTHING these days outside of the support contract*

      Business reasons, in short. Oracle makes a lot more than just a very good RDBMS - just look at their website. My personal reason for liking Oracle RDBMS more than, say, MySQL, DB2, Informix or others that I have worked with professionally, both as a developer and a DBA, is the Error and Messages manual; nearly every fault has a well-documented description. The rest of the documentation is good too - if you work with it is professionally - because it is very comprehensive and delightfully free from click-and

  • Lesson 1: How to piss off your Customers (Score:5, Funny)

    by arbiter1 ( 1204146 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @03:44PM (#53768207)
    Step 1: Do this.
  • Time for the hadoop thunderclouds to rain on Oracle's revenue stream.

  • Great news!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @03:52PM (#53768273)

    I think this is an excellent move for Oracle, and I enthusiastically applaud them. I think the company will experience significant revenue increases with this pricing change, and that's always a good thing. In fact, I encourage them to raise prices even more.

    For all the naysayers, as I always say when someone complains about Windows, "if you don't like it, don't use it".

  • Genius! (Score:5, Funny)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @03:56PM (#53768309)

    I can just see some exec racking their brain trying to figure out how to increase revenue finally had an epiphany: "Eureka! I got it! We'll just charge our customers twice as much!" to which everyone at the board meeting replied "Brilliant! You deserve a promotion!". Smiles and carefree laughter were gifted with abandon that day...

    • Re:Genius! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BigBuckHunter ( 722855 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @04:09PM (#53768407)

      "Eureka! I got it! We'll just charge our customers twice as much!"

      Oracle doesn't have customers, they have hostages.

      • Re:Genius! (Score:4, Funny)

        by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @04:59PM (#53768803)
        Now that's true, funny and sad all at the same time.... Oh I do whish I had mod points today....

      • Oracle doesn't have customers, they have hostages.

        the same applies with all non-free software because a corporation decides what you are allowed do with the software instead of you.

        • the same applies with a lot of free software too, being hostage to custom ways and ecosystems is not exclusive to closed source systems.

          • Re:Genius! (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2017 @12:09AM (#53771567)

            if you don't like how an open source system works then you can always modify the program. sure, you might have to pay someone with the knowledge to make it happen but it's still possible. the same is not true of closed source.

            • exactly, leaving you hostage to the system, either spend thousands or in some cases hundreds of thousands maintaining or doing what the open source community decided to abandon or change or have to recode everything to use another system. People are kept hostage both in open and closed source in EXACTLY the same way, the cost of change.

              • The difference in cost to change a closed source program versus an open source program is several orders of magnitude.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Don't laugh, I've seen at least 100 stupid ideas start out similarly. I always have my life-raft ready.

      Examples:

      "We'll just use Microsoft Access instead of a real database and save lots of time and money!"

      "Relax, it might be slow today, but it'll get faster; hardware is getting increasingly cheaper and faster..."

      "Relax, the deadline looks tight, but we'll be using Methodology X that I just read about, so it will go twice as fast..."

      "Login prompts are too annoying, let's skip it. We all trust each other..."

      "

  • Is there a technical reason for using Oracle over something else?

    • It's fast while huge.

      If you care about your transactional data, it can't be beat by any other on-premises RDBMS.

      But the major reason is Oracle's customers are using web applications built to run on top of Oracle. They buy the web application and then purchase Oracle as the infrastructure.

      The reason Oracle is trying to dissuade customers from hosting on AWS is that they're desperate to get those customers hosting on Oracle's own cloud solution. AWS has a slick Database Migration Solution [amazon.com].

      • eh? DB2 with purescale can kick Oracle's ass for speed and also price. And you can do rolling upgrades across a cluster. And with oracle the oracle thugs come by and make you pay for each place in a virtual environment oracle *might* run, not just where it does run. Oracle? just say no

      • If you care about your transactional data, it can't be beat by any other on-premises RDBMS

        I *somewhat* agree with you, but not everyone reaches that point. You can use the other solutions for less cost, and they will cover most everyones needs.

        One thing that nobody on here has touched on though are the REALLY big systems like Teradata. Although I've never had the pleasure of working with it, I'm willing to bet that it can smoke Oracle.....of course I'm sure you'll pay a pretty hefty sum to do so. If you have THAT much data to crunch though, cost should be less of a deciding factor. Look at h

    • Re:Why do people use Oracle? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @04:12PM (#53768435) Journal

      Is there a technical reason for using Oracle over something else?

      Frankly, no, except in some specialized instances. I'd wager that 99% of the supposedly "mission critical" things that currently run on Oracle could safely be run on other databases.

      Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL are capable alternatives, as are DB2 and MariaDB. Even much-maligned MySQL can be used for many (perhaps most) of the applications that are using Oracle right now. All of these databases scale into the 100s of millions of rows and most include the transactional reliability that used to be exclusive to Oracle.

      Oracle used to be the only choice for serious database work, but those days are gone. Unless you're doing a Moon shot or international banking you can almost certainly use an alternative DB and get the same functionality, robustness, and security (or better, in some cases).

      • Re:Why do people use Oracle? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Major Blud ( 789630 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @05:05PM (#53768835) Homepage

        DBA here. I work with SQL Server, Oracle, and MySQL. Each has it's pros and cons. One thing that Oracle offers which the other vendors can't really match at this point is Oracle RAC. It's the only out-of-the-box N+1 shared-disk solution that somewhat works properly. SQL Server has tried to offer something comparable with AlwaysOn, and MySQL has MySQL Clusters*, but these really don't fit into the same roles.

        I haven't worked enough with DB2, and nothing large scale with PostGres to comment on those. I do feel that RAC is less of a necessity nowadays anyway, and will continue to be so, since the hardware has improved so much that the SQL Server/MySQL solutions can handle pretty much anything. I also don't think RAC is a good fit for a cloud-based solution.

        *owned by none-other than Oracle nowadays

        • with other DB can just add cpu and memory in either virtualization environment or server with hardware logical partitioning, not seeing the compelling case for RAC and its administrative burden for most cases. Yes I've built RAC clusters that use being used in very large city governments but nothing that couldn't also be done by "big iron" or good virtualization solution

          • Agreed, virtualization has come a long way in the past 10 years. Back into 2005 I would have laughed at you if you told me you wanted to virtualize my DB server....but nowadays I don't want anything else.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by sr180 ( 700526 )

              All my db servers are now virtualized, I just havent told the DBA's because they demand individual iron - they just cant tell the difference.

      • No they are not capable alternatives. They are for geeks using SQL statements and writing your own small software in PHP. THis is going to irk someone but they are not real production quality for the enterprise when it comes to many features:
        1. No analytical tools that come with the CD of the commercial products
        2. 3rd party software like Remedy ticking software, Kronos time keeping, and PeopleSafe that use proprietary calls to either MS SQL Server or ORacle
        3. No reliable replication for PostgreSQL. Nothing

        • When you need something up that can reliability get replicated and use third party business software then there is no replacement.

          You have some points, but you may have missed the part where I said "I'd wager that 99% of the supposedly "mission critical" things that currently run on Oracle could safely be run on other databases." And I believe that's still a valid statement.

          The vast majority of database applications don't require many of the things you mention. Sure, there are MC applications that do require some of Oracle's specific features, but most applications do not. Most applications would work perfectly fine on Microsoft SQL S

    • Is there a technical reason for using Oracle over something else?

      Yep, the PHB thinks that paying for support means he will get faster resolution of his production problems so he's willing to pay the support fees.. Plus he has a couple of Oracle Gurus on staff or contract too...

      Yea, I know that's not a "technical" reason per say, but it's THE normal reason.

      It's like buying IBM hardware, nobody gets fired for buying stuff that usually works, but many get fired for saving money and buying junk that doesn't work.

    • Is there a technical reason for using Oracle over something else?

      Because they have a slick sales team that buys the CIO a free lunch and a game of golf while you are uninvited too. THen you are told we are moving support this etc.

      But in seriousness many slasdhotters are about to be irked but just like Linux is not universal for everyone, neither is a FOSS alternative.

      Oracle & MS SQL Server have very rich analytical tools, closed apis, ecosystems, etc. For statistician geeks software, kronos payroll systems, integration with .NET ticketing software, and PeopleSoft you

    • 1. If you have thousands of stored procs and/or other customizations (I've done a couple of custom aggregate functions that were pretty sweet).
      2. You use Oracle Forms (probably starting back in the 1990s).

      It's the same situation as with other legacy applications such as iSeries systems, except those situations can be far more painful given dwindling personnel numbers (Who, as a young developer, chooses to go into IBM mid-range development? - This might change over time if salaries increase, but they are s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        1. If you have thousands of stored procs and/or other customizations (I've done a couple of custom aggregate functions that were pretty sweet).

        This is a thing. People who write PHP scripts tend to think of a database as just a big closet where you store data until you need it again. You pull it back out and then you go do something with it (with PHP). But there's another school of app dev where any manipulations done on any stored data should be done by the database itself, and that the appropriate place to store that application logic is in stored procedures. There actually are good arguments to be made in favor of that type of design. But becaus

  • TFA inaccurrate (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30, 2017 @03:59PM (#53768327)

    "Big Red's previous licensing regime [PDF] recognised that AWS's virtual CPUs were a single thread of a core that runs two threads. Each virtual CPU therefore counted as half a core."

    That's flat out wrong; the actual old licensing regime counted each AWS vCPU as a full CPU core even though it was actually hyperthread. The new licensing regime counts each AWS vCPU as one half a CPU core (unless hyperthreading is disabled for the instance). That change alone effectively cuts the cost of licensing on AWS in half:

            Old: Oracle running a instance with 4 vCPU (4 hyperthreads on 2 CPU): licensed as 4 CPUs requiring 2 cores of licensing
            New: Oracle running a instance with 4 vCPU (4 hyperthreads on 2 CPU): licensed as 2 CPUs requiring 2 cores of licensing

    The other change with the "Oracle Processor Core Factor Table" effectively doubles the cost back to where you started anyways:

    "The intel core factor is 0.5, so an 8 core physical box requires 4 cores of licensing. Now on the cloud, an 8 core VM (16 vCPUs on AWS or 8 vCPUs on Azure) requires 8 cores of licensing."

    • Re:TFA inaccurrate (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cederic ( 9623 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @05:32PM (#53769029) Journal

      Interesting that the summary uses the words from the article on this from The Register but without their link to the old PDF, and your quote includes [PDF] but then challenges their summary.

      the actual old licensing regime counted each AWS vCPU as a full CPU core even though it was actually hyperthread

      Sadly the PDF linked by El Reg doesn't provide clarity on this. It talks only about virtual cores and doesn't mention hyperthreading at all. Of course LMS would use that lack of clarity to apply your interpretation (assuming they couldn't invent something even nastier with which to fuck over their 'customer').

      My only conclusion is to continue to avoid Oracle wherever possible.

  • Greedy fucks... (Score:3)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @04:16PM (#53768467) Homepage Journal

    Oracle: Trying to price ourselves out of business since...well...SINCE!

  • So, what's the assessment? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday January 30, 2017 @04:20PM (#53768489) Journal
    It seems like this move could mean one of two things: either Team Oracle thinks that there is sufficient willingness to pay among users of their products, and they were previously leaving money on the table in AWS instances; or they fully expect this to seriously dent use of their products in AWS; but don't care because they have their own 'cloud' offerings and want everyone not running on premises to be buying cloud from them.

    Any guesses as to which it is? Is this a "Larry's a jerkass; but he knows that most of us will suck it up and pay the extra" situation; or is this a straightforward move to make one of the more popular cloud options blatantly uneconomic for use with Oracle stuff, in order to improve the apparent value of Oracle's pet cloud?

  • and Oracle is evil. These are all self-evident. For big companies, I guess the pain of migrating to another solution is greater than the pain of bending over for ol' Larry. Especially since they just pass the additional costs along. It's a pity, though, that some lesser evil doesn't take on the task of de-throning Oracle - it would be sweet to see them losing market share fast, and even sweeter to hear them begging their lost customers to come back.

  • Only when hyperthreading is turned on, it runs two threads on each processor. When it is not turned on, each processor runs only one thread.

    Looks like Oracle was not checking this flag and was counting it as half a cpu even hyperthreading is off. They corrected this. People who turn on hyperthreading will see their virtual processor be counted as half a cpu.

  • When a shrinking company suddenly jacks up their prices, it usually means they are milking the short-term for all they can and don't expect to be around in the long term (at least not as a real company).

    Big tech co's basically have 4 choices when they start slipping:

    1. Innovate and keep up
    2. Hold existing customers hostage and milk them dry before they finish migrating away
    3. Sue other co's using sketchy patent claims, hoping for at least settlements
    4. Wither until you are bought out by a holding co. that d

    • 200 layoffs at Broomfield
    • $502 million in restructuring
    • Oregon exchange debacle
    • MongoDB grabbing lots of Oracle customers
    • They're now aggressively pursuing Java licensing fees
    • Questionable fate of their cloud offering
    • On-going legal battles with Google

    ... and the list goes on. Does anyone else see the writing on the wall for Oracle?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      MongoDB grabbing lots of Oracle customers

      Wait, what? Nice try. You almost had us.

  • Not often you hear "Oracle" and "effectively" in the same sentence!

  • Unless you are doing some pretty hairy things with your DB, there's really no reason not to move to Postgres for heavy lifting, or other DBs for more trivial workloads.

    I can't imagine running Oracle in a Cloud would be a good idea in the first place. Then again, I don't know everything - perhaps there's a valid use case to do so. But really, if your DB is important, I can't see virtulizing it in anything other than a VM meant for only DBs, not a general cloud VM. EG: OK for something like DBaaS, but not to

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