Oracle changes its mind about multicore licensing

In Computerworld back in October Jacqueline Woods, vice president of Oracle Corp.'s global licensing and pricing strategy said: “We don't have a position with respect to dual-core processors. A core is equal to a CPU, and all cores are required to be licensed. Therefore, if you have a dual-core processor, you are required to have two processor licenses.”

About 8 months later, CRN knows: “Whereas the company had previously counted each core as a full processor, it will now count each core of a multi-core chip as three-quarters of a processor.

That would mean that Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition database running on a four-way server with dual-core processors which had listed for $320,000 (four times two cores times $40,000) will now list for $240,000 (or 0.75 times 8 cores times $40,000 per core), according to sources.”

 

Dear Oracle customers, if you want to upgrade to dual- or multicore, you can either wait a few months until Oracle changes their mind again or choose SQL Server. SQL Server licensing does not make a difference between a single core and a multi core based system. We charge per socket, no matter how many cores. BTW, this hasn’t changed since October last year.