Oracle has hailed grid computing as the future of IT, but
its success depends on devising a model of software licensing which
allows users to pay only for the IT they use.The existing Oracle licensing model means
users would have to pay up front for the maximum number of
processors their Oracle-based applications could ever use.
Speaking at the OracleWorld show in San
Francisco, Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison said a flat-rate
fee that allows users to use software as much as they want should
replace per-processor licensing.
"It becomes very hard to count processors and
to count users," said Ellison. "I think we’ll go towards enterprise
licensing. You pay an annual recurring fee and use as much software
as you want."
Ellison claimed some Oracle customers already
paid for software in this way, but would not say when Oracle would
adopt this approach more widely.
IDC analyst Carl Olofson agreed the licensing
system needed to be changed for grid computing. “The technology is
ahead of the licensing. Paying a licence fee based on a
per-processor charge does not make sense.”
Oracle 10g allowed users to add and remove
applications very easily, but a users should not be charged the
full licence fee to run a 32-processor system if they only require
32 processors to run quarterly accounts four times a year, for
example, he said.
But Jacqueline Woods, Oracle's vice-president
of global practices, who is responsible for pricing, told Computer
Weekly that pay-per-use pricing was not the way forward.
“The way licensing works today is you license
to the maximum number of processors or users you use,” she said, it
was irrespective of whether peak usage or peak CPU utilisation.
Volume licensing discounts make pay-per-use
licensing an expensive option for users, she said.
Woods also suggested that there was little
sympathy for flexible licensing at Oracle.
“There is no provision [at Oracle] where you
can say 'I am using 128-processors for 20% of the year and 82
processors for 80% of the year',” Woods said. Once a user has
purchased the 128 processor licence there is no way to scale back,
she added.
Some hardware companies, such as
Hewlett-Packard, have announced tools that can measure the amount
of CPU used by a specified application uses within a given time
period.
This data could provide the raw metrics for
licensing software based on the amount of CPU time dedicated to the
application.
However, Woods said she would only consider
such tools if HP could show her how it could measure the usage of
Oracle across all makes of server in the datacentre, irrespective
of whether the servers are from HP, IBM, Sun or a PC
manufacturer such as Dell.
Whatever changes Oracle plans for the future,
for grid to take off, the whole industry will need to reach a
consensus on licensing as few users run a single enterprise
software supplier's products end to end.