IT user groups are to meet with leading software
suppliers to tackle the costs of
server virtualisation software licensing, which is a growing
concern among IT departments.
Server virtualisation aims to reduce IT hardware and management
costs by allowing IT directors to reduce the number of physical
servers in their datacentres.
But the
Strategic Suppliers Relationship Group – a consortium of 15 IT
director user groups –is concerned that the
value of virtualisation is being eroded by licensing charges
that do not differentiate between physical and virtual servers.
SSRG chairman Ray Titcombe said,
“
Software licensing is a roadblock preventing people taking
advantage of the benefits of virtualisation.”
Meetings between the SSRG and suppliers will take place
throughout June and July on a range of topics, including
virtualisation.
Michael Why, an infrastructure manager at Haden Building
Management, said he experienced a degradation in performance when
multiple applications were running in his virtual server. But his
software licensing did not reflect this.
Local authority IT manager Beth Hague wanted to use
VMware virtualisation software to run Oracle on two processors
on her eight-processor server, but she found Oracle’s licensing
policy made this expensive.
“Oracle does not class VMware as hardware partitioning, but
rather software partitioning,” she said. This means that users
running Oracle on a two-processor VMware software partition on an
eight-processor server would need an Oracle licence for all eight
processors.
David Roberts, chief executive at the
Corporate IT Forum, said, “IT users have to be able to build a
business case for virtualisation, otherwise they are not going to
invest – and that would be bad for business and bad for the
environment.”
Oracle UK managing director Ian Smith said that users had the
choice of buying an unlimited licence if they found per-processor
licensing costs expensive on virtual servers.
“Some people may not want to pay per-processor costs. They just
need an overall licence cost,” he said.
Reza Malezadeh, director of product marketing at VMware, said,
“The cost issue is simply because the legal side of the industry
[which draws up the licensing contracts] has n0t caught up with the
technology.”
However, he said the software industry was moving to support
virtualisation, citing examples where Microsoft, Oracle and BEA
Systems were supporting virtualisation in product and licence
arrangements.
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