Rumor Mill: Oracle Licensing DB for 'Free'

Rumor Mill: Oracle Licensing DB for \'Free\'

I don't know if there is any truth to this, but there is a rumor going around that Oracle will announce a new licensing model for the Oracle DB. I would like to know if anyone can confirm.

The rumor going around is Oracle will begin licensing like the Oracle DB in the Red stack like IBM has been doing with the Blue stack. Essentially, by paying maintenance for the Red stack, you would get unlimited licenses for the Oracle DB (assuming you run Oracle DB for JDE).

I guess they are trying to lure away the Blue stack competition (and, ostensibly, DB2/400). Can anyone confirm or deny?

Re: Rumor Mill: Oracle Licensing DB for \'Free\'

Well, this WOULD make a LOT of sense from Oracles' standpoint.

Currently, the majority of EnterpriseOne customers run a database OTHER than Oracle - though in the past few months I've certainly seen that figure rise in Oracles favor. So the impetus is there with customers moving towards Oracle, realizing that they might get better support from their software vendor if they ran the same software for the database and the JAS components.

From Oracles standpoint, they recoup the money for the software license within, say, five years (and make even more money over a longer time period). Its also harder for IBM to do something similar (since you need the hardware to run DB2/400 !) - though my opinion is that this is going to hurt the SQL Server marketshare probably more than the Oracle marketshare.

Remember, nothing is free. Oracle WILL recoup their licensing costs back over time - but it won't necessarily be a capital expenditure. Secondly, remember that Oracle skills are more expensive than, say, SQL Server skills - so a company might be paying more over time. BUT, I am positive this news will sway a number of companies towards the red side - and an equal % marketshare of oracle database customers vs DB2/400 and SQL is a good thing all around.

I expect we'd hear if the rumor is true at Collaborate...see you all there !

Re: Rumor Mill: Oracle Licensing DB for \'Free\'

This is not a rumor, but has actually been in place for some time now. Provided you own Tech Foundation, you can either choose Red Stack or Blue Stack - the Red stack coming with unlimited users on STANDARD EDITION of the Oracle DB, accessing the JD Edwards DB only. Jon is right in that they have reasoning behind it:
1. If you own a DB, why would you give away an OEM DB but not your own?
2. They are hoping for 2 things - that the customer will uplift to enterprise licensing $$$ or that they will choose to use the Oracle DB for other business, requiring licensing $$$
3. It must be obvious to everyone by now that while the iSeries is and will continue to be a viable and robust platform for JDE, you have to look at the overwhelming number of techies developing advanced technologies to compliment the JDE applications on RED technologies, compared to the very limited number of IBM folks trying to keep up with new releases, testing, etc. who really can't keep up with what the red stack folks are doing.

So what platform is best for long term on this app? I don't have to say it - we all know it is coming...

Re: Rumor Mill: Oracle Licensing DB for \'Free\'

Earlier post is correct. If you purchase the Red stack, and you must choose one technology stack at contract signing time (Red or Blue), you get unlimited use of Oracle DB, OAS, etc., or if blue DB2/UDB, WAS, etc..

Caveat is you can only use the DB and AS in either situation for E1 unless you pay additional fees. This has been in place pretty much since Oracle bought PSFT.

And yes, you CAN switch (for a fee), but to my knowledge, you can not pick and choose from both such as using Oracle DB and WAS.