Re: oracle price question

Oracle used to charge by number of concurrent users. Since web sites use connection pooling (i.e. sharing connections between thousands of users), they set up a new model-based on "power unit" which, for a PC, is 1Mhz.

A few points:
-I can hardly imagine that our 266Mhz machine, worth probably $350 now,
could run $50K worth of software. Yet that's how Oracle's "power unit" pricing works for Enterprise Edition. ($200/Mhz * 266 Mhz). Make it a dual-processor 500Mhz and you end up paying 2*500*200=$200K.

-Standard edition is *MUCH* cheaper. $25/Mhz instead of $200/Mhz, or
$6K instead of $50K. Enterprise has advanced queueing, replication services, and some other features handy for the giga-hits-per-day site, but it seems that Standard Edition works fine also. I think this is Oracle's way of soaking the .Com's with $billion valuations and ultra- high traffic, while keeping the base product more affordable. You can always develop the Standard Edition and move to Enterprise when the need arises.

-Oracle charges about 50% more per Mhz for a Sparc processor than for
Intel.

-Everything is negotiable. How much is a "powered by Oracle" icon
worth to them?

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Before you buy. Received on Fri Dec 03 1999 - 14:30:10 CST