Oracle OpenWorld is in full swing
Now, would someone do something about Oracle’s pricing model?
October 4, 2000
by Eric Svetcov
Hmmm, has anyone tried to figure out Oracle's BIZARRE pricing scheme.
I tried and my head almost exploded....
You get these power point things based upon the number of MHz of your processor and then if it's a RISC
processor you multiply it by 1.5. Then you multiply it by the number of processors in the box and then you multiply it by the cost per power point thingy.....and then you get your cost.....or do you????
And how about if you use a mainframe. Apparently, with a mainframe you take your processor MHz and multiply it by 24. I don’t know about you, but I would recommend redefining all mainframes and turn them into something different. I hereby proclaim all mainframes to be Gooblezwigs. Does that get me around the 24x pricing for my Gooblezwig? Hey, I’d like to know what is considered a mainframe from Oracle. Would a Sun E10000 with 64 x 400MHz processors be considered a mainframe or would it enjoy the “lower” cost of a 1.5x multiplier? How about an IBM S/390 G6 with 12 x 500MHz processors?
I have no idea....I must be stupid, or something.
And, incidentally, are RISC processors exactly 1.5 times faster than a CISC processor? If I'm running a database on an older RISC Sparc box, is it really that much faster
than a brand new Intel 1GHz...or is it the other way around? I don't know....does Larry? And are Mainframe processors actually 24 times faster than an Intel processor and 16 times faster than a RISC processor?
If someone could explain this to me, I would be happy to listen. I guess I just find this all needlessly complex....now when specing out a database, you need to put into your evaluation how much the Oracle database will cost and how much better (or worse) any particular solution might be from a cost/performance standpoint.
Groan!!!!! I’m sure to someone this makes perfect sense.