Oracle License strategies, perhaps a user group link needed.

[Steven E. Protter]

One of my customers is currently in negotiations with Oracle over licenses and support.

Issues:
Oracle is demanding max cpu possible on vpar be licensed. This of course with floating cpu's leads to cpus's being licensed multiple times.

vmware. If I add a oracle db server to a vmware server farm with 44 CPU's possible, Oracle says we need 44 licenses, but since its vmware, only half licenses. It doesn't seem to matter whether its impossible to actually use 44 cpus.

These two issues have led us to alter the way we build systems to cut Oracle costs. I'm sure many of you have gone through this.

What I'm looking for here:
* Strategies used to successfully negotiate better license terms with Oracle. Do's and Don'ts

* Possibly some Oracle oriented but not Oracle controlled peer to peer forums where we can go fishing for some attainable goals in these negotiations.

I had the pleasure of listening to Larry Ellison saying some opposite of kind things in some very colorful language at a trade show as we walked the halls. I know what I'm dealing with. This attitude trickles from the top down.

But this is just me attempting to add value to myself and pass some resources to my manager.

So:
2 points for any good Larry Ellison stories.
3-7 points on my mercurial system for anything actually helpful as far as advice.
8-10 points for verifiable resources or details. I can take this offline if needed.

SEP

[Pete Randall]

Tell Oracle you can't afford them so you're now talking to Informix.

;^)


Pete

(don't bother with points, please)