How to Waste Money on Microsoft and Oracle Database Licensing

Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition costs around 16k. Enterprise Edition of Oracle costs up to 32k.

This is big spending for organisations with 20 to 30 odd Installations. With new licensing models for 2012 and 12c; you’ll see a big shocking difference when its renewal time.

We find procurement officers doing licensing reviews, shopping around to save 1 or 2% off 200k to 500k licence bills.

The challenge we have as a Database Services organisation is that database technology sits between the application and infrastructure. Mid-sized organisations often bounce responsibility of the data platform between Development and Infrastructure Teams; the application guys want quick provisioning, ample sandpit and test and pre-prod environments. Infrastructure guys want stable, predicable IO, storage and CPU usage.

So when an application forces a new SQL or Oracle upgrade, or the infrastructure team migrates to a new SAN and virtualise, the Procurement team merely gets like for like quotes for Database Licensing. At which point, everyone falls off their chairs and the project plans grind to a halt.

The little known fact is that Database technology is now designed (and priced) for consolidation. With SQL 2014 or 2012 and Oracle 12c organisations can run fewer installations of their databases with greater performance, less infrastructure to manage, and more importantly, less licensing to buy. Quite simply, if you’re looking to review your database, application or infrastructure you mustn’t buy like for like!

A simple Value Proposition is that if you have over 10 installations of SQL or Oracle, we could probably reduce it down to 2 of 3. That will demonstrate a 60k+ saving in Licensing, whilst improving performance and database availability and recovery.

Another Value Proposition is that if you have 10 installations of MS SQL or Oracle, dsp can reduce your hardware/hosting/cloud costs by 30-60%.

Working into more of a business case with a ROI calculated, if you have 10 installations of MS SQL or Oracle, you will probably see a realistic saving of up to 1m over 3 years.

These are just examples but are common savings with the engagements we get involved in.

The thing, you have bespoke applications, right? And complex Data Warehouse interfaces? And legacy applications that simply can’t be consolidated?

Of course you do. Everyone does. When we review a Data Platform these are the very things we take into consideration (otherwise everyone will be doing it). We have those intelligent conversations with your picky Application Vendors, we assess your IO/CPU usage, and we work out exactly what Cores you need. Generally we find that organisations (with a sufficiently complex enough data platform) can consolidate up to 80% of their database installations. 20% of them sincerely can’t.

Give our Data Platform Modernisation Team a call for a chat about what can be done.