OOW Secrets

Last week, Oracle nuked Microsoft PDC with its buying-Siebel-schtick. This week, Microsoft blew Oracle OpenWorld outta the water with its Allchin-exit bombshell.

Sun chief Scott McNealy seemed unthrilled to be asked about Microsoft's news at his Oracle OpenWorld QandA. "Steve [Ballmer] doesn&t call me about reorg stuff [but generally] the bigger your installed base, the more you need to change. These times they are a-changin'. I have that song on my iPod." he noted, before changing the topic to new Sun servers.

The mystery of Oracle OpenWorld is how they got that damn BMW/Team Oracle yacht into the basement of Moscone North. Very ingenious. One veep surmised it was something like putting a ship in a bottle.

Disillusionment set in when a source close to the CEO said the yacht in question was not really "the" yacht but a replica. Say it ain't so Larry!

The other buzz was Oracle's new lifetime support option for all of its apps, telegraphed Sunday by Charles Phillips and discussed some more on Monday.

Charles was mum on deats, but not so Jacqueline Woods, Oracle's pricing/licensing guru. Tuesday night,Woods outlined for a befuddled reporter (the wine was good) the complex litany of calculations needed to total support costs.

Basically, the old Extended Maintenance (EM) which covered some products is now called Extended Support. That option includes updates, fixes, security alerts, tax and regulatory updates, tech support, and major new releases. For example, PeopleSoft SCM 8.9 and FMS 8.9 are covered through August 2011. EPM 8.9 is covered through August 2013, according to an Oracle handout.

Basically those opting for extended support will pay a percentage of their last maintenance support bill.

Extended Support is not offered on the bulk of old PeopleSoft and JD Edwards products but Sustaining Support will be indefinite. That MetaLink access, any major product release, and pre-existing fixes is available across the board. It covers such venerable products as JD Edwards Xe which shipped in September of 2000 and PeopleSoft apps going back to 1999.

But Extended Support which includes updates, fixes, and security alerts as well as tax and regulatory updates, tech support and major release, NOT available for the wide range of the older products.

Licensing and pricing is becoming as hard to figure out as the technology itself.