Oracle/Sun Deal Explained. Kinda.
Some folksincluding many at the Redwood Shores glass towersscratched their heads when the database poohbah gave Sun a big price break on per-core pricing for the Oracle 10g Enterprise database. Basically the UltraSPARC IV chip cores would count as a quarter of a CPU while Intel/AMD cores would count as half a CPU.
Such a deal!
But, it's not good news to partners. Some Oracle partners were more than a little non-plussed at the news.
"Number one it was a blind side[it's] not something they told partner channel about," said one long time partner. "I don't like it when Oracle cuts deals with Dell either." He is somewhat comforted by the limited-term nature of the bundlewhich ends May 31, 2006.
Still, Oracle's blessing of pricey Sun multi-core chips and servers was especially striking after months of Oracle's ardently-proclaimed love for "commodity" hardware. The use of on-the-cheap blade servers sucks cost out of even high-end database implementations. So why give Sun such a break on what is clearly not commodity hardware?
The answer, according to an internal Oracle employee FAQ posted in mid January is this:
"Sun determined that they were experiencing a slower than expected uptake on their dual core UltraSPARC IV server. As a result, the slower growth adversely impacted their anticipated server sales. To address this issue, Sun and Oracle worked together to develop a promotion that facilitates competitive pricing for Sun USIV/IV+ servers and additional software up-sell opportunities for Oracle."
In addition: "The promotion is designed to progress Sun's single core installed base customers to Sun's multi-core core servers and in turn the incentive pricing should help accelerate sales of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition."
Clearly anticipating angst from sales guys, the FAQ also stressed how the promo will spark good up-sell opportunities for service and maintenance and middleware. The cheap license will expire with the server and cannot be transferred to new hardware.
"Once you figure in the gotchas and by the time you get through real-market discounting, we have customers who aren't sure it's worth it," according to the Oracle partner.
So there.