Jacqueline Woods on Licensing at Oracle OpenWorld

I attended the Jacqueline Woods session on licensing at Oracle OpenWorld. Most of you don't care. I'll give you a few highlights anyway:

• Two new pricing models include "capacity on demand" (only pay for the CPUs that you're actually using) and "software as a service via financing" (one payment per month for the license and the support).


• Also some talk about metering software usage and looking for peak usage. Woods cited fantasy football servers as an example - these servers will have peak usage around Sunday or Monday, but lower usage the rest of the week.


• Multi-core processor licensing will be cheaper than licensing of separate processors.


• A lot of talk about cluster licensing, both for hot clusters and failover clusters.


• Discussion of a Lifetime Support Policy, with some level of support 6+ years after a product is introduced. Better than no support at all, and when you think about the obsolescence in this industry, the policy is commendable.