[SteveNuts]

Oracle makes their licensing model intentionally impossible to be compliant. It's not just "you run x number of instances you owe us y dollars".

It's "you enabled x feature on your database times y users oh and use this handy CPU core count chart to calculate how many cores you're using. Oh and you're running your database in a virtual machine with a clustered hypervisor so you owe us for every cpu core in your cluster".

Then they tell you how much they owe you but "it will all go away if you migrate some of your stuff over to our 'cloud'" and the process starts all over again in 2 years, or less.

Fuck Oracle.

[heyyyouu]

Oracle does some evil shit. Their sales tactics can be outrageous. It really doesn't seem like they give a crap about their clients/servicing them.

[nobleach]

The biggest tactic I've seen is their inability to be consistent. In 2 years, I spoke to 3 Oracle reps and received vastly different quotes for the same hardware, features, processors/cores, etc.

[mathattack]

Oracle’s pricing is “whatever we can get from the customer.”

Their salespeople are so hyper-agressive that I can tell which vendors have ex-Oracle reps.

[heyyyouu]

Definitely! We actually dropped one vendor because it was all ex-Oracle salespeople, and their negotiation tactics were outrageous. They tried to hold us over a barrel and instead we made a major platform change in six weeks just so we could tell them to f-off.

[justinclift]

> ... one vendor because it was all ex-Oracle salespeople

Mellanox?

[heyyyouu]

Nope! but good to know.

[curt15]

Any other companies set their licensing structure like they are laying landmines?

[SteveNuts]

Microsoft, with SQL server. But when you deal with their auditors you just settle your bill and you're done. They don't turn it into an extortionate sales pitch.

[dx87]

I've heard Microsoft's is pretty complicated, they even have a certification exam to prove you understand their licensing.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-70-705.aspx

[jm4]

It hasn’t been that bad for me. I give them an updated user count and tell them what else I’m using once per year and they give me a bill. They’ve never pushed back on anything. We start with a conference call, I send over a spreadsheet and that’s it. They have software I can run on my network, but they have always let me give them the numbers from my asset tracking system. Frankly, they’re one of the easiest software vendors I deal with.

[fragmede]

"User count" sounds so simple when you put it that way. That spreadsheet isn't trivial to build, and the situation on what's in it may be foreign to some readers here (it was to me).

A Microsoft shop needs licenses for each laptop/desktop running windows, but in an office using Microsoft Server to operate its LAN and the requisite services - DNS, DHCP, SMB file sharing, VPN, email, etc - basically any device that touches the Windows Server machine needs a Client Access Licences (CAL), which is available in user-based and device-based flavors.

Let's say the company operates a website and has developers. The development/QA environment requires an (expensive) MSDN account (or whatever it's called now) per-developer. In production, unlimited anonymous/unauthenticated users are allowed to hit IIS (web server). Authenticated access by employees to IIS needs a user CAL, authenticated customer access requires an External Connector (EC) license. But don't worry, the backing MS SQL Server database for the website also needs to be licensed, with per-cpu-core-per-machine licensing available. Except everything's a VM theses day, so the servers sit on top of a VM host (Microsoft Hyper-V), so there's some additional licensing intricacy there to deal with.

On top of that, there's the Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) licensing model available for ISVs, but OEM licenses cannot coexist wth SPLA licensing on the same system (VMs + host).

Just to make it more fun, different Microsoft reps will have different answers on how some of the more subtle intricacies even apply!

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/product-licensing/...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/licensing-programs...

[jm4]

I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that bad. I don’t put together the spreadsheet from scratch. Been doing it a long time though. We start with what I had last year. I just have to fill in my numbers for each license. Then they come along and tell me I need an external connector because I’m doing this or that. I groan a little bit and pay.

They’re pretty easy because you only have to do it once a year. It drives me nuts when a vendor wants me to manage individual licenses as people are coming on board. I end up having to keep extras on hand. At least let me reconcile quarterly or something. It’s even worse when each seat has its own key.

Microsoft makes the license management and reconciliation so easy. The only negative about their licensing is they double dip with the desktop OS and CAL stuff.

[lunchables]

I see you have never been through a SAM audit.

We've been on EA for years and the amount of complexity and shifting rules year by year is absurd. It is nearly impossible to stay in compliance. Even the companies who have "owned" our EA (partner responsible for managing it) are wrong frequently about licensing rules, later contradicted by Microsoft.

If you have a handful of licenses on a Select agreement, or O365 (I don't know, we dont use it) maybe it is simple. But a large enterprise customer? It's a fucking nightmare.

[jm4]

We are on an EA. Annual spend is in the 200-250 range. We have pretty tight asset management so it’s not difficult to get precise numbers. We have grown substantially over the past 7 or 8 years and our license count has gone up accordingly so I’m sure that helps too. Maybe we ran their software once or twice to confirm counts. It’s kind of a non-event. I’ve never experienced any kind of full blown audit where they challenge our numbers and go looking for hidden software. We keep track of what we use, pay for it during true up and renewal, and that’s about it.

[lunchables]

>I’ve never experienced any kind of full blown audit

I have been through SAM audits. It is a huge pain in the ass. You will spend hours arguing with them over obscure licensing details that equate to tens of thousands of dollars in licensing costs.

For example, in one audit they charged us for Visio licenses because we paid for Pro versions of licenses but the helpdesk had accidentally installed Standard.

[mathattack]

IBM is very guilty. Then they hire Deloitte to chase their customers for breech.

[hackeraccount]

That. Oracle lost my companies business because of chickenshit like the parent post.

[xeeeeeeeeeeenu]

Oracle products are outrageously expensive, but I wouldn't call their licensing complicated. Microsoft's model (with CALs) is much more opaque and they refuse to clarify it. I can't comment on IBM licensing though, unfortunately I know nothing about it.

[SteveNuts]

Oracle has the exact same thing, they just call it "Named users" or "NUP's" rather than "CAL".

https://www.peakindicators.com/blog/oracle-licensing-nups-pe...

[hermitdev]

I don't know about current IBM licensing, but for DB2 UDB server on Windows circa 2001, it was was something like $150k per CPU per year (pre multicore, only SMP at the time).