[jodrellblank]

When you need "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" levels of nontechnical legitimacy?

(I too wonder what technical marvels it can perform which justify the cost).

[karambahh]

When you need multiple spatially distributed active/active write nodes (multiple masters...) you pretty much need Oracle RAC. When confronted with the cost, you end up designing something where writes are pushed to a caching layer, which deals with an active/passive setup, with enough buffer to switch passive to active if something goes wrong.

[jacques_chester]

DB2 and Teradata boast comparable degrees of horizontal, multi-site scalability.

[karambahh]

And DB2 cost pretty much the same as Oracle... :p

[jacques_chester]

Less, usually, depending on the platform. IBM mostly uses DB2 to sell its fancier hardware.

But occasionally you gotta spend money to make money.