RSSFive-digit fees from Sun's MySQL could actually save businesses millions
By Michael Hatamoto | Published July 2, 2008, 4:26 PM
Sun Microsystems hopes to expand GlassFish and MySQL use with a new Glassfish and MySQL Unlimited initiative aimed at corporations looking to deploy open source software.
Sun Microsystems announced last week it will bundle GlassFish with MySQL in a new program called Glassfish and MySQL Unlimited, which will offer companies the ability to deploy these products an unlimited number of times, for a fixed annual fee.
"We have been working really hard at creating a compelling offering for customers that want to be freed from proprietary database and application server vendors that are arbitrarily raising their prices," Sun VP of Marketing Mark Herring said in a blog post.
Glassfish is an open source application server spearheaded by Sun for use with its Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) platform. MySQL is an open source database software program that Sun acquired earlier in the year, in a billion-dollar purchase to strengthen its competitive position against Oracle and Microsoft.
Companies with less than 1,000 employees will be able to use Glassfish and MySQL Unlimited for $65,000 per year, with two other tiers for companies with 1,000 to 5,000 employees and companies with more than 5,000 employees. Sun did not disclose pricing information for the two other tiers.
Sun reported servers running 20 dual-CPU, dual-core x86 hardware and databases that run 10 dual-CPU, dual core x86 servers will on average cost at least $3 million over a three year span. Companies can instead choose to use the Glassfish and MySQL Unlimited program and only pay $240,000 over the three-year program, for a savings of $2.76 million.
The pricing scheme was actually a MySQL component that Sun ended up acquiring, and several employees within MySQL did not expect Sun to embrace it.
Sun's price cut comes at the same time Oracle announced it will increase the cost of its database software up to $47,500 per CPU. But instead of expecting customers to replace Oracle technology for Sun software, the Glassfish and MySQL Unlimited program is more designed for new customers looking for low-cost programs.
It wasn't long ago when companies were hesitant to switch to open source in the enterprise, but manufacturers have addressed their concerns with innovative pricing and support schemes. Open source technology can be deployed for a lower price than commercial software, but companies such as Sun make money from software support when something goes wrong. Furthermore, proprietary compliance issues and license fees are often removed when companies switch from standard commercial enterprise software to open source alternatives.
"We have been working really hard at creating a compelling offering for customers that want to be freed from proprietary database and application server vendors that are arbitrarily raising their prices," (quote)
Ironic that this is only an initial offering, with no track record to indicate they too would not raise prices. This quote says nothing at all. So, Sun is going to charge a fee to bundle two "open source" products, one of which does nothing more than promote J2EE, which is semi- open source. This wreaks of marketspeak.
Score: 0
|WOW! MS SQL Server cost a fraction of that.
Score: 0
|Uh......Try again.
You cannot deploy MS SQL as many times as you wish on as many CPU's as you want with unlimited client access licenses for 65k. Not even close.
Score: 0
|Its incredibly humorous (and scary) to listen to the myriad folks whose knowledge of computing is limited to their desktop PC used primarily for gaming and those who live to download MP3s from some P2P site...
Score: 0
|You're right; I'm not going to argue that MS SQL could compete with Sun's deal, but they are less expensive than Oracle.
One deal MS SQL does have that can be pretty economical is that you can run an unlimited number of instances of MS SQL Enterprise on virtual machines on one physical host. But I've found that MS SQL Express 2005 works for most of the things I need it for; there's a lot more with it than MSDE had.
Score: 0
|it's true, but how many business applications required unlimited connections? a few
unlimited CPU - interesting, but can many business afford to use 100CPU DB server? again a few....
So in reality this great offer become useless
Score: 0
|I don't know my Oracle pricing too much but isn't it $47,500/CPU? And Oracle actually counts cores fractionally, not just CPUs which is what MS does, so a 2 proc 8 core Intel is 4 "processors" from Oracle (8 x .5) but just 2 "processors" from MS. MS SQL is about $25,000/CPU. I definitely could be wrong about Oracle's pricing but that's what their price list leads me to believe:
http://www.oracle.com/co...chnology-price-list.pdf
Score: 0
|You need to become MUCH more familiar with the corporate world!!!!!
Score: 0
|