Oracle plans pricing and licensing seminars

IDG News Service - Oracle Corp. plans to start a series of seminars on its pricing and licensing practices later this year in an expanded effort to clear up confusion about the topic among users, an Oracle executive said Friday.
Oracle already publishes many details on its licensing and pricing on its Web site and last September released a 40-page Software Investment Guide to better inform customers (see story). Now the vendor will offer interactive seminars so customers can get direct answers to their questions.
"The Software Investment Guide is great overall, broad information, but I think the key for seminars is that people can ask questions that apply directly to their particular situation," said Oracle's vice president of licensing, Jacqueline Woods. "It is another step in the right direction to provide clarity on our pricing and licensing models."
The company plans to offer the free seminars online, at various conferences and during a road show that will stop at any location worldwide where enough Oracle users have expressed interest, Woods said. Oracle is already conducting an online user survey to assess interest.
Oracle's pricing and licensing faces continued criticism. However, users and analysts welcomed the seminars as another way to learn more about an area that most software vendors like to keep mysterious.
"I think customers are going to attend the seminars. If I was the CIO responsible for managing my bottom line, I certainly would attend," said Karen Brownfield, a representative of the International Oracle Users Council. "I hope Oracle will put the publicity out there that announces the seminars."
"Oracle has done probably more than anyone in making its pricing policies as transparent as possible, and they should get credit for that. This has been one of the great mysteries of the enterprise software space," said analyst Joshua Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Application Consulting in Daly City, Calif.
Oracle buyers are definitely still confused about the vendor's pricing and licensing scheme, said Gartner Inc. analyst Jane Disbrow.
"Things go wrong, especially when people have to change from an older licensing model to a current model. That's when they generally end up having to pay more money to Oracle," she said. "These seminars are a great thing and will really help their customers who really want to understand their licensing metrics."
Information guides and seminars are nice, but in the end clarity will come only if Oracle comes up with a straightforward pricing and licensing scheme and sticks to that for a while, Disbrow said. "Until they basically simplify their license modeland stay with that simplified license model for several years, they are going to run into this same trouble."
Oracle recently launched a new pricing model for its E-Business Suite, just over a year after it introduced flat fee pricing for its enterprise applications suite.
Customers may have no choice but to keep complaining, because according to Oracle's Woods, there's no such thing as a static pricing and licensing policy.
"I don't think we are in an environment where you can have a static pricing model. I don't think that is a paradigm that can exist. As long as the computer industry keeps changing, to have a pricing model that never changes is not a realistic expectation," she said. "I think customers want more flexibility."

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