Oracle finally releases pricing for cloud software offerings

IDG News Service - Oracle has finally answered a big question hovering over its emerging family of cloud services: What do they cost?

While not giving a public price for every one of its cloud products, Oracle's website now has pricing for its on-demand database and Java development service, as well as for some applications.

Pricing for the database service, which uses version 11g R2, starts at US$175 per month for one schema, 5GB of disk storage and 30GB of data transfer. A midtier option costs $900 per month with one schema, 20GB of storage and 120GB of data transfer.

For $2,000 per month, developers get 50GB of storage and 300GB of data transfer, but still only one schema.

The Java service is also priced in tiers, starting at $249 per month for a single WebLogic server and rising up to $1,499 for four servers, with storage and data transfer amounts also rising accordingly.

Still unknown is how much Oracle's upcoming IaaS (infrastructure as a service), which was announced Sunday, is going to cost. This is of particular interest since Oracle is positioning the IaaS as a competitor to Amazon Web Services, which is known for its low-cost IaaS.

Oracle plans to price its IaaS competitively but would rather land deals that incorporate its full cloud stack, rather than just sell commodity compute cycles in bulk, said Abhay Parasnis, senior vice president of Oracle Cloud, during a question-and-answer session with journalists.

There's no release date set for the IaaS, Parasnis said in a brief interview after the session.

The public pricing for the database and Java service come as Oracle is now ready to offer them broadly to customers after working extensively with some large companies to work out all the kinks, Parasnis said. "One of the key tenets for us is to match the enterprise-grade SLAs customers expect."

Meanwhile, for the cloud applications, human resources starts at $9.50 per employee per month and talent management begins at $1.50 per user per month.

Sales and marketing starts at $100 per user per month for the standard edition, with enterprise and premium editions available for $140 and $200 per user per month, respectively.

Oracle's site also includes pricing for its cloud customer service and support software, acquired through the acquisition of RightNow. Seat pricing ranges from $90 to $250 across four editions.

Pricing wasn't yet listed for Oracle's cloud ERP (enterprise-resource-planning) and social software.

Salesforce.com is the clear rival to Oracle's cloud offerings in general, as it provides some of the same types of applications as well as a Force.com development platform and Database.com service, which is partly powered by the Oracle database itself.

Oracle's pricing seems higher than that of Salesforce.com, "but what they are providing in general is deeper in functionality," said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research.

"For example, global territory management is something Oracle does much better than Salesforce.com," Wang said, referring to a feature in CRM (customer-relationship-management) software.

As a result, Salesforce.com customers have to add certain components, Wang said. "So the main point is, get it all with Oracle or piecemeal it with Salesforce.com. The pricing is market-competitive."

In addition, Oracle may offer cloud customers discounts off list price according to a deal's volume.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com