Oracle Cloud Services: Metered vs. Non-Metered

If you haven’t noticed, Oracle’s focus is in the cloud.

Over the past year, there has been a significant push from Oracle to grow their cloud business. Part of this push has included “wrapping” or “baking” Oracle Cloud services into many of their standard on premise license deals.

There’s a good chance you’ve already read about this in sources like this article from Business Insider, which paint the practice as “ugly”.

I don’t see it that way.

In my experience, I’ve seen Oracle reps include Cloud into deals to encourage their customers to test out and try the service. (We recommend starting with a hybrid cloud approach.) The idea behind this is that some, if not most, will see a value and continue to renew their licenses.

Regardless of what you may have heard about Oracle’s Cloud sales or Oracle Cloud Credits, I encourage you take advantage of the customer incentives to try their cloud while you still can.

There’s a few things you need to know before buying Oracle Cloud. 
The biggest questions you need to ask are:

• What am I buying?
• How much do I need, and what will it cost?

What am I buying? Metered vs. Non-Metered Cloud Services

You have two options when it comes to Oracle’s Database Cloud Service offering: Metered and Non-Metered.

Metered Cloud 
Metered Cloud is a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) offering that allows you to buy prepaid units called Oracle Cloud Credits which are billed against on a monthly or hourly basis depending on your organization’s cloud usage. Contracts last for either 12 or 24 months, after which point any unused Cloud Credits will expire.

Non-Metered Cloud 
Non-Metered Cloud is a fixed price offering that is billed on a monthly basis. The price does not fluctuate, regardless of your organization’s cloud usage.

How much do I need? What will it cost?

With both the Metered and Non-Metered offerings, the price you pay depends on which edition of the database you choose, as well as how many Oracle Compute Units (OCPU’s) you need. One OCPU provides the CPU capacity equivalent of one physical core of an Intel Xeon processor with hyper threading enabled. (Source: Oracle)

When it comes to the Metered Cloud service, a good way to determine how many Cloud Credits you need is to calculate the cost of a 1-year term license for the on premise version(s) of the products you plan on using in the Cloud and purchase the same dollar value in Cloud Credits.

Interested in learning more?

Oracle provides full product descriptions and basic pricing information on their website – and of course, MiCORE consultants are always available to answer any questions you may have!

Related Posts

• Got Oracle Cloud? Start with a Hybrid Cloud Approach. 
• 10 Considerations Before Moving Your Database to Cloud IaaS
• How to Select the Right Cloud Vendor