Reduce Oracle Licenses Costs by moving to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Oracle licensing is quite expensive. The enterprise edition is $47,500 per unit (sockets * cores per socket * core factor) and the standard edition is $17,500 per unit (sockets)! Still, Oracle is widely used across corporations for its ability to scale and perform at very high levels. Roughly 430,000 customers in 175 countries use Oracle. Many of these customers are looking to migrate their Oracle workloads to the cloud and various alternatives to reduce/optimize their Oracle Licensing and on-going Support costs.      

Migrating from on-premise to Oracle Cloud is a viable option!

Most CIO’s contemplate whether the cost to migrate to the cloud would align with the internal financial models or not.  What are the hidden costs of moving to the cloud or do we have the expertise to successfully execute a migration? What are the cost benefits of one over the other? 

Gartner predicted that 75% of all databases would move to the cloud by 2023.  Today, many organizations still run their Oracle Database workloads on-premise.  To migrate, they face various challenges including, current datacenter/equipment commitments, low network latency requirements, internal security and or strict industry regulations, Oracle Licensing impact, etc.

Oracle Cloud Database License Models

Oracle allows for two database licensing models in their cloud.  One is a Bring Your Own License (BYOL) or Database as a Service (DBaaS) model.  The DBaaS model includes the Oracle Database Licenses as part of your monthly or yearly cloud subscription.  It has various options that include up to most of every advanced database feature Oracle offers from high availability, security, and management.

Ways to reduce your Oracle Licensing Cost by migrating to Oracle Cloud

• Don’t over provision your database platform:  Oracle provides Gen2 infrastructure (aka latest and greatest) which you can size appropriately for your workloads based on the current database metrics/outputs.  There is no need to overprovision your cloud infrastructure upfront.
  Through DBaaS, if you need additional capacity you can scale up/down as needed and or “burst” various workloads based on the business requirement (month end close, peak workloads, etc.).  By using this approach, you do not overpay upfront and essentially pay for what you use.  This model works well for new workloads, lower environments, and Disaster Recovery.

• Leverage BYOL Model: You can rapidly provision OCI Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environments and transition your on-premise Oracle Licenses to them.  The benefit of this model is you are able to CAP your Oracle Licensing to the vCPUs you deploy in OCI.  This saves significant Oracle Licensing cost compared to having to license the entire physical box as on-premise Oracle Licensing requires.
• Disaster Recovery (DR):  Traditionally for on-premise Disaster Recovery/standby environments, companies mirror the same amount of Oracle Database Licenses they have running on their production site.  With the introduction of Oracle cloud (DBaaS), companies that either are looking at a new DR requirement or want to repurpose their existing Oracle Licenses can leverage OCI.  The ability to “burst” your OCI platforms allows companies the ability to configure their DR environment as needed so you only leverage the full capacity and associated costs when needed.  This approach provides for a significant cost savings on Oracle licensing and infrastructure while supporting the critical business requirement.
• Terminate Oracle Support / Reduce Oracle Support:  While this is not recommended by Oracle, they are your licenses.  In certain cases, customers have purchased database licenses and specific advanced feature/database options that they no longer want and or are no longer being used.  This could apply to a variety of reasons (bundled purchase to get bigger discount, requirements have changed, etc.), but regardless you still have to pay support.  The Oracle Cloud provides you the ability to re-think, re-architect how you deploy those Oracle Database workloads in a modernized infrastructure.
  Leveraging only what you need through a OCI monthly or yearly commitment and sunsetting old, unused, and potentially overprovisioned perpetual Oracle Licenses can save a lot of money and provides flexibility to scale your database at a predictable cost structure.

Talk to our experts today to know more about moving Oracle Workloads to the Cloud.

If you like this blog and want to know more, check out:

• Top 5 Database Management Challenges – and How to Solve Them

• Top 3 Migration Strategies When Moving SQL On-prem to Azure SQL Database or SQL Managed Instance

Migrate to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with MiCORE Solutions

At MiCORE, we offer database managed services and cloud solutions with migration, 24/7 support and monitoring. With a combined experience of 80+ years working with Oracle Software and Licensing, our certified teams craft the best cloud migration strategy to shift your workload to an agile and secure environment. We know Oracle databases and the Oracle cloud. Combining these two, we help to provide you an Oracle cloud infrastructure that maximizes performance and reduces cost. 

About Author

Kent Kofman

He is a Principal & Leader at MiCORE Solutions Inc, having 12+ years of extensive experience in Database managed solutions, Proprietary and open-source database implementations and migrations, Cloud migration and management, Multi-cloud, hybrid cloud expertise, Cloud integration services and Specialists in Oracle licensing. He is fortunate to lead a purpose-built organization full of strong, passionate, committed associates to enable Business solutions for organizations by providing managed services and consulting services to help our customers make better business decisions.