January 15, 2010 at 7:25 am
Consider what the data ON the server is worth. Desktop hardware is so cheap its marginal cost is almost irrelevant compared to the software licenses for the OS, MS Office, throw Photoshop and Dreamweaver in for a web developer setup and you've easily spent 5+ times the cost of the hardware. That cost is incurred to enable a single user to do their job. The server enables many people (or everybody) to do their work. Is $20k too high of a cost of business for storing/managing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business per year? That said, I'm glad I'm not in a position where I must convince the company to spend that kind of money 🙂
re: Very Small Business - Are you using SQL Server Express? I thought that was the whole point of a free version; you could grow into having a reason to purchase higher levels of licensing as needed.
It would be an interesting model to use some form of pay-as-you-go for server service provided in the cloud - although in the long term that's probably only a win for the provider.
January 15, 2010 at 7:26 am
From a US perspective, I think SQL Server is very well priced. I think that what comes in the box is a great deal, and is very useful too. My complaint goes to how much we pay because of our blasted exchange rate.
January 15, 2010 at 8:30 am
GilaMonster (1/15/2010)
Only way that could really work is if the licences were then only usable in the country purchased. That's a lot of admin work. Otherwise people would do what we do when visiting europe/usa. Buy stuff for friends cause it's cheaper.
I agree. We have the same issues with medicines and other goods.
I could see separate pricing if the product was locked to that language. Wouldn't necessarily prevent movement, but it would likely keep it manageable.
January 15, 2010 at 8:42 am
Steve Jones - Editor (1/15/2010)
I could see separate pricing if the product was locked to that language.
iSQL Server. iDatabase management platform
(South Africans should get the joke, I apologise to everyone else. Nothing to do with iApple)
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
January 15, 2010 at 8:59 am
I agree with Colby. A tiered/piecemeal pricing model like Steve suggested would be great. On paper SQL seems like a bargain compared to it's rivals b/c of the pay-per-socket model vs the pay-per-core model the other vendors use. The gotcha is in an enterprise arena when you only need one feature like reporting services installed on a box (ie reporting farm). You then pay ~25K for that instance of Reporting Services, whether or not you have the SQL engine installed there or not. With SQL licensing you're charged a license fee for any/all feature(s) installed on a server. With the other vendor's piecemeal pricing it could be a little cheaper for a large scaled-out BI shop or a small shop that only needs one feature.
January 15, 2010 at 9:18 am
What's a fair price? We're about to find out later today as we have a call with MS themselves 😀 We'll have upwards of 24 procs on 3 machines and I'm pretty sure we're not allowed to buy CALs anymore. I doubt we'll be quoted the $25K/proc Enterprise list price.
Ken
January 15, 2010 at 9:46 am
The pricing is fine when you are looking at the database server. The thing that kills me is when you scale out services to other servers. 2 scaled out report servers, 1 SSAS server, 1 db server; at 2 CPU/server that is 200K!
January 15, 2010 at 9:49 am
LC-268234 (1/15/2010)
I agree with Colby. A tiered/piecemeal pricing model like Steve suggested would be great. On paper SQL seems like a bargain compared to it's rivals b/c of the pay-per-socket model vs the pay-per-core model the other vendors use. The gotcha is in an enterprise arena when you only need one feature like reporting services installed on a box (ie reporting farm). You then pay ~25K for that instance of Reporting Services, whether or not you have the SQL engine installed there or not. With SQL licensing you're charged a license fee for any/all feature(s) installed on a server. With the other vendor's piecemeal pricing it could be a little cheaper for a large scaled-out BI shop or a small shop that only needs one feature.
Especially since some of the pieces do not play together very well when run on the same server.
All in the box seemed to become 'not on the same box' as we started growing a bit.
$25k because you need a feature becomes a lot harder to justify with only a couple hundred users as you try to scale.
A socket is better than a core for a licensing model - much easier to administer and keep track of.
Same with being able to say Pocessor, not CALs.
Greg E
January 15, 2010 at 9:51 am
Let us know what happens.
CALs are still there, but for internal users. If you're going for anon users (Internet), you need the CPU.
January 15, 2010 at 10:00 am
CALs are still there, but for internal users. If you're going for anon users (Internet), you need the CPU.
Ours is intranet with NT authentication but it's a vary large # of possible users. With CALs I don't think I ever got a definitive answer but from this population would it be based on all possible users or only those we think are interested in running our application on the corporate web site? Probably all possible users.
Ken
January 15, 2010 at 10:03 am
It can take some work to right-size SQL Server licensing in a medium to large shop. I used to work for a Fortune 100 company that used all major DBMS'. We had some dinky SQL Server apps used by thousands of users, and very large apps that could peg an 8 processor box, but were only used by a few analysts. Virtualization and/or clustering is one option, stack as many small instances as possible on a processor licensed server is quite efficient licnesing-wise.
January 15, 2010 at 10:45 am
ken.trock (1/15/2010)
CALs are still there, but for internal users. If you're going for anon users (Internet), you need the CPU.
Ours is intranet with NT authentication but it's a vary large # of possible users. With CALs I don't think I ever got a definitive answer but from this population would it be based on all possible users or only those we think are interested in running our application on the corporate web site? Probably all possible users.
Ken
If I am reading this correctly all potential users are internal. If that is the case you should be able to purchase CALs for your internal users - you decide device or user - but it should be one for one. It very well may be less expensive to purchase CPU licenses if you have enough devices or users.
January 15, 2010 at 11:46 am
Another big deal is disaster recovery pricing.
In the world of Oracle an active/passive cluster (RAC) would need licenses on both servers.
Also an unused disaster recovery server that production is being replicated to would also need a license. Basically you end up paying double for Oracle licenses you are not even using. Microsoft has a much more reasonable licensing formula.
January 15, 2010 at 12:02 pm
TCO is much more than per cpu or per socket price. Feature-based pricing too is arbitrary and even large installations don't need all the features all the time. Perhaps the cloud or similar models can offer features as needed on demand and price them accordingly. Ultimately its the use of features should determine the price and not whether the buyer is large or small or geographic location.
January 15, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Let's not forget to add the cost of Server CALs.
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