Further details surrounding the deal between Oracle and Azure could make the whole thing a financial setback. The partnership should make Oracle hardware and software available in Azure data centres.
Oracle is charging double to run certain products in Azure’s cloud. Indeed, the company writes in the details that it counts two vCPUs as one Oracle processor license when multithreading of processor cores is enabled.
That could give customers a financial hangover. Especially if the details are not carefully reviewed and customers assume what Oracle previously disclosed about the deal. “We made it one seamless whole: you go to the Azure portal, and you can set up an Oracle Autonomous Database, our very latest technology on an Exadata server, which is also our very fastest technology,” said Larry Ellison, CTO and founder of Oracle.
Two vendors
However, experts have now reviewed the details and disclosed the potential dangers to The Register. According to the experts, there is no thorough reason for double charging. Customers would end up with a solution through Oracle Database@Azure in which they would have to purchase services from both Oracle and Azure individually.
The deal between Oracle and Azure was proposed in September 2023 by Ellison and Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO. The appearance of two big chiefs made it immediately clear that this was a big announcement. The deal would bring benefits in accelerating AI development, and customers are already said to be excited about a partnership that brings together Oracle’s best hardware and software with all the advanced functionality Microsoft can offer. That enthusiasm may be tempered by the financial details.
Response Oracle -update
We asked Oracle why the calculation would be made this way and why these details were not communicated clearly. “When hyperthreading is enabled in Microsoft Azure, each core runs two threads that appear as two vCPUs in the Azure Cloud,” Oracle told Techzine on February 13.
It is striking that despite the collaboration between Microsoft and Oracle, customers do not financially benefit. Oracle indicates that the Oracle database costs do, however, count for the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) when purchased through the Azure Marketplace.
It further highlights the benefits of the partnership for customers: “Customers using Oracle Database@Azure will receive the highest level of Oracle database performance, scale and availability, as well as functionality and price parity with OCI public list prices.”
Also read: Microsoft and Oracle extend partnership with Oracle Database@Azure
24 hours ago
