TmaxSoft has upped its attack on Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) with a warning that moving Oracle’s database to the cloud could be problematic for users.
Organisations porting Oracle databases to run on virtualisation technologies such as VMware could be in serious breach of Oracle’s licensing rules, it has warned.
Carl Davies, managing director for TmaxSoft UK, claims that it was “simply not clear” what Oracle’s contractual position is in reference to virtualised hardware.
“Oracle permits some partitioning technology as a means of limiting the number of software licences required in virtualised environments but it can be unclear which methods are approved and it’s easy to misinterpret and fall into non-compliance,” he says.
Davies adds that one sure result for non-Oracle Virtualisation Machine (OVM) users such as VMware will be “significant cost and disruption, and once the audit is complete they will be given 30 days to become compliant again.”
He says that Oracle does publish an Oracle Partitioning Policy which makes a distinction between hard and soft-partitioning. It prohibits the use of many of the most common virtualisation technologies as hard partitioning in order to limit the number of licences required, including Solaris 9 resource containers, AIX workload manager and VMware.
“However this document has been far from widely publicised and, confusingly, explicitly states that none of these prohibitions can be included in any contract,” says Davies. “Despite the fact that Oracle goes to great lengths to describe its partitioning policy, it goes on to suggest that this very policy will not form part of any agreement or contract.”
“Oracle’s draconian attitude in pursuing its existing customer base is based in the belief that its customers are locked into the Oracle database due to high transitional costs to move over to another supplier,” says Davies.
TmaxSoft recently hired former Oracle man Nick Hayes as its new UK sales manager. He will be charge of increasing and supporting users migrating to Tibero, which the firm touts as a “low-cost” alternative to Oracle.
“The relational database market has become stagnant in the UK, with big players dominating the space with little room for competition,” says Hayes.
“I’ve seen first hand the impact an aggressive vendor audit can have on an organisation and really think it’s time for a shake-up in the sector. With a severe lack of clarity in licencing agreements becoming the norm with established database vendors, I was on the lookout for a strong alternative to Oracle’s stranglehold over the industry.”
