Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2004/02/03/oracle_does_the_deed/

Oracle does the deed with 10g price cut

Free RAC too

By Ashlee Vance

Posted in On-Prem, 3rd February 2004 16:38 GMT

In a bid to reach small and medium-sized companies, Oracle has revamped the pricing models for its new low-end and midrange 10g database products, the company announced Tuesday.

Oracle confirmed that the rumors traveling news sites are true - it will sell the Standard Edition One 10g database for $4,995 a pop, which is a $1,000 cut. In addition, Oracle has graciously increased the processor limit for the product to two chips from one. Oracle delivered word of the price cut during a Tuesday conference call to officially kick off the release of the 10g product.

Customers more interested in Oracle's midrange Standard Edition 10g database will see some benefits as well. The product still comes in at $15,000 per processor, but Oracle's Real Application Clusters (RAC) software will now be bundled with the database at no charge. The maximum number of CPUs for the database and cluster is 4.

The Enterprise Edition pricing remains unchanged at $40,000 per processor.

Oracle has started shipping the 10g database for Unix and Linux operating systems. A Windows version of the product should follow in "some weeks."

The price changes are designed to help Oracle compete against Microsoft's SQL Server product and a low-end version of DB2 from IBM. Oracle is hoping to gain ground in Microsoft's traditional small-to-medium sized business market.

Oracle first launched the Standard Edition One product last October and hinted that it might lower the price of the product with the release of 10g. And so it has been done. ®