Oracle Cloud licensing – Compare Oracle, AWS, Azure and GCP

Are you searching for Oracle cloud licensing help?  This is an high level article, that will help you understand how to license Oracle in AWS, how to license Oracle in Azure, Oracle on GCP and Oracle Cloud licensing. These vendors are the 4 biggest public cloud providers, Oracle Cloud, AWS RDS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. We review the licensing flexibility and options available for each platform to help you understand how Oracle licensing works as well as how you can leverage existing Oracle software investments.

 

Oracle Cloud licensing

 

Oracle Cloud 

 

You license per Oracle OCPU and you purchase Oracle Universal Cloud Credits that can then be spent on compute and/or platform services. Oracle is the only platform where you can use almost any Oracle software license without the need to purchase a license. For example you cannot use Enterprise Edition and partitioning in AWS and Azure without you first purchasing a license from Oracle and then bringing it to AWS or Azure. With Oracle cloud you can pay per hour or per month. Pay as you go is the option where you dont make any pre-payment amount and can spin up an cloud instance, that is then billed per consumption per month. Annual commit is an contract which you negotiate with Oracle and it has a discounted pricing structure.

 

Universal Cloud Credit Models (Oracle Cloud Currency)

Pay-as-you-go (Pay per hour)

– License included (all licenses) – You pay for both compute and platform service.
– Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) – You only pay for compute services

Pre-payment 12 month (discounted rates)

– License included (all licenses) – You pay for both compute and platform service.
– Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) – You only pay for compute services

 

Oracle BYOL costs

 

Analysis:

 

  • Flexibility and you can choose license include for all Oracle software licenses.
  • Oracle BYOL provides a discount if utilized on Oracle Cloud.
  • If you paying support for unused Oracle software licenses, this is the only option where you can get value from that spend.
  • Oracle gives you a 33% return on your support bill, If you spend 100,000 $ on Oracle Cloud and you have an active support agreement for on premises licenses. You can apply to recieve 33% on your support costs back. Oracle calls this Support Reward.

 

AWS – Oracle licensing

 

AWS is authorized as a cloud provider and allow you to license per vCPU.  2 vCPUs as counts as Oracle processor license if multi-threading is enabled. Read how to calculate Oracle licensing on AWS  here. AWS has 2 different options, either you take your own license and license it on EC2 or you choose RDS AWS which has included license for standard edition.
AWS does not allow you to use any pay per hour options unless its for Oracle Database Standard Edition and SE1. It does not provide specific usage rights, such as hosting or SaaS rights. AWS do not provide included licenses for Enterprise edition or middleware products.

 

AWS EC2

 

  • You bring your own license to AWS EC2 and you license per vCPU.

 

AWS RDS

 

On-demand DB instance (license included)

  • License included (only Standard Edition 1 and DB SE2 licenses are available)

On-demand DB instanced BYOL

  • Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) – you bring your own Oracle licenses to AWS.

 

oracle licensing on aws

 

Analysis:

 

  • AWS RDS only have “license included” for standard edition options.
  • For almost all Oracle software you need to use the BYOL options and it offers no discount contrary to Oracle Cloud.
  • AWS is almost like any traditional outsourcer provider when it comes to license management, only exception is that they have pre-negotiated rights to license on vCPU.

 

Oracle Licensing Azure

 

Azure is as AWS an authorized cloud provider and allow you to license per vCPU.  2 vCPUs count as 1 Oracle processor license if multi-threading is enabled. Read how to calculate Oracle licensing on Azure here. Azure has no included licenses options, you need to bring your own Oracle licenses.

 

Bring your own license (BYOL)

 

Microsoft Azure does not have any “license included” option and customers needs to bring their own Oracle licenses.

 

Oracle applications on Azure (BYOL)

 

Microsoft and Oracle have an partnership and allows you to deploy Oracle applications taking advantage of an integration between OCI and Azure. You do not need to purchase Universal Cloud Credits for OCI, only make sure that you have licenses for the Oracle applications (BYOL

Oracle applications you can deploy on Azure are:

 

 

oracle licensing on azure

 

Analysis:

  • Azure has no “license included” option at all.
  • Azure offers an integration with Oracle, but that has no impact on licensing as can purely provide technical advantages.
  • Azure has no included license options at all, you need to purchase them from Oracle and then use Bring Your Own license to Azure.
  • No flexibility to pay per hour or usage.
  • Azure is like any traditional outsourcing provider, where they only have negotiated the right to license on vCPU.

 

Google Cloud – Oracle on GCP

 

Oracle Cloud Licensing options

 

Only BYOL

 

  • GCP does not have any “license included” option and customers’ need to bring their own Oracle licenses – BYOL.
  • GCP is not an “authorized cloud environment” by Oracle, which means it has no advantage of licensing per vCPU.
  • GCP only option is their bare metal solutions, allowing customers to license per core as they would for any on-premises environment.
    Read how to calculate Oracle licensing on GCP here

 

Analysis:

 

  • GCP is like any other hosting/outsourcing provider who offers bare metal services.
  • No license included and no advantages on licensing.

 

Frequently asked questions

 

Can we bring Oracle ULA licenses to public cloud?

Many times not, you need to pay attention to what is in your Oracle Unlimited License Agreement, read the certification clause what does it say about public cloud deployments.

How does it work with Java in Public cloud?

Oracle has recognized AWS and Azure as authorized public cloud providers, this means that you need to license Java on x number of vCPUs. The same way as Oracle technology software.

How can I be non-compliant when moving to Public cloud?

Unfortunately the same issues as on premise. For GCP you license Oracle the same way as you do for onprem licensing, no exceptions on vCPU. For AWS and Azure we often come across customers who have wrongly sized their Oracle instances by starting to large instances or been using non licensed software. You can discover these issues by using Oracle LMS scripts and then remediate any issues without alerting Oracle.

Can I bring Oracle Applications to Public Cloud?

Sure, review your contract for any restrictions, but if none exist you simply deploy the technology licenses for technology products under Oracle EBS or Siebel, JDE etc. Oracle applications licensing is not based on number of vCPU or processors its based upon application users or revenue metrics.

 

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