Licensing Limbo

摘要

Licensing models and grid computing are about to collide. Don't take my word for it, though. Read what Larry Ellison said to me when I interviewed him last month. "You will see an alternate pricing model per user and per processor. And [it will be done] on an annual basis: so much per employee per year." Think about it. If an enterprise is going to the hosted model, well, that's easy. The software-as-service (or the utility) model allows the ASP to charge on a per-employee, per-month basis no matter, in theory, how many CPUs are needed to run the application at any given time.