Re: Price pressure due to Microsoft SQL Server

grimes_at_access3.digex.net (Seth Grimes) writes:

>I've heard opinions expressed that Microsoft's aggressive pricing of
>SQL Server, with Sybase reluctantly following for their own Windows NT
>version, is going to force Oracle to lower "open" platform (i.e., Unix
>and NT) prices drastically. Already, I understand "Oracleware" (i.e.,
>Oracle for Netware) is selling for 4-5 times less than a comparable
>Unix license. Anyone have any thoughts or evidence?

Watch the trade press next week for Oracle's announcement of a "Workgroup Server," priced consistent with Microsoft's pricing of SQL Server for NT. The channels (100% indirect -- you CAN'T buy it from Oracle) and the support (no free support) are consistent with shrink-wrap pricing. If you want some of the esoteric V7 capabilities like 2pC or other you have to buy the big systems. Whatever you think about this move, it is clearly better for them to have made it than for them to have denied the need to do something about lower-price products such as MS SQL Server.

-brent

-- 
-brent williams (brentw_at_netcom.com) san jose, california
"There's a special place for lovers, one we understand, there where
 neon bends the daylight sky.  In that sunny room, she soothes me, 
 cools me with her fan.  We're drifting, a thousand years roll by."