In the past, Microsoft has tried to persuade everyone to stick to the tradition of the IT business – namely, stay with Microsoft products and purchase new licences regularly. However, Microsoft seems to be quietly changing the way it works.
Microsoft is, for example, adapting its licensing to the growing use of multicore processors and service-oriented architecture (SOA). While Oracle charges 75 percent of a full licence price per processor core, Microsoft has opted to charge per processor socket, which is far easier to understand. And Microsoft is talking about dynamic instancing for the future – essentially a pay-per-use business model that fits more readily with SOAs.
