User count
User count is kind of an important figure to have when comparing these numbers. Without that, they are just numbers with no real meaning.
The vast majority of London Councils use Oracle as their ERP provider, but some bodies are splashing out less than £15,000 while others are forking out £500,000, according to research. The findings were based on Freedom of Information responses sent to enterprise IT business TmaxSoft, which quizzed 27 councils. Of those, 92 …
That and what 'an Oracle licence' is would help. And what applications are then run on it. Which will differ widely.
Third time a variant of this story has been run (at least). Central government, then police, now local government. It was nonsense first time. It's still nonsense.
There is no such thing as an "Oracle license", it's bound to vary with product, system size, number of users, etc. This is a little like pointing out that a "household" in Westminster spends less on, say, tea than a "household" in Birmingham, and ignoring the likely difference in household size and makeup.
Which one of the many hundreds of SKUs are you referring to?
Almost all Oracle software is available to be licensed as either on a per-core basis (with a minimum number of users per core) or on a named user basis. In almost every case it is cheaper to license production systems on a per-core basis and non-prod on named users.
However, as others have pointed out, without specifying which products are being referred to this study is completely meaningless. Price list prices on products varies from less than $10k USD per core to $250k USD or more.
It's like saying that some people pay more for a car than other people. If the council pays twice the price for a specific model of Ford Focus that would be news. To say that a council pays more for a lorry than a person pays for a car is not news.
So, you require a robust database and you buy Oracle so you are paying to license software and services, but my question is why not use PostgreSQL or other opensource database and use the 100 thousand + in Oracle costs to higher a couple of good database administrators with expertise in that software to develop it. The money then stays in the community and you already have those administrators that work your Oracle database(s) who can learn the differences.
The article refers to the licencing of Oracle ERP. i.e Applications such as Oracle Financials, Procurement, iExpenses. These are designed and configured to run on an Oracle database so PostgreSQL, whilst it could be used for in-house database uses wouldn't work behind Oracle eBusiness Suite.
Have you tried to hire a PostgreSQL or other open source database admin at local authority pay scales?
I have. It's not possible. People with those skills want to work elsewhere, people who work in local authorities are (for the most part) not interested in or not able to get the skills in these alternate applications.