Oracle’s 2023 price list for the Java SE Universal Subscription reveals that the company bases its costs on the total number of employees, not just employees using Java.
The price list, released last week, shows costs starting at $15 per employee for companies with 1 to 999 employees and decreasing to a minimum of $5.25 for companies with more than 40,000 employees.
Oracle provided an example of the new system in operation. A company with 28,000 employees would expect to pay $6.75 per employee per month — including full-time, part-time, temporary, and even contractors — or $2.268 million per year.
The Java SE Universal subscription replaced the previous Java SE subscription launched by the company in 2018, which was billed per processor for servers and cloud instances, and per user for PCs.
Orcle notably fails to highlight the change in its FAQ page, but does detail a few other ways that Universal Subscription differs from Legacy. In a welcome move, licensed use is universal across desktops, servers, and third-party clouds, and licensees will receive triage support for their entire Java portfolio.
However, while this is much more convenient for employees who use Java on different machines, it will certainly increase costs for companies where this does not apply.
Oracle promises that legacy users will, for now, be able to renew under their existing terms and conditions, but is likely to push to switch to the new subscription in the future.
Nathan Biggs, CEO of consulting firm House of Brick, wrote in a blog post that anyone using Java in their business is “potentially responsible for a massive increase in subscription fees that may have very little benefit for your company”.
He continued: “We have already heard from our customers that they are being contacted (harassed) by their Java sales representatives to adopt this ‘easier to understand subscription model’. We expect legions of sellers Oracle are salivating at the thought of locking in these new subscriptions before the February quarter-end deadline for their personal bonuses. This Java change also gives every Oracle representative an excuse to try to audit customers on their entire Oracle footprint (database, middleware, Java, applications), so it’s critical to prepare now to reduce potential unexpected costs.”
We have contacted Oracle for comment.
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