Oracle launches database for SMBs

Hoping to grow its business by reaching into new markets, Oracle Corp. launched a new edition of its database software Wednesday priced for small and medium-sized businesses.

Called Oracle Standard Edition One, the software is available now and designed for use on single-processor servers in smaller businesses and at the departmental level, said Jacqueline Woods, Oracle's vice president of global pricing and licensing strategy.

The software is priced at $5,995 per processor for an unlimited number of users, or $195 per named user with a minimum of five users. That puts the entry point for the product at $975, Woods said.

"Many of our customers indicated that they would like to see a product that was more for a smaller market, particularly when you have departments that tend to buy products independently of the general procurement process that occurs at the enterprise level," Woods said.

Many of the industry's big vendors have been targeting smaller businesses as spending from their traditional base of enterprise customers has slowed. IBM Corp. launched its Express line of products for smaller businesses, including a version of its DB2 database released in June. That product retails for $499 for the base server package plus $99 per user, and is available for one -and two-processor systems.

Such midmarket products typically offer ease of use and low maintenance features designed to appeal to organizations with small IT departments. That isn't the case with Oracle, according to Woods. Oracle's pitch is that the product provides the same features, security and reliability as its higher end products, but limited to a smaller machine.

This is "not a scaled down version of the enterprise edition or the standard edition," Woods said. "You have essentially the same features and functions that are available on those other products. The limitation is that it's on a one-processor machine."

Customers will be able to upgrade easily from Standard Edition One to higher end versions of Oracle's database, according to Woods. The company hopes to grow its business by tapping into a fast growing market for one-processor servers, Woods said.

"This provides us another entry point to reach other customers that we were not reaching before," she said.

The entry price breaks new ground for the Redwood Shores, California, company. The standard edition of its database, for servers with up to four CPUs, is priced at $15,000 per CPU and $300 per named user. The enterprise edition is $40,000 per CPU and $800 per named user.

Standard Edition One is built on its current Oracle9i database and is available now for all the platforms Oracle typically supports, she said, which include Windows, Linux and Solaris. When Oracle 10g, the next big upgrade to its main database product, is released later this year, a 10g version of Standard Edition One will appear at the same time, Woods said.

Oracle has no current plans to offer midmarket versions of any of its other products, Woods said, although she didn't rule out that possibility for the future.