Kudos to Microsoft for Dual-Core Chip Plans - Page 3

The problem comes down to the old utility computing issues of how to measure usage once you cut yourself off from tangible commodities like processors. "When youre running in a big grid environment [for example], you dont have the physical resources that say, I consumed four processors or whatever," said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst at Illuminata, in Nashua, N.H. "Theres nothing physical and simple to point to: I used one-twentieth of a processor for 14 nanoseconds. Its not a simple way of talking about what resources youve used." Of course, were vendors to switch to a usage model, it wouldnt be pretty for their revenues, at least for the short term. As it now stands, companies like IBM get paid whether a customer uses a license or not. Once such vendors move to a consumption usage model, all bets are off as far as what revenues will flow into their tills. "They cant plan effectively," noted Julie Giera, an analyst at Forrester, in Cambridge, Mass. "They dont know what usage levels will be. It gets hard for vendors to budget. They get paid now, no matter how often it gets used." The upshot: Microsoft deserves kudos for eschewing the unfair hardware tax that other vendors have no problem levying. But as far as long-term solutions go, they and other vendors still need to unleash themselves from the need to touch all that physical evidence of what their customers are up to—lest they send database customers straight into the arms of no-fuss, no-muss competitors. Whats that mean? Three words: open-source databases. Editors Note: This story was updated to specify that dual-core technology specifically from AMD or Intel has not yet materialized. Check out eWEEK.coms Database Center at http://database.eweek.com for the latest database news, reviews and analysis.

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