Forget whether Fusion is real, forget whether it will go on general availability this year as outlined by CEO Larry Ellison at the last earnings call. Instead, concentrate on the pricing structure (PDF download.)
To Oracle’s credit it has put pricing out there into the public domain but this might as well read like the Oracle Price Book of old: confusing, complex and guaranteed to put unwary customers at risk of under provisioning what they need or ending up with shelfware.
As I understand, Fusion is available across a variety of deployment options: On-premise, hosted, in some sort of cloud - whatever. Fair enough - but the way this reads, you might as well consider yourself as an on-premise user with every bit and piece an ‘extra.’ Example, check out the financials matrix:
- Fusion Accounting Hub
- Fusion Advanced Collections
- Fusion Automated Invoice Processing
- Fusion Expenses Fusion
- Financial Reports Center
- Fusion Financials
…are all separate ‘components’ with license price plus support pricing and at different minimum user levels. Look at other components and it gets a whole lot messier.
Given we were told that Oracle is looking seriously at cloud deployment options, how does this work? How are those interested in adopting Fusion supposed to figure out the cost/benefits of that method of deployment when this is what you see?
Assuming this is the way Oracle believes Fusion will be sold then we’re into the same old games we’ve always been in: massive discounts on the main user pricing and no wiggle room on the 22% support price.And that’s just the start of pricing issues you’re almost certain to find in the bowels of licensing agreements.
Message to Oracle: wake up - the world has changed. If you’re serious about Fusion as next gen then that should mean sensible pricing in the cloud as a starting point that keeps thing simple. Or as some might say: you can fool some of the people all of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
UPDATE: think I am alone - how about this Tweet from Debra Lilley:
Oracle please listen your #fusion price list is too complicated, is it really going to cost that much just to do what i do today?
Disclosure: Debra represents many users as UKOUG Chairman and as ACE Director. She is also a fellow board advisor to Constellation Research. We have not discussed this topic.
