No Price Increase for SQL Server 2008

Published: September 26, 2007

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft won't raise the price of SQL Server 2008 when it ships, as scheduled, in the second quarter of 2008, SQL Storage chief Ted Kummert told attendees of the 2007 Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Community Summit last week. He also unveiled new pricing incentives aimed at getting Oracle database users to switch to SQL Server.

After five years elapsed between the deliveries of SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005, Microsoft was determined to keep the database to a three-year release cycle. Judging from Kummert's keynote at the PASS show in Denver, Colorado, last week, it appears that Microsoft is keeping on track with that plan.

And what's more, unlike the hefty price increases that SQL Server 2005 brought compared to SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 won't cost any more to buy than SQL Server 2005, Kummert said.

When the product formerly known as "Katmai" ships next year, companies will be able to buy Enterprise Edition licenses for $25,000 per processor (most likely dual- or quad-core processors, as Microsoft charges based on the number of CPUs, not cores, making it silly to run the software on old single-core processors).

Likewise, Standard Edition licenses for SQL Server 2008 would cost $6,000 per processor--the same as for SQL Server 2005. Standard Edition could run on servers with up to four processors; Microsoft has not said if it will change this limitation with SQL Server 2008.

Microsoft also currently sells a Workgroup Edition license for SQL Server 2005 that installs on two-processor systems and costs $3,899, which, ostensibly, is what Microsoft will charge for SQL Server 2008 Workgroup Edition.

At PASS, Microsoft also announced that it will give discounts on SQL Server customers who migrate away from Oracle's database. As part of the program, customers who migrate from Oracle will get a 50 percent discount on SQL Server Enterprise Edition or 25 percent on Standard Edition, but only if they buy Software Assurance maintenance protection from Microsoft.

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