In March 2010, Oracle reduced the price of the Exadata v2 hardware by 15%. The first thing that went through my mind when I read this is that high prices must be hampering Exadata adoption. This was reinforced by articles like Oracle users like Exadata idea but balk at price. But, after digging into the pricing a little more, we discovered that there are some very interesting alterations to the fine print in the Oracle price list that accompanied these changes. Here is the fine print that was in the price list prior to the pricing changes on 16 March 2010 (the highlighting is from us):
And here is the corresponding fine print in the current Oracle Exadata USA Price List:
You will notice that only 1 year of Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm basic “warranty” is included now. Previously, 3 years of 24×7 support was included. Of course, if you want, you can purchase 3 years of 24×7 support for an additional fee. It’s just that Oracle has decided to remove this from the base system and therefore reduce the value provided to clients.
Disk Retention Services are also no longer included in the Exadata price. And I also believe that Linux O/S support is no longer included in the Exadata software support. Finally note that hardware installation is no longer included in the price.
Oracle have indeed reduced the initial acquisition costs for the Exadata hardware, but they have also reduced what they are providing for those costs. Let’s have a look at those costs, highlighting the removed items. Here are the 3-year costs for the different Exadata systems before 16 March 2010:
Note: These Exadata prices do not include the cost of the Oracle Database software that is required. For more information, see A Closer Look at Exadata v2 Costs.
And here are the 3-year costs to purchase the same Exadata configuration. I’ll leave out the bundled hardware installation prices, but be aware that these are additional costs.
Now, let’s compare the two:
Some customers may be happy with a Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm hardware warranty. However, even in this case, those customers will now have to pay for coverage in years 2 and 3. And, of course, they may also need to pay for Disk Retention Services, Linux support, and installation. The worst case scenario (if they purchase the equivalent of the base system from before 16 March 2010) is that these customers end up paying an additional 40% or so more over 3 years. The best case scenario is that these customers will still pay a significant amount more for Exadata over 3 years. And this is after a supposed price reduction 
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