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Can you help me with my software licensing question?

I am in the process of setting up my company's applications on Cloud. Some apps run on a fully LAMP stack with Opensource (community versions). So we dont run into any licensing issues. But there are some key applications that use Proprietary software like WebSphere, Oracle DB (10gR2), MS SQL 2005 and so on.

How are licenses obtained while running such software on cloud environments ? Am I allowed to restore an image with licensed software in as many VMs ? I guess not.

Please throw some details on the licensing issues, models and other things to keep in mind while using proprietary commercial software on Cloud environments.

Also, if I use managed Hosting with a provider (like Rackspace etc), is it still considered a Cloud (for licensing purposes) ? I presume that in the case of managed hosting, the licensing model would be same as in the "On premise" scenario.

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Sathya
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Depends TOTALLY on the software licensing as defined by your contract and / or the producer.

So, you are wrong here. You need to pretty much check that on a case by case basis. For example Microsoft - depends on whether you license normal or by SPUR, but they have a per virtual processor license.

TomTom
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  • Fine. I agree. I would like to know about different licensing modes (for the software I have mentioned above) and any indicative prices. I am eager to know people's experience in using such softwares in cloud based environments (with focus on licensing/pricing). – Sathya Jul 21 '10 at 08:32
  • Microsoft: REASONABLE, especially under SPUR. Flexible and done by lawyers that seem to have talked to some IT peope about what is needed. For others I can not talk. I know oracle was once BAD (licensd per CPU speed -which you simply do not even really know). May / should have changed by now, though. Sadly, RENTING the softare from Microsoft is still best - the cloud hosters have more options (license per physical processor) that the user simply has no access to. – TomTom Jul 21 '10 at 08:39
  • +1 for the above inputs. Thanks TomTom. – Sathya Jul 21 '10 at 11:35